1

 
 EDITED BY 
 
 PROFESSOR ERIC S. ROBERTSON, M.A. 
 
 LIFE OF THACKERAY.
 
 LIFE 
 
 OF 
 
 . THACKERAY. 
 
 BY 
 
 HERMAN MERIVALE 
 
 AND 
 
 FRANK T. MARZIALS. 
 
 LONDON: 
 
 WALTER SCOTT, 24 WARWICK LANE. 
 
 NEW YORK : 3 EAST 14TH STREET, 
 
 AND MELBOURNE. 
 
 1891. 
 
 [AH rights irsetved.]
 
 
 PREFATORY NOTE. 
 
 -♦-f- 
 
 THIS little book was begun by Mr. Merivale, who 
 however, found himself unable to finish more 
 than the first six chapters, and the supplementary 
 chapter, on Thackeray's friendships, which he had 
 intended to incorporate into his narrative. The task 
 of completing the volume then devolved on me. As 
 Mr. Merivale was not primarily responsible for the choice 
 of his successor, and has had no opportunity of seeing 
 what I have written, it will be understood how anxious I 
 am that none of my errors of omission or commission 
 should, however lightly, be laid to his charge. 
 
 Through the kindness of Thackeray's family, and 
 especially of his daughter, Mrs. Ritchie, certain 
 " Memorials of the Thackeray family," collected by his 
 relations, Mrs. Bayne and Mrs. Pryme, were placed un- 
 reservedly in Mr. Merivale's hands, and, more reservedly, 
 in mine. These Memorials, in so far as they referred to 
 Thackeray, had reference especially to his youth, and 
 use of them has been made in the earlier of the
 
 6 PRE FA TOR Y NO TE. 
 
 following chapters, which contain information and pas- 
 sages of correspondence not hitherto published. My 
 own task has been to take up the narrative where Mr, 
 Merivale had left it, and, with such materials as I could 
 collect, to carry it to a conclusion. 
 
 I am sure I am doing right in expressing Mr. Merivale's 
 thanks, as well as my own, to Mrs. Ritchie. Mr. Merivale 
 would also, I think, have wished to express his obliga- 
 tion to Sir Theodore Martin and to Mr. Synge for some 
 valuable notes and memoranda. Personally my thanks 
 are due to Mr. Garnett for several suggestions, and for 
 kind revision of proofs ; and also to Messrs. Smith 
 and Elder for permission to quote from Thackeray's 
 works, and from the "Collection of Letters," published 
 in 1887. I have, moreover, received help from the 
 Bibliography appended to the volume entitled " Sultan 
 Stork," and published by Redway in the same year. My 
 other debts will be found acknowledged, either in the 
 text, or in the foot-notes. 
 
 FRANK T. MARZIALS.
 
 CONTENTS. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Prefatory Note 5 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 Difficulty of writing memoir of Thackeray at present time — 
 absence of materials ; his sensitive disposition ; disappoint- 
 ment and religion the two key-secrets of his life ; his 
 poetry and prose ; the causes of his disappointment with 
 life : his domestic sorrows, the want of appreciation shown 
 for his work — especially by women; his "idleness"; his 
 deep religious faith . . . . . . . .II 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 Thackeray's ancestors; birth at Calcutta, July 18, iSll ; 
 parents ; he comes to England on his father's death, 
 1816 ; boyhood ; at Charterhouse School, 1822-28 ; his 
 life there 33 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 Holidays at Otteiy St. Mary — the scene of " Pendennis " laid 
 there ; Thackeray's powers as a caricaturist ; his first 
 appearance in print ; impressions of Ottery vSt. Mary . 51 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 A description of Thackeray at Cambridge ; he goes there Feb- 
 ruary, 1829; his life there as described in his letters to his
 
 8 CONTENTS. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 mother ; his friends ; the disadvantage of being a " No- 
 year Man"; leaves Cambridge, 1830; Caml^ridge hfe 
 portrayed in "Pendennis" ...,,. 60 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 Thackeray's political economy ; his private fortune ; he travels 
 through Europe ; visits Goethe at Weimar; his preference 
 for Schiller's works ; his choice of a literary career probably 
 due to his Weimar experiences ..... 7^ 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 Thackeray goes into chambers in the Temple, 1831 ; he does 
 not take kindly to law ; takes part in the Reform election 
 of 1832; loses a large part of his fortune; his work for 
 The National Standard ; moves to Paris with his mother 
 and stepfather, 1833 ; " Flore et Zephyr," published 
 1836 86 
 
 CHAPTER VH. 
 
 The possibility of compiling a life of Thackeray between 1833 
 and 1847 from his works; his editorship of The National 
 Standard ; contributions to Fraser's Magazine prior to 
 1835; leanings towards an artistic career; he marries, 
 August 20, 1836, and settles in Great Coram Street ; 
 literary work from 1837 to 1842; his wife's illness and 
 consequent break up of his home, 1840 ; effect of this 
 upon his character 99 
 
 CHAPTER VHI. 
 
 Thackeray's Bohemianism ; "The Great Hoggarty Diamond " ; 
 "The Irish Sketch Book" and Thackeray's friendship 
 with Charles Lever result from a tour through Ireland in 
 1842 ; his characteristics at this time ; literary activity ; 
 a visit to the East, 1844; "From Cornhill to Grand 
 Cairo " ; his connection with Puncli ; tardiness of public 
 recognition in Thackeray's case in spite of good work 
 clone; "Barry Lyndon," 1844; "The Book of Snobs," 
 1846-47 IIS
 
 CONTENTS. 9 
 
 CHAPTER IX. PAGE 
 
 "Vanity Fair" published, 1847-48; Thackeray's anxiety for 
 its success ; settles at 13, Young Street, Kensington, with 
 his children ; "Punch's Prize Novelists"; gradual appre- 
 ciation and success of "Vanity Fair"; its characters and 
 style ; effect of success upon Thackeray's social position 
 and character — was he spoilt thereby? " Pendennis," 
 1848-50 ; its autobiographical interest ; its characters ; 
 Thackeray ill ; his intercourse with Charlotte Bronte . 136 
 
 CHAPTER X. 
 
 Thackeray and Athenreum Club ; ceases to contribute to Punch, 
 1850; decides on lecturing, 1851 ; constitutional nervous- 
 ness ; lectures on the " Humourists " — contemporary 
 opinion, Thackeray's manner and style as a lecturer ; 
 "Esmond" published, 1852; Thackeray essentially a 
 classic — in what the classical spirit consists ; hence his 
 success in treating of the classical age of Anne in "Es- 
 mond " ; characters in " Esmond " ; the book not appre- 
 ciated at the time ; delivers lectures on the " Humourists " 
 in America, 1852-53 ; impressions of America ; " The 
 Newcomes" published, 1853-55; the moral and characters 
 of the story; moves to Onslow Square, 1853; delivers 
 lectures on the " Four Georges" in America, 1855-56 ; 
 incidents and success of tour; el ivers "Four Georges" 
 in England and Scotland, 1856 160 
 
 CHAPTER XI. 
 Thackeray seeks to enter Parliament — defeated at Oxford, 
 1857; " The Virginians," 1857-59; Thackeray's appear- 
 ance at this time ; his dispute with Mr. Edmund Yates 
 and Dickens, 1858 ; acts as the first editor of The Cornhill 
 Mcii;aziue, 1859-62 ; his contributions to The Corn hill — 
 "Lovel the Widower" (i860)— "The Adventures of 
 Philip" (1861-62), illustrated by Frederick Walker— 
 "The Roundabout Papers" (1860-62); Thackeray an 
 old man at fifty ; his religious faith ; his view of death ; 
 moves to his new house at Palace Green, Kensington,
 
 10 CONTENTS. 
 
 PAGB 
 
 March, 1862 ; his last clays, and death, December 24, 
 1S63 ; absence of biographical materials; his enigmatical 
 character — the probable explanation ; his loveableness ; 
 his relations with his family ; his liberality ; his art and 
 his style 19° 
 
 CHAPTER XII. 
 
 Section I. — Recollections of some of Thackeray's friendships — 
 with Badger, Venables, Leech, Charles Buller, Mr. and 
 Mrs. Brookfield, Higgins (Jacob Omnium), Mr. and Mrs. 
 Croker, Horace Smith and his daughters, Morgan John 
 O'Connell, Herman Merivale, sen., his own imaginary 
 characters. Cole (of the Science and Art Department), 
 Sir Theodore and Lady Martin, and Dickens ; Thackeray's 
 bitter experiences and his great record as an author and a 
 man. 
 
 .S'£c/?<7« 2.— His friendship with Charles Lever; his friendship 
 for, and correspondence with, Mr. and Mrs. Follett 
 Synge 226 
 
 INDEX ... 249 
 
 Of the above, Chapters I. to VI. and Chapter XII. are by Herman 
 Merivale, and Chapters VII. to XI. by Frank T. Marzials.
 
 LIFE OF THACKERAY. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 (By Herman Merivale.) 
 
 IT is a bold thing for any man, perhaps, to undertake 
 to write a memoir of Thackeray at the present time. 
 We lost him just a quarter of a century ago : too long 
 a space for us to rouse the instant interest which belongs 
 to the story but a moment closed ; too short to escape 
 from running counter to many surviving prejudices, if 
 we may at least hope to avoid hurting a living feeling. 
 As the mists that first surround a great figure gone, melt 
 and disappear, it begins to assume for us something like 
 true proportions, to promise something of what it is like 
 to be in the eyes of an after-world, when living memory 
 can speak of it no more, when enmities are forgotten 
 and friendships with the dead. And at this moment, 
 assuredly, that strange and contradictory, but vivid and 
 magnetic, personality speaks to us more than ever. 
 Perhaps the best excuse the present writer may plead 
 is just and only this, " I knew him, Horatio." For 
 indeed he was to me as kind and true a friend as a man 
 of his age could be to one of mine, and my first memory 
 of him goes back as far as memory can. I do not
 
 12 LIFE OF 
 
 remember when I did not know and love him. In what 
 this Httle book may have to say, therefore, the writer 
 craves privilege to use the personal pronoun, to save 
 circumlocutions and time. 
 
 It is matter of public knowledge that the materials for 
 a full Life of Thackeray have yet to be collected. " None 
 of this nonsense about me after my death," he said 
 impatiently one day, tapping some biography of the 
 admiration order that had just appeared. The expres- 
 sion has been construed by his daughter a little too 
 literally, perhaps. The result has certainly been much 
 publication that need not have been — undigging of the 
 most private confidences, modern literary resurrectionism, 
 little hard sayings by which he would have hated to 
 give pain, spurious anecdotes about originals, and 
 Heaven knows what. All this may prove difficult to 
 correct, in time. And I doubt if any man would have 
 more wished for an honest record in the mouths of men 
 than Thackeray. He was the most sensitive of mortals. 
 Conscious probably of certain defects of manner — of a 
 certain shyness, of a certain incapacity for the " jolly 
 good fellow " business with every first comer — he liked 
 to be liked, and he loved to be loved. To be well 
 thought of and well spoken of was a great desire with 
 him ; and he chafed and winced a good deal, at times, 
 under the feeling that the world at large misunderstood 
 him much. It could scarcely be otherwise. He had all 
 the nervous susceptibilities, as he had all the loving- 
 kindness, of a woman ; having, indeed, about him more 
 than any other man I have known, of Goethe's untrans- 
 latable " ewigweiblichkeit." He froze in an ungenial
 
 THACKERAY. 13 
 
 atmosphere. One unwelcome presence silenced him. 
 He was not a good talker, in the common sense, or a 
 brilliant. Of all things his delight was to be among a 
 small circle of his intimates, and to be allowed, if we 
 may use the phrase, to play the fool. " Desipere in 
 loco " was his favourite pursuit ; and he fretted under a 
 companion who could not understand or join in it. It is 
 on record that in Cornhill days — when he was labouring 
 at the uncongenial task of editorship, which suited him 
 amazingly badly (it made him feel, he used to say, 
 " like a toad under a harrow ") — he would stop dead in 
 his flow of talk when a certain chief contributor of his 
 
 came into the room, with "Here's : now we must 
 
 be serious." Yet the man in question was genial, to the 
 world at large. Thackeray was not of the men who 
 " have no enemies." 
 
 " Who has no enemies, shall know no friends : 
 
 'A real good chap,' men say. And there it ends." 
 
 A very good fellow may sometimes be a very bad man. 
 The two key-secrets of Thackeray's great life, as I take 
 it, were these— Disappointment, and Religion. The first 
 was his poison; the second was his antidote. And, as 
 always, the antidote won. No wonder that he was dis- 
 appointed. First a man of fortune, then a ruined and a 
 struggling artist, then a journalist, recognized to the full 
 as such even by the brothers of the craft, but, like them, 
 very little beyond it— then at last the novelist and the 
 famous man, he was thirty-eight before the first num- 
 ber of " Vanity Fair " was published. Till then he was 
 not really known. He was but fifty-two when he died.
 
 14 LIFE OF 
 
 Born in July, 1811, he saw the other of the great twin- 
 brethren, one half-year his junior, in the full flood of 
 fame at twenty-four years old. Dickens was born in 
 February, 1812. In 1841 he was banqueted in Edin- 
 burgh as no man was before, with " Christopher North " 
 in the chair, before Thackeray knew " what he was going 
 to be," out of the versatility of mind which is as great a 
 danger as a charm. Dickens knew his own line from 
 the first. And then remember, if you please, that 
 Thackeray was a "poet," with all that that sensitive 
 word implies — 
 
 *' Willst du in meiner Himmel mit Mir leben? 
 Komm wann du willst — es wird dir often sein ! " 
 
 Men say that " Law is a jealous mistress." Assuredly 
 Poetry is. Of all the gifts of earth, one of the rarest 
 given to men : and Thackeray had it, though, like a 
 wise man, he used it little. Write poetry by profession, 
 and it may be as bad as anything you please ; you are 
 a poet. But, be you solicitor, advocate, novelist, any- 
 body — in this England you do not count as a poet. 
 What business have you, as a practical man, to make 
 such an ass of yourself? Thackeray did — sometimes. 
 The man was not a rhymer, but a poet, who wrote this 
 translation from the German — and felt it. Not easy 
 work to do. 
 
 " The cold grey hills they bind me around,' 
 
 And the darksome valleys lie sleeping below ; 
 But the winds, as they pass o'er all this ground, 
 Bring me never a sound of woe. 
 
 Da liegen sie alle, die grauen Hohen. (Uhland.)
 
 THACKERAY. 15 
 
 Oh ! for all I have suffered and striven, 
 Care has embittered my cup and my feast ; 
 
 But here is the night and the dark-blue heaven, 
 And my soul shall be at rest. 
 
 Oh golden legends writ in the skies ! 
 
 I turn towards you with longing soul. 
 And list to the awful harmonies 
 
 Of the Spheres as on they roll. 
 
 My hair is grey and my sight nigh gone ; 
 
 My sword it rusteth upon the wall : 
 Right have I spoken, and right have I done ; 
 
 When shall I rest me once for all ? 
 
 Oh blessed rest ! oh royal night ! 
 
 Wherefore seemeth the time so long. 
 Till I see yon stars in their fullest light. 
 
 And list to their loudest song ? " 
 
 He was a poet, too, and not a rhymer, who wrote the 
 graceful ballad which, in his usual spirit of burlesque, he 
 chose to laugh at himself as one of his " Love Songs 
 made easy." 
 
 " Yonder, to the kaiosk beside the creek. 
 Paddle the swift caique, 
 Thou brawny oarsman with the sun-burnt cheek. 
 My soul is full of love, and would hear the Bulbul speak. 
 
 Ferry me quickly to the Asian shores, 
 
 Swift bending to your oars ; 
 Beneath the melancholy sycamores 
 Hark 1 what a ravishing note the love-lorn Bird outpours. 
 
 Behold the boughs seem quivering with delight, 
 
 The stars themselves more bright, 
 As mid the waving branches, out of sight, 
 The Lover of the Rose sits singing through the night.
 
 16 LIFE OF 
 
 Under the boughs I sate and listened, still 
 
 I could not have my fill : 
 ' How comes,' I said, 'such music to his bill? 
 Tell me for whom he sings so beautiful a trill ? ' 
 
   Once I was dumb ' (thus did the Bird disclose) 
 
 ' But looked upon the Kose, 
 And in the garden where the loved one grows 
 I straightway did begin sweet music to compose.' 
 
 Oh bird of Song ! there's one in this caique 
 
 The Rose would also seek : 
 So he might learn like you to sing and speak I 
 Then answered me the bird of dusky beak — 
 * The Rose, the Rose of Love, dwells upon Leila's cheek ! ' " 
 
 If I have chosen for quotation these two trifles rather 
 than the pieces which are household words with half the 
 world, it is partly for that very reason, and partly because 
 it is precisely in such trifles as these that Thackeray 
 seems to me most to show where his genuine poetic gift 
 lay, had he cared to cultivate it. He never did : his 
 verses, like his drawings after he had given up his 
 artistic schemes, were an amusement and a relaxation to 
 him, and nothing else. He began with them at Charter- 
 house, and it is the first thing his boy-chums remem- 
 bered of him. But the nameless charm of simplicity 
 of expression, which reaches the perfection of style simply 
 through aiming at no style at all, was certainly his in 
 verse, as it was the crown of all his prose, even when as 
 in " Esmond " he became archaic advisedly. His Queen 
 Ann English in that book is realistic in its archaism, and 
 in striking contrast to the absurd affectation of impossible 
 phrases which passes for historic with so many. If they
 
 THACKERAY. 17 
 
 are to be believed, it becomes appalling to think of the 
 tone of everyday conversation in the spacious times of 
 great Elizabeth. As we are quoting a little at the outset, 
 to bring the man himself as much as possible before our 
 readers at once, let me side by side with the specimens of 
 his verse give this little sample of his prose out of one of 
 his lesser " libelli " — the letters of Mr. Titmarsh to Miss 
 Smith on the second funeral of Napoleon. It is cited 
 here in mere example of Thackeray's simplicity. It is 
 the quiet outcome of a quiet observation. The more 
 I read it the less can I discover in it, in matter or in 
 manner. But — it is perfection. Why ? A whole lesson 
 in the art of composition might be based upon its study. 
 There were rumours in Paris that the " second funeral " 
 might be made the occasion of some demonstration 
 against the English; and demonstrations in Paris are 
 apt to be — well, rather violent. Nobody was at his 
 ease that morning in Paris ; his Majesty Louis Philippe 
 included. 
 
 Well, as he went out of doors towards the Invalides 
 with his companion, writes Mr. Titmarsh — 
 
 "We saw the very prettiest sight of the whole day, and I can't 
 refrain from mentioning it to my dear, tender-hearted Miss Smith. 
 
 "In the same house where I live (but about five stories nearer 
 the ground) lodges an English family, consisting of i, a great 
 grandmother, a hale, handsome old lady of seventy, the very best 
 dressed and neatest old lady in Paris ; 2, a grandfather and grand- 
 mother, tolerable young to bear that title ; 3, a daughter ; and 4, 
 two little great-grand or grandchildren, that may be of the age 
 of three and one, and belong to a son and daughter who are in 
 India. 
 
 "The grandfather, who is as proud of his wife as he was thirty 
 
 2
 
 18 LIFE OF 
 
 years ago when he married, and pays her compliments stil! twice or 
 thrice a day, and when he leads her into a room, looks round at 
 the persons assembled, and says in his heart, ' Here, gentlemen, 
 here is my wife ; show me such another woman in England I ' — 
 this gentleman had hired a room on the Champs Elysees, for he 
 would not have his wife catch cold by exposing her to the balconies 
 in the open air. 
 
 " When I came to the street I found the family assembled in the 
 following order of march : 
 
 " No. I. The great grandmother, walking daintily along, sup- 
 ported by No 3, her granddaughter. 
 
 " A nurse carrying No. 4, junior, who was sound asleep ; and a 
 huge basket, containing saucepans, bottles of milk, parcels of infant's 
 food, certain dimity napkins, &c., a child's coral, and a little horse 
 belonging to No. 4, senior. 
 
 " A servant, bearing a basket of condiments. 
 " No. 2. Grandfather, spick and span clean shaved, hat brushed, 
 white-buckskin gloves, bamboo cane, brown great coat, walking as 
 upright and solemn as may be, having his lady on his arm. 
 
 " No. 4, senior, with mottled legs and a tartan costume, who was 
 frisking about between his grandfather's legs, who heartily wished 
 him at home. 
 
 " ' My dear,' his face seemed to say to his lady, ' I think you 
 might have left the little things in the nursery, for we shall have to 
 squeeze through a terrible crowd in the Champs Elysees.' 
 
 " The lady was going out for a day's pleasure ; and her face was 
 full of care : she had to look first after her old mother, who was 
 walking a-head, then after No. 4, junior, with the nurse — he might 
 fall into all sorts of danger, wake up, cry, catch cold, nurse might 
 slip down, or Heaven knows what ; then she had to look her 
 husband in the face, who had gone to such expense and been so 
 kind for her sake, and make that gentleman believe she was 
 thoroughly happy ; and finally, she had to keep an eye upon No. 4, 
 senior, who, as she was perfectly certain, was about in two minutes 
 to be lost for ever or trampled to pieces in the crowd. 
 
 " These events took place in a quiet little street leading into the 
 Champs Elysees, the entry of which we had almost reached by 
 this time. The four detachments above described, which had
 
 T HACKER A V. 19 
 
 been straggling a little in their passage down the street, closed 
 up at the end of it, and stood for a moment huddled together. 
 No. 3, Miss X , began speaking to her companion, the great- 
 grandmother, 
 
 " • Hush, my dear,' said the old lady, looking round alarmed 
 at her daughter ; * s^£aJk Freiuh 1 ' — and she straightway began 
 nervously to make a speech which she supposed to be in that 
 language, but which was as much like French as Iroquois. The 
 whole secret was out ; you could read it in the grandmother's face, 
 who was doing all she could to keep from crying, and looked as 
 frightened as she dared to look. The two elder ladies had settled 
 between them that there was going to be a general English slaughter 
 that day, and had brought the children with them, so that they 
 might all be murdered in company. 
 
 " God bless you, O women, moist-eyed and tender-hearted I In 
 those gentle, silly tears of yours, there is something touches one, 
 be they never so foolish. I don't think there were many such 
 natural drops shed that day as those which just made their appear- 
 ance in the grandmother's eyes, and then went back again as if they 
 had been ashamed of themselves, while the good lady and her little 
 troop walked across the road. Think how happy she will be when 
 night comes, and there has been no murder of English, and the 
 brood is all nestling under her wings sound asleep, and she is lying 
 awake, thanking God that the day and its pleasures and pains are 
 over. Whilst we were considering these things, the grandfather 
 had suddenly elevated No. 4, senior, upon his left shoulder, and 
 I saw the tartan hat of that young gentleman and the bamboo cane 
 which had been transferred to him, high over the heads of the 
 crowd on the opposite side, through which the party moved. 
 
 " After this little procession had passed away — you may laugh at 
 it, but upon my word and conscience. Miss Smith, I saw nothing in 
 the course of the day which affected me more — after this little pro- 
 cession had passed away, the other came. Et cetera." 
 
 Now what is there in this commonplace Httle story of 
 a family group, on an unusual outing, told in language 
 which troubles itself with no purist's rules, but is simply 
 good talk and no more, which is so vivid and so effective ?
 
 20 LIFE OF 
 
 According to the rules, I suppose, ^^ she had to look her 
 husband in the face, zuho had gone to such expense" is not 
 good writing-English. But it is precisely because masters 
 like Montaigne and Thackeray are content to write good 
 talking-language that they have such a hold upon the 
 attentions and the affections of men. This personal 
 style was Thackeray's charm — developed afterwards at 
 its best in the Roundabout Papers. But it was always 
 with him. Much as, like the rest of the world, I can 
 admire "Becky Sharp" and "Colonel Newcome," I 
 have never been able to look on character as Thackeray's 
 strongest point. Some novelists' characters talk on the 
 paper better than their authors. Some novelists talk better 
 than their characters. In the great field called the novel 
 — which may be didactic or funny, historic or burlesque, 
 digressive or melodramatic or plotless — there is room for 
 all. And Gossip Thackeray was ever behind his own 
 characters. With Scott, I hold imaginary converse with 
 Jeanie or with Caleb. With Dickens, I am interviewing 
 Sam Weller or Mrs. Nickleby. With George Eliot or 
 Miss Austen, it is their puppets who are the realities to 
 me, not they. But with Thackeray, somehow or other, 
 disguise himself as he may behind creations the most 
 admirable, as so many of them are, I am always listening 
 to Thackeray's own talk. And I don't want to stop 
 listening. Most people do not talk on paper quite so 
 well. For always on the same strainless quiet key, 
 always in the same direct and supple English, he ranges 
 from the gayest to the gravest at his master-will ; from 
 the glorious nonsense of " The Rose and the Ring" — so 
 like the man himself in his private moods of fooling — to
 
 TMAClCMkAy. 21 
 
 the Vanity-Fair epic of the " Battle of Waterloo," to the 
 sublime home-passion of Helen Pendennis's death. Of 
 that last passage there is no better description than may 
 be a little varied from some words of Thackeray's own. 
 I know of no passage in fiction "more solemn or sur- 
 prising." 
 
 The disappointment which was so much part of him 
 rose from many things. By nature he had about him 
 something of Antonio's melancholy. With Antonio he 
 "held the world but as the world : a stage, where every 
 man must play a part, and his a sad one." He hated to 
 be misunderstood. He shrank from the littlenesses of 
 the world, and entered into its sorrows. The problems 
 that made Swift savage, made Thackeray sad ; and he 
 liked to tell of the woe-begone face which struck him in 
 a crowded room in Paris, and turned out to be his own 
 reflection in a mirror. " In part, too " (I can do no better 
 here than repeat the delicate words of an article which 
 appeared in the North British Revieio at the time of his 
 death), "this melancholy was the result of private cala- 
 mities. He alludes to these often in his writings, and a 
 knowledge that his sorrows were great is necessary to the 
 perfect appreciation of much of his deepest pathos. We 
 allude to them here, painful as the subject is, mainly 
 because they have given rise to stories, — some quite 
 untrue, some even cruelly injurious. The loss of his 
 second child in infancy was always an abiding sorrow : 
 described in the ' Hogarty Diamond ' in a passage of 
 surpassing tenderness, too sacred to be severed from 
 its context. A yet keener and more constantly present 
 affliction was the illness of his wife. He married her in
 
 22 Lli^E OP 
 
 Paris when he was 'mewing his mighty youth,' preparing 
 for the great career which awaited him. One Hkes to 
 think on these early days of happiness, when he could 
 draw and write with that loved companion by his side ; 
 he has himself sketched the picture : — ' The humblest 
 painter, be he ever so poor, may have a friend watching 
 at his easel, or a gentle wife sitting by with her work in 
 her lap, and with fond smiles or talk or silence, cheering 
 his labours.' After some years of marriage Mrs. Thackeray 
 caught a fever, brought on by imprudent exposure at a 
 time when the effects of such ailments are more than 
 usually lasting both on the system and the nerve. She 
 never afterwards recovered so as to be able to be with 
 her husband and children. But she was from the first 
 entrusted to the good offices of a kind family, tenderly 
 cared for, surrounded with every comfort by his unwearied 
 affection. The beautiful hnes in the ballad of the 
 ' Bouillabaisse ' are well known : — 
 
 '• ' Ah me ! how quick the days are flitting 1 
 
 I mind me of a time that's gone, 
 When here I'd sit as now I'm sitting, 
 
 In this same place — but not alone. 
 A fair young form was nestled near me, 
 
 A dear, dear face looked fondly up, 
 And sweetly spoke and smiled to cheer me, 
 
 — There's no one now to shave my cup ! ' " 
 
 By nature one of the most domestic of men, Thackeray 
 was thrown upon club- life for resources, whilst his two 
 " little girls " were yet too young to be companions for 
 him, and "the G.," as he always called the Garrick, 
 became a kind of home to him. An old member of that
 
 TH ACKER A v. 23 
 
 club, when it was at the httle house in King Street, 
 remembers the time when Thackeray first joined it early 
 in its life, and recalls his as a quiet, unobtrusive figure, 
 with nothing to suggest the greatness to come. In the 
 same way his friend Venables wrote of him, that when he 
 went to Charterhouse there was nothing noticeable about 
 him. He was not one who flowered early. It was only 
 by degrees, my Garrick informant tells me, that the 
 smoking-room circle of the club began to realize that they 
 had a prophet amongst them. 
 
 Another reason for Thackeray's general sense of dis- 
 appointment was, that for so many years " the women " 
 didn't like him in his work. In his loving faith in them, 
 that was to him a trial. The women have outgrown it 
 now. But without wasting words, one quotation from 
 Mrs. Jameson, a lady who favoured the world in her day 
 with much criticism, and much opinion about other 
 people's work, will show the oddly perverse view which 
 many good women took of his. He understood them 
 much better than they did themselves. 
 
 "No woman resents his Rebecca — inimitable Becky! No 
 woman but feels and acknowledges with a shiver the completeness 
 of that wonderful and finished artistic creation ; but every woman 
 resents the selfish inane Amelia. Laura in Pendennis is a yet m.ore 
 fatal mistake. She is drawn with every generous feeling, every 
 good gift. We do not complain that she loves that poor creature 
 Pendennis, for she loved him in her childhood. She grew with 
 that love in her heart ; it came between her and the perception of 
 his faults ; it is a necessity indivisible from her nature. Hallowed 
 through its constancy, therein would lie its best excuse, its beauty 
 and its truth. But Laura, faithless to that first affection ; Laura, 
 waked up to the appreciation of a far more manly and noble nature,
 
 24 LIFE OF 
 
 in love with Warrington, and then going back to Pendennis and 
 marrying ///;;; / Such infirmity might be true of some women, but 
 not of such a woman as Laura ; we resent the inconsistency, the 
 indelicacy of the portrait. And then Lady Castlewood. . . . Oh, 
 Mr. Thackeray ! this will never do ! Such women may exist, but 
 to hold them up as examples of excellence, and for objects of our 
 best sympathies, is a fault, and proves a low standard in ethics and 
 
 Verily this is most amazing nonsense. It deserves 
 to be rescued again from the oblivion from which 
 the Norih British dragged it, and nailed for ever to the 
 editorial counter as a warning to critics. There is noth- 
 ing so dangerous as generalities : and the *' every woman 
 resents " style (the italics being my own) is always pro- 
 fitable reading when the great critic, Time, has given his 
 definite verdict. Even as I was reading the words, 
 a fair student of " Vanity Fair " not far from me laid 
 down her book, and expatiated on Amelia's sweet and 
 womanly charm of truthfulness and love. And to me, 
 who do not care for Amelia in the same degree, Laura 
 Bell has been always a lady-love, so much so that I a 
 little resent her after-appearances as Mrs. Pen in the later 
 novels. I love the very Christian name for her sake. I 
 delight in her little Warrington episode as profoundly 
 true and human, and her return to Pen as something 
 truer still. And oh, how I love to read through misty 
 spectacles, over and over again as I read it now, perhaps 
 the very shortest scene of troth-plight ever written, and 
 the best ; when Pen comes back from Blanche Amory a 
 free man, and goes " up to Laura of the pale face, who 
 had not even time to say, ' What, back so soon ? ' and, 
 seizing her outstretched and trembling hand just as she
 
 THACKEkA V. 25 
 
 was rising from her chair, fell down on his knees before 
 her, and said quickly, ' I have seen her. She has en- 
 gaged herself to Harry Foker — and — and — Now, Laura?" 
 I delight in " that poor creature Pendennis,'' too, with 
 the full sanction of that same critic Time, as about the 
 completest picture drawn of the young man of his day, 
 as complete as Tom Jones of his. Neither all good 
 nor all bad, but cunningly blended in the shades till one 
 loves to meet him even as his author meant him to be, a 
 "man and a brother " ; and a very brilliant and pleasant 
 creature to boot, well worth his Laura after his airs and 
 graces had been knocked out of him. I like him much 
 better than Warrington, who is what he too was meant 
 to be, a fine sketch of strong brains and muscle to be 
 labelled " Best Commonplace," to be the ancestor of 
 many a hero of the type, and to delight the Mrs. Jamesons. 
 And who shall say a word, now, against those womanliest 
 of fair matrons, Helen and Lady Castlewood? I do 
 protest I love them as a son. And Time too loves them. 
 Oh, Mr. Thackeray / this will never do 1 Yes ; but it 
 did ! Infelix foemina et impar ! Never prophesy till 
 you know. How small the shade of Mrs. J. must feel. 
 Oh these unhappy hole-pickers ! Why not cherish a little 
 healthy hero-worship, and thank God for a great man 
 when we get him ? And what becomes of the hole- 
 pickers when they die ? Do they have to go on doing 
 it ? Thackeray's " low standard of ethics and art " is a 
 delicious thing to think upon now, for one of the greatest 
 lay-preachers that ever breathed. 
 
 But never was author so thoroughly well lectured. Of 
 course his art was so new that the world was not quick to
 
 26 Life op 
 
 understand it. Charlotte Bronte says — " As usual he is 
 unjust to women, quite unjust " : and The Edinburgh 
 Review (1848) is good enough to inform him that 
 " having with great skill put together a creature of which 
 the principal elements are indiscriminating affection, ill- 
 requited devotion, ignorant partiality, a weak will and a 
 narrow intellect, he calls on us to worship his poor idol 
 as the type of female excellence. This is true." This last 
 sentence is beautiful, and points to a sudden and whole- 
 some doubt in the reviewer's mind whether he might or 
 might not be talking real nonsense after all. It is like 
 the " This is a dog " with which the small boy under- 
 writes his drawing, and quite as necessary. It was so 
 dreadfully improper, in a novel, to suggest that a 
 thoroughly good woman could be subject to feminine 
 weaknesses — much more be loved for them ! He was 
 too new and too true not to be caviare to many, was 
 Thackeray. And his great fault in the eyes of his de- 
 tractors seems to have been this, that he did not make all 
 his good women clever. Yet surely Ethel Newcomewas 
 good enough, if a thought wayward. And clever enough 
 for anybody. Much too clever for that typical good chap, 
 Lord Kew, as he knew and she knew, and he said. Ethel 
 coming gravely to her grandmother with the ticket on her 
 back, labelled for sale, is a living and eternal picture. 
 For the girl knew what was wanted of her, and meant to 
 see it through. Yet from the mighty chastening of her 
 life — always the steady purpose of Thackeray's epics of 
 Humanity, she came out pure gold. The scene in 
 which, in dead and suffering silence, but unbroken calm, 
 she hears from the old nurse the news of CHve New-
 
 THACKERA V. 27 
 
 come's marriage, knowing that her own paltering with 
 Vanity Fair (the text of all Thackeray's work, as the 
 chosen title of his most famous story) has alone brought 
 about that ill-omened nuptial, is wonderful, simply. 
 And how characteristic of Thackeray's faith in God's 
 even loving-kindness is the end. The death, ay and the 
 rescue with it, of that poor, foolish, helpless little child 
 of the terrible Campaigner. And the quiet second 
 marriage, so delicately but so clearly suggested. She 
 made a noble wife to world-proved Clive, our glorious 
 Ethel Newcome. Ethel was tested through the furnace 
 of worldly disappointment, and came out ennobled. 
 Beatrix was tested in the same, and came out debased. 
 Therein all the moral of Thackeray's watchful teaching. 
 Garde a ton ctme. Poor Mrs. Jameson ! 
 
 It was not, however, only during his lifetime that 
 Thackeray was to be told what a bad sort of boy he was. 
 One of the popular reproaches cast at Thackeray by 
 his literary pastors and masters was always his idleness. 
 The ne'er-do-weel was always behindhand with his copy. 
 There is a passage in one of Mr. Motley's letters which 
 describes him at the Athenaeum, writing the very number 
 of one of his novels which is due in a few days' time. 
 It was most irregular, and altogether wrong. " Unstead- 
 fast, idle, changeable of purpose, no man ever failed 
 more generally than he to put his best foot foremost." 
 That was what TroUope wrote of him when he was 
 gone ! 
 
 "Dicite caslicolse, squamosi dicite piscesi " 
 
 Thackeray's worst foot would seem not to have been
 
 2S LIFE OF 
 
 a bad one. But Trollope scolded his memory from the 
 best of motives. He thought it would have been a 
 disgraceful job if Thackeray, like himself, had got an 
 appointment in the Post Office. He thought it very 
 bad taste in Thackeray to stand for Parliament, and 
 mentioned the exact cost of the election to prove it. 
 On the whole, however, he held that Thackeray did not 
 altogether disgrace himself by lecturing, and is pleased 
 to think that the money he left behind him was " earned 
 honestly, with the full approval of the world around 
 him." Well : perhaps it was. 
 
 It is a pity that a novelist, himself of good repute in 
 his own line, should take upon him thus to moralize 
 upon the methods of a greater than he. According to 
 him, Thackeray wanted "forethought," which he calls 
 the novelist's " elbow-grease." Trollope wrote, regularly, 
 so many words an hour, and therefore Thackeray 
 should have done the same, and not so doing, wanted 
 forethought. Forethought indeed ! Had not the man 
 the eyes to see, the heart to comprehend — that that 
 very idleness— that very putting off of the allotted hour 
 of work — was Thackeray's forethought itself? During 
 those hours of naughty idleness, what stores of observa- 
 tion, what volumes of reflection, what mightiness of 
 insight, were gathering in that massive brain, so strongly 
 defiant of the pigmy's measuring-yard. " She stooped 
 down. She kissed him on his monumental forehead. 
 'Call me Betsi,' she said." Thus Thackeray himself, 
 in a delicious parody of Dumas, supposed to tell of 
 Shakespeare and Queen Elizabeth, which appears in 
 the volume called the " Orphan of Pimlico." There is
 
 THACKERAY. 29 
 
 more behind those monumental foreheads than we wot 
 of, I imagine. No, Mr. Trollope, no. There is more 
 work, more thought, more truth, to spring out of one 
 morning lost in Thackeray's idleness, than in many 
 gallons of elbow-grease at so much industry per hour. 
 "If Thackeray," said a writer in the Pall Mall Gazette 
 when this appeared, "was idle while writing 'Vanity 
 Fair ' and ' The Newcomes,' if he was so little of a real 
 business-like author that he could never go at his work 
 so many hours a day, but wrote when the humour took 
 him or when he was obliged, we assure Mr. Trollope 
 that we do not much care, — any of us his countrymen. 
 Indeed, if he could come back to write in his old idle 
 way, on condition that any half-dozen well-regulated 
 living authors we could name were sent to fill his place 
 in Hades, we should be sorry to answer for the existence 
 of the well-regulated six for a week." Idleness, with 
 a Thackeray, is simply " getting ready." Not for a 
 moment would I be thought to reflect on Trollope 
 the novelist, with his quaint Miss-Austen-like touch of 
 every-day life. But one man's methods are not as 
 another's. And he — of all men — should have realized 
 that, and — held his tongue. If all fiction should 
 consist of machine-made works — the "mahogany-tables" 
 with which Trollope himself compares his own — the 
 world should not contain the novels that should be 
 written. There are a good many of them, as it stands. 
 If everybody published so many words a day ! 
 
 Well, then, yes. The great life was a disappointment, 
 to him who lived it, and as they whom the gods love, 
 died young. Thackeray, Dickens, Byron, Shakespeare,
 
 80 LIFE OF 
 
 Shelley, Raphael, Musset, and so forth. Some day— 
 we shall know. The great and abiding pain, of course, 
 rose out of his own deep personal trial— trying tenfold 
 to one of heart so deep— that to which in passing I have 
 alluded as gently as may be, in other words than mine. 
 No heavier trial can be laid on man. Was it because he 
 was worth it? Faith, I think so. 
 
 " God has His mysteries of Grace, 
 His ways that we cannot tell : 
 He hides them deep, like the hidden sleejp 
 Of him whom He loved so well." 
 
 One of my earliest personal memories of Thackeray, as 
 early as anything that a good memory can recall, is of 
 his words to a relation of mine of an older generation, 
 who was counted amongst his friends. My relative had 
 lost his wife— a dear and worthy one, if ever woman was. 
 The husband was heart-broken, as well he might be. 
 ''Dear fellow," said Thackeray, "a dead sorrow is better 
 than a living one." And God alone can tell or measure 
 the tenderness with which my hero said it. For, as he 
 is my subject, so is he my hero. 
 
 Religion, then, was to Thackeray the antidote, if 
 Disappointment was the bane. Read him, and see it. 
 Through all his trials and through all his troubles, there 
 never lived a simpler or more rock-built faith. Did ever 
 man write down his " Credo " in simpler words than 
 these, or nobler ? —
 
 THACKERAY. 31 
 
 •' How spake of old the Royal Seer ? 
 (His text is one I love to treat on.) 
 This life of ours, he said, is sheer 
 MaraioTtiQ Maraior/jrdi)'. 
 
 * * » * 
 
 Though thrice a thousand years are past, 
 Since David's son, the sad and splendid, 
 
 The weary King Ecclesiast, 
 
 Upon his awful tablets penned it." 
 
 " Splendid " and '* penned it " make a shockingly bad 
 rhyme, and oddly characteristic of Thackeray's — idle- 
 ness. At so many words an hour, you could never 
 rhyme like that. But, do the world's descriptions number 
 one more graphic than that? "The sad and splendid, 
 The weary King Ecclesiast." So was Thackeray weary. 
 As wise — wise before all things — and as " splendid " as 
 Solomon. And assuredly, every inch a King. And 
 therein lies the story of his work and life. The man 
 was a new Ecclesiast, and sad beyond belief accordingly. 
 It would be truer, perhaps, to speak of Thackeray's 
 faith than of his religion, as he seems to have formed 
 no very definite creed. At one time he seems to have 
 tended towards the Roman Catholic, having steadily 
 attended the sermons both of Manning and Newman ; 
 and his comparison between Charles Honeyman's study 
 and the monk's cell points that way. But at another 
 time we find him questioning the reaHty of the devo- 
 tional feeling excited by beautiful music and choral 
 services. This was after a visit to Magdalen Chapel at 
 Oxford. In a letter to a friend, he severely depreciates 
 the school of Thomas k Kempis, as taking all the love 
 and use and brightness out of life. This seems to me
 
 32 LIFE OF TH ACKER A V. 
 
 neither true nor worthy of him. It is well to remember 
 Martha, but also to think of Mary. 
 
 "They also serve, who only stand and wait." 
 
 But Thackeray's deep reverence for the "awful 
 Father," and hopeful trust that the tangle will some- 
 where be lovingly unwound, are characteristic of him 
 always. The passage about the death of Helen Pen- 
 dennis, before referred to, is but one of many noble 
 professions of faith in his writings. And a further extract 
 from the North British will fitly close this chapter, 
 before we enter on the proper task of Biography. The 
 passage itself strikes me as of rare merit. 
 
 "We cannot resist here," says the reviewer, "recalling one 
 Sunday evening in December, when he was walking with two 
 friends along the Dean road, to the west of Edinburgh — one of the 
 noblest outlets to any city. It was a lovely evening, such a sunset 
 as one never forgets ; a rich dark bar of cloud hovered over the 
 sun, going down behind the Highland hills, lying bathed in 
 amethystine bloom; between this cloud and the hills there was 
 a narrow slip of the pure aether, of a tender cowslip colour, lucid, 
 and as if it were the very body of heaven in its clearness ; every 
 object standing out as if etched upon the sky. The north-west 
 end of Corstorphine Hill, with its trees and rocks, lay in the heart 
 of this pure radiance, and there a wooden crane, used in the quarry 
 below, was so placed as to assume the figure of a cross : there it 
 was, unmistakable, lifted up against the crystalline sky. All three 
 gazed at it silently. As they gazed, he gave utterance in a tremu- 
 lous, gentle, and rapid voice, to what all were feeling, in the word 
 ' Calvary ! ' The friends walked on in silence, and then turned 
 to other things. All that evening he was very gentle and serious, 
 speaking, as he seldom did, of divine things, — of death, of sin, of 
 eternity, of salvation ; expressing his simple faith in God and in his 
 Saviour."
 
 <DHAPTER It 
 
 (By Herman Merivale.) 
 
 " T N 1336 there was a John de Thakwra who held 
 X of the Abbot of St. Mary of Fountains a dwelHng- 
 house and thirty acres of land at Hartwich. In 1361, 
 WiUiam de Thackwra was tenant at will of a messuage 
 and twenty-one acres at the same place. A century 
 afterwards Robert Thackra was residing in the same 
 vicinity, and kept the Grange of Brimham for the con- 
 vent, where he was occasionally visited by Abbot Green- 
 well. Subsequently an Edward Thacquarye held houses 
 and land from the same convent." 
 
 So run some family records which the kindness of the 
 great writer's representatives has lent me to cull from : 
 and there is something in these beginnings that one loves 
 to read. A great man's works are his own best pedigree, 
 but genealogies have for most of us a charm of their 
 own. I hke to trace the quaint mutations of spelling — 
 the evolution of a Thackeray from a de Thakwra, 
 wondering the while how de Thakwra was pronounced, 
 and of what race he was derived. I like to know 
 that Abbot Greenwell sometimes called on Robert 
 Thackra, albeit I know not who Abbot Greenwell was. 
 The card of the parish-parson is a certificate of good 
 character and of polite worth, and I am sure that 
 Thackra felt it. 
 
 3
 
 U LIFE OF 
 
 " Ours," wrote one fair relative of the novelist to 
 another, " was indeed a most remarkable family, and I 
 feel proud of all our dear old relatives. They were so 
 handsome and so good." One likes to hear of such 
 frank and enthusiastic faith, just one of those gracious 
 little weaknesses on which Thackeray himself would have 
 loved to dwell. How pleasantly and wanderingly Mr. 
 Roundabout would have egoized round such a text. 
 For I deny the name of egotist to him or to Montaigne, 
 in spite of his own argument. 
 
 " I should like to touch you sometimes with a reminiscence that 
 shall waken your sympathy," he gossips about his two children in 
 black, "and make you say : lo anche have so thought, felt, smiled, 
 suffered. Now how is this to be done except by egotism ? Linea 
 recta brevissima. That right line ' I ' is the very shortest, simplest, 
 straightforwardest means of communication between us, and stands 
 for what it is worth and no more. Sometimes authors say, ' The 
 present writer has often remarked ; ' or ' The undersigned has 
 observed ; ' or ' Mr. Roundabout presents his compliments to the 
 gentle reader, and begs to state,' &c. : but ' I ' is better and straighter 
 than all these grimaces of modesty ; and although these are Round- 
 about Papers, and may wander who knows whither, I shall ask 
 leave to maintain the upright simple perpendicular." 
 
 Perhaps this is unconscious pleading of the "present 
 writer " on his own behalf. " On a most remarkable 
 family " would have been a title to suit that roundabout 
 humour to a turn. One might speculate much upon 
 a certain Elena Fulford, of Ripon, who in 1453 be- 
 queathed to Joan Thackvva " a coffer containing jewels, 
 furfilling thread, crewels, and sewing thread ; " and like- 
 wise a " folding cop-stool, a buffet-stool, and all my 
 sericum (silk), with gold thread." A notable pair of
 
 TH ACKER A V. 35 
 
 housewives, Elena Fulford and Joan Thackwa. And 
 Joan Thackwa, we know, was very good and handsome. 
 We cannot tell if Elena Fulford was. 
 
 Walter Thackeray, first of the name as now written, 
 lived at Hampsthwaite, a little West Riding village by 
 the Nidd, on the skirts of the forest of Knaresborough, 
 like the other places mentioned ; and he died in 1618. 
 From father to son, from Walter to Thomas, they did 
 their yeoman's duty in that home for nearly two hundred 
 years, like so many other good old Saxon stock. They 
 were of the race of small landowners so desiderated now, 
 and tilled their own acres through generations of health- 
 fulness, in their nerve-making moorland air. If records 
 be true, they were a race of Anak — like their great 
 descendant, more than common tall. Thomas Thackeray, 
 last of the Hampsthwaite line, died childless in 1804, 
 but seven years before the novelist was born. In 1682 
 meanwhile, we find a southwvard-bound Thackeray in 
 Elias, of Christ's College, Cambridge— who passes M.A. 
 in 1709, and two years later" is Rector of Hawkerswell, 
 in the Archdeaconry of Richmond. The traditions of 
 his race were quite alive in him ; for does not his 
 epitaph (in good Latinity) tell us to this day that he 
 shone, amongst other things, with " every virtue that can 
 adorn a priest ''? 
 
 " Gravity. Chanty. Piety. 
 Piety, not languid, not delicate, not pontifical ; but rigid, 
 
 but severe, but Christian. 
 A youth, he glowed with Virtue ; a youth, he ensued Piefy. 
 A youth, he even waxed old in Good Morals."
 
 86 LIFE OP 
 
 Does not the record irresistibly suggest the similar work 
 of " Father Drono, who piqued himself upon his 
 Latinity," upon the Ivanhoe stone of " Rebecca and 
 Rovvena " ? 
 
 " Verbera dura dabat : per Turcos multum eqiiitabat : 
 Guilbertum occidit : atque Ilierosolyma vidit." 
 
 Well, the good Elias, desirous that his family should 
 profit by the same classical advantages as he, appears to 
 have imported a nephew from Yorkshire, in the shape of 
 an earlier Thomas, and sent him as a King's scholar to 
 Eton, in January, 1705-6. He was a noble-looking and 
 pure-hearted boy when he went out of his village, the 
 chronicler is quite sure, on inward evidence which who 
 will grudge ? And his parents, though grieved to lose 
 him, knew that they had bestowed upon him principles 
 which would be proof against all trials and temptations. 
 They knew it; for they had given him their own. I 
 repeat that one loves this pretty kind of song of praise : 
 and I would not give a farthing for the man who does 
 not swear by his forbears. Perhaps I will not go quite 
 so far as my chronicler in holding that only the genius of 
 his great descendant (for this was the ancestor direct) 
 could conceive what thoughts arose in the boy's mind. 
 I remember going to Harrow at about the same age ; 
 and conceive that they were much the same as mine. 
 Most boys' are, at that familiar crisis. Neither Pain nor 
 Pleasure, but a mixture of both. Curiosity, with a cer- 
 tain physical uneasiness, from what one has heard, 
 perhaps felt, before. As a rule, no ambition about being
 
 THACKERAY. 87 
 
 good, of any definite order. In due course, however, 
 Thomas Thackeray became a Fellow of King's College, 
 Cambridge ; and when at thirty-five he was married to 
 Ann Woodward, of twenty, they were then considered to 
 be the handsomest pair that ever were seen. The mind 
 reels a little ; but we recover, and pass on. Beautiful as 
 virtuous, the lady was fruitful as beautiful, and between 
 September 2, 1730, and June 20, 1749, presented her 
 lord with sixteen infants, yet without twins. The father 
 was evidently rather oppressed at times. There is a ring 
 of despair about the name of the tenth olive, Decima, 
 born ten months after Jane ; and one is not surprised to 
 learn that, on the birth of the fourteenth. Dr. Thackeray 
 accepted the best preferment he could get, and became 
 head-master of Harrow. An interesting 'act connected 
 with this is that amongst his pupils was the famous 
 scholar, Samuel Parr, who was destined, at home, for 
 an apothecary. Struck by the boy's power and promise, 
 Dr. Thackeray persuaded Parr the elder to send him to 
 college. " Dr. Thackeray," wrote Parr long afterwards, 
 *' though a strict disciplinarian, possessed much kindness 
 of temper and much suavity of manner. I have reason 
 to love and revere him as a father as well as a master." 
 For our purpose a more interesting fact is this ; that the 
 Benjamin of this goodly stem, who came into the world 
 at Harrow as number sixteen, in June, 1749, was 
 christened "William Makepeace." It is quaint to think 
 of the first appearance — unwelcome probably, if not 
 resented — of the little unconscious sponsor of the Titan 
 afterwards to be. 
 
 Jpteresting, too, is the story of William Makepeace
 
 88 LIFE OF 
 
 the second, in his day (about 1795) a physician of 
 renown at Chester. It was a singular coincidence that 
 he should all his life have suffered from the efifects of 
 the blow of a friend at school, as the novelist did, though 
 in a less degree. And there was no lack of prophetic 
 humour in the man whose patient objected to paying 
 him a guinea, and said he thought half would do. "Cer- 
 tainly," said the Doctor : then tore his prescription down 
 the middle, and gave the patient half of that. But 
 the quaint old-world flavour of ancestry must not keep 
 me from my hero too long. The preparation of the 
 way would seem to have culminated in another Elias 
 Thackeray, born in 177 1. He was a clergyman, of whom 
 it is sad and strange to learn that his wife was plain. He 
 " kept several curates, who always dined with him on 
 Sundays." This must have been a dispensation in its 
 way, too. But he himself — first a soldier and afterwards 
 Vicar of Dundalk — was one of the finest men ever seen. 
 Apart from his figure and complexion, he was " quite a 
 saint " to one worshipper ; while another, described as 
 not so partial, said that he was known by the name 
 of the "Beauty of Holiness." After that there was no 
 more to be done. Nothing could come of it but Michael 
 Angelo Titmarsh : and it was on July 18, 181 1, at Cal- 
 cutta, that the true and mighty Thackeray was born. 
 
 William Makepeace, the first, the Harrow Benjamin, 
 was his grandfather. The curious name is by tradition 
 connected with a martyred ancestor of Queen Mary's 
 day : but it is not known. William was in the Bengal 
 Civil Serdce, and in 1776, at Calcutta, married Amelia 
 Richmond Webb. In the next year he left India with a
 
 THACKERAY. 89 
 
 competence, and bought a house near Barnet. There 
 he died at 64 years old. He and his wife had a family 
 of twelve children; and of these the fourth child, and 
 second son, was Richmond Thackeray, born in 1781, 
 He was schooled at Eton, and was sent young to India, 
 where his brother William, three years his elder, had 
 gone before him. He was but a home-sick youngster, 
 like many another exile ; but he did his work. He was 
 Judge and Magistrate at Ranghyr, and afterwards 
 Secretary to the Calcutta Board of Revenue — described 
 as a man of much personal frankness and charm. But 
 he suffered much from illness, and died at thirty- 
 one. His wife was Anne Becher, and what may be 
 claimed for others, of her was true. I remember her as 
 one of the handsomest old ladies in the world. The 
 novelist was the only son of the two, and he adored his 
 mother. After her first husband's death she married 
 Major Carmichael Smyth, and, coming back to England, 
 lived first at Addiscombe and afterwards in Devonshire. 
 She and her son were afterwards much together in Paris, 
 and she outlived him just one year, the lady with the 
 great dark eyebrows, and the beautiful white hair. She 
 went to her rest as suddenly as he, and was buried on 
 Christmas Eve, 1864, the first anniversary of his death. 
 
 Well might portents like Glendower's have attended 
 the birth-time of the great romancer. The English 
 world has chosen, on the whole, six of the first rank, and 
 no more : Fielding, Walter Scott, Jane Austen, George 
 Eliot, Dickens, and Thackeray. Any one for himself 
 may be indifferent to one or more of these. But that is 
 the net result, till now. And of those, without questions
 
 40 LIFE OF 
 
 of comparison, the world pitted the last two, one against 
 the other, as the literary duellists of the age. Thackeray 
 was born in 1811. Ini8i2 came Dickens. And just 
 before those two, in the same cycle, in 1809 and three or 
 four years earlier, were born the appointed political 
 duellists of that same age, Gladstone and Disraeli. So 
 short were those two literary careers, compared to the 
 two political, that one almost regards the novelists as of 
 an elder generation, rather than as the younger men. 
 But it is certain that that narrow space of years gave 
 birth, in its course, to the four foremost Englishmen of 
 our time. 
 
 Born, then, at Calcutta on the i8th of July, 181 1, the 
 child Thackeray was sent to England upon his father's 
 death five years afterwards. His ship touched at St. 
 Helena, and he was taken by his black servant to 
 Bowood to see the Corsican ogre — only to meet him 
 again on the occasion of that Second Funeral upon 
 which I drew in the last chapter. It is easy to see 
 how the early memory is made to point his moral. 
 England was in mourning for Princess Charlotte when 
 he came ; and there too the unconscious associations of 
 childish memory and observation seem to leave their 
 traces on his Georgian lectures, through their deep tone 
 of sad and thoughtful moralizing upon the vicissitudes of 
 power, and the impartialities of fate. Insatiable and 
 steady goddess — Pallida Mors ! 
 
 " Le pauvre en sa cabane ou le chaume le couvre, 
 Est sujet a ses lois ; 
 
 pt la garde qui veille aiix barrieres du Louvre, 
 W^Xi defend pas nos rois."
 
 THACKERAY. 41 
 
 His grandfather having been four years dead, 
 Thackeray was taken charge of at Chiswick by his 
 aunt, Mrs. Ritchie, who was alarmed one day on 
 finding that his uncle's hat fitted him, and carried 
 him off to Sir Charles Clark. " Don't be afraid," the 
 popular physician is reported to have said, " he has a 
 large head ; but there's a good deal in it." The little 
 man, however, began his life much like other little men, 
 and seems to have been innocent of the bottomless sin 
 of precocity. Here is his first recorded letter, written 
 February 12, 1818, to his mother in India, " in a round 
 hand and between ruled lines," my chronicler says, and 
 "evidently unassisted in its diction ": 
 
 " My dear Mama, — I hope you are quite well. I have given my 
 dear Grandmama a kiss. My Aunt Ritchie is very good to me. I 
 like Chiswick, there are so many good Boys to play with. St. 
 James's Park is a very fine place. St. Paul's Church too I like 
 very much. It is a finer place than I expected. I hope Captain 
 Smyth is well ; give my love to him and tell him he must bring you 
 home to your affectionate little son, 
 
 " William Thackeray." 
 
 The dear Httle delicious boy-like humbug ! the touch 
 of the " so many good Boys to play with " is the truest of 
 humanity in little, original edition ! 
 
 " That is the way we all begin 1 " 
 
 And, with all respect to the chronicler, " My Aunt 
 Ritchie is very good to me " is decidedly suggestive of 
 " assisted diction," and the near presence of that excel- 
 lent lady in the background. " I love my dear school-
 
 42 LIFE OF 
 
 mistress," I remember writing through burning tears 
 with the fiery authority at my elbow, just after she had 
 boxed my ears severely for not dotting my i's in a Greek 
 exercise. Earnestly I had tried to explain that the 
 Greeks didn't ; but the plea was too idle. If they were 
 so ignorant, it was no excuse for me. This very first 
 letter of Thackeray's was prophetic of his self-illustrating 
 taste, being decorated with a small drawing of an officer 
 on horseback, the horse very weak of leg, but the rider 
 all that he ought to be. It was supposed to be a por- 
 trait of Major Carmichael Smyth, to whom his mother 
 was by this time engaged. And here let me quote my 
 chronicler textually, as making me suspicious of the 
 diction : 
 
 " There is a little PS. (to this letter) by his uncle, who says, ' My 
 dear Sister Anne, I have seen my dear little nephew, and am 
 delighted with him.' And a longer one from his great-grandmother 
 Becher, to whom he had just given the kiss. She was a very pre- 
 cise old lady, and always called her daughter Harriet who lived 
 with her ' Miss Becher,' and was addressed by her as ' Ma'am.' 
 She says in her postscript, * William got so tired of his pen he could 
 not write longer with it, so he hopes you will be able to read his 
 pencil. The little one lives half the day with us, and calls — 
 " Grandmama and Aunt Becher win you give me a penny win 
 you?" He drew me your house in Calcutta, not omitting his 
 monkey looking out of the window, and Black Betty at the top 
 drying her towels, and told us of the numbers you collected on his 
 birthday in that large room he pointed out to us.' " 
 
 For six years (from 1822 to 1828) the boy 
 Thackeray was at Charterhouse School. He hated 
 it. They were but rough training-grounds for sensitive 
 §nd nervous children, the public schools of those
 
 TH ACKER A V. 43 
 
 days. But, somehow, they bred manhood, and I 
 sometimes wonder if a more grandmotherly rule is 
 not weakening the fibre of the race, believing as 
 I must believe, from many and various signs, that the 
 Decline and Fall is upon us. Not long since a school- 
 master of my acquaintance, comparing his own boy-days 
 and mine with these, told me how he had lately given 
 some theatricals in his school, even as he had himself 
 acted as a boy. At that earlier date, he said, he well 
 lemembered how awkward and wretched the boys felt 
 who had to act the women's parts, and how eagerly they 
 cast off the war-paint when the play was over. " But 
 my schoolboys now," he said, " rouged and painted and 
 discussed their furbelows like the real thing — cared all 
 for their dresses and nothing for their acting — and cared 
 more for appearing in their fal-lals at supper afterwards, 
 than anything in the whole show." In after years, 
 Thackeray came back to the old school as we all do, 
 with an affection that takes no count of the bad times, 
 and thinks only of the good. But, poor little man, what 
 a true cry of boy-pathos rings out of this letter to his 
 mother in his last year at the school : 
 
 " I really think I am becoming terribly industrious, though I 
 can't get Dr. Russell to think so. It is so hard when you endeavour 
 to work hard, to find your attempts nipped in the bud. . . . There 
 are but 370 in the school. I wish there were only 369." 
 
 No more genuine expression of the intense sense of 
 injustice which a schoolboy feels so strongly when he 
 tries so hard to do his best, and goes thankless away
 
 44 LIFE OF 
 
 for it from his pastors and masters, was ever set down 
 than that " It is so hard." How many boys, just waking 
 up to work, has not a schoohnaster's injustice and im- 
 perception disgusted into idleness again ! And indeed 
 it is easy, out of the man Thackeray, to construct the 
 idea of the Boy. A moony httle fellow, sensitive and 
 solitary, and foredoomed by the official wiseacredom as 
 a dreamer ; likeable and loveable, but not popular ; ever 
 and again waking up to some fit of energy in the school- 
 room or on the playground, and regarded askance for it 
 as one of those idle apprentices who " could do anything 
 if they chose " — no wonder he should have felt so 
 keenly when his honest attempts to work hard were 
 " nipped in the bud " by Mr. Schoolmaster. Perhaps, 
 however, this very discouragement was the forerunner 
 of " Vanity Fair " and " Esmond." Dr. Russell's views 
 of industry and idleness seem to have borne some 
 affinity to Trollope's. 
 
 Major Carmichael Smyth, now Thackeray's step- 
 father, was settled in England with his wife as Governor 
 of Addiscombe, while the boy was at Charterhouse. He 
 wrote regularly to his mother, it seems, in daily letters 
 kept together journal-wise. As early as Jan. 20, 1822, 
 he asks to be told all about Addiscombe and the " Gen- 
 tlemen Cadets," and " if Papa has got a cock-hat that 
 will fit him." " I have made a vow not to spend that 
 five-shilling piece you gave me until I get into the 8th 
 form. Write again as quick as you can." And towards 
 the close of his school-time, in the letter which bewailed 
 his wasted efforts, he described how he was reading the 
 Georgics, and went on —
 
 THACiCERA V. 46 
 
 " I have not read any novel this term except one by the Author of 
 'Granby,' not so good as ' Granby.' I have read a curious book on 
 the Inquisition, with plates delineating faithfully the various methods 
 of torture ! . . . We are going to have a debate to-morrow night 
 on ' The Expediency of a Standing Army. ' We have not yet settled 
 the sides which we shall take in this important question. There 
 goes the big bell, and I must have done for the present, but we will 
 have a little more chat, before night, as I hope to send this off this 
 evening. Good-bye till school is all over for the day. — I have just 
 heard of a poor lad who has got a commission in his father's 
 regiment, and was expecting his arrival from India every day. His 
 father and mother went up the country previous to their departure, 
 were seized with cholera and both died on the same day ! When I 
 come home I mean to get up at five o'clock every morning, and so 
 get four hours' reading before breakfast ; then there will be only 
 two short hours more, and the day will be my own ! I feel every 
 day as if one link more were taken from my chain. I have a con- 
 solation in thinking there are not many links more. I have been 
 working all the evening, and must be up by seven to work again. 
 So good- night, dearest mother." 
 
 How much of Thackeray one seems to see in this, 
 with the man's hfe and record before us. There is true 
 Thackeravian fun in the we have not yet settled which 
 sides we shall take, which is prophetic of some later 
 pohticians of more serious cast. And how odd it is to 
 read of a young debate on Standing Armies, sixty years 
 ago, to us that groan under a Bismarck's Armamental 
 Age. The little more chat on paper foreshadows all 
 those sheets of chatty " copy " which were one day to 
 entrance the world ; and the touch about the poor lad's 
 trouble rings the true note beforehand of the ever-ready 
 sympathy with sorrow and with trial that was to inspire 
 that gentle life. Last, not least, is the whole volume 
 about his own character, conveyed in the delightful
 
 46 Life oP 
 
 announcement that he means to get tip at Jive o'clock 
 every morning, and so get four hours' reading before 
 breakfast. Bless the boy's dear heart, how many 
 mornings did he do that ? This great resolve represents 
 exactly what this Idle Apprentice of Letters was always 
 meaning to do, and — mercifully, never did. It represents 
 pretty nearly, I believe, (" writing " set down for 
 "reading"), what the Good Boy Trollope actually did. 
 The moral thereof would seem to be that no two literary 
 men ever work in quite the same way, and that for any 
 one of the brotherhood to teach another the art of egg- 
 sucking in pen and ink, is about the most gratuitous 
 waste of wit and wisdom ever undertaken by man. 
 
 " I first remember Thackeray as a pretty, gentle boy at the 
 Charterhouse," his friend George Venables wrote of him. 
 " Though he staid there several years he never rose high in the 
 school, nor did he distinguish himself in the playground ; but he 
 was liked by those who knew him, and in the latter part of his 
 time he began to display the faculty of writing humorous verse. 
 His little poems and parodies were much admired by his contem- 
 poraries ; but he was less known than many boys of less promise 
 because he became latterly a day scholar, living at a boarding-house 
 in Charterhouse Square, and only appeared among us in school- 
 
 It is not exactly clear at what period of his school 
 life the boy took up his quarters at a boarding-house ; 
 but in the unwritten tables of precedence which existed 
 at public schools in those days, the day-scholars, or 
 home-boarders as they were elsewhere called, were 
 regarded as somewhat inferior members of the youth- 
 ful hierarchy. No doubt this may have increased
 
 THACKERAY. 4t 
 
 Thackeray's habit of seclusion. It was in a school- 
 fight with this same schoolfellow Venables that 
 Thackeray received the injury to his nose which left 
 its effects through life. There is no doubt that but 
 for that he would have been as handsome a man as 
 any of his well-favoured forbears. With me, personally, 
 he leaves that memory as it is. I always think of him 
 as a man of exceeding comeliness. He was very 
 indifferent to banter on the subject, and nobody ever 
 caricatured him as well as he was always caricaturing 
 himself. Who does not love the little squat figure 
 with the spectacles whom Titmarsh loved to draw in 
 all sorts of impossible positions ? He gave me once 
 a copy of his "Rose and the Ring," with a delicious 
 frontispiece of himself in the act of presenting it. 
 A relation borrowed it, and I never heard of it 
 again. It amused the great man to tell anecdotes 
 against himself — to repeat Douglas Jerrold's joke when 
 he had just stood godfather to some friend's boy — 
 •' Lord, Thackeray, I hope you didn't present the child 
 with your own mug," — or tell his own story of the 
 travelling showman who was sitting disconsolate by 
 the roadside, because he had just lost his giant. 
 " It wasn't so much the money he brought in," he 
 said, "it was that he was such a good fellow, and 
 everything to me. We were just like brothers, we was." 
 Sympathetically Thackeray, whose great stature was 
 another favourite joking-matter with him, asked if he 
 might not do for the place. Critically and seriously the 
 showman examined him. "Well," he said, "you're nigh 
 tall enough, but I'm afraid you're too hugly." So on
 
 48 LIFE OP 
 
 another occasion, when he went to a fair with his friend 
 and brother-giant Higgins, best known by his pen-name 
 of Jacob Omnium, he said laughingly at the receipt of 
 custom, "They'll let us in free. They think we're in 
 the business." 
 
 But we are forgetting Charterhouse. Of Thackeray's 
 other school-friendships, the one which most survived 
 was with John Leech the draughtsman, afterwards to be 
 his fellow-worker in the pages of Mr. Punch. It may 
 not be out of place here to record a delightful dinner 
 which I remember at Thackeray's table, which he gave 
 in order to bring together Leech and Sothern the 
 comedian, the creator — in more than the usual con- 
 ventional sense — of that immortal ass Dundreary. 
 Of Thackeray's love of plays and acting I shall have 
 to speak again. But the conjunction of these three 
 very differing stars was interesting, because of Sothern's 
 eager acknowledgment to Leech (his Dundreary had but 
 just burst on the town) that the idea and success of 
 the character were due entirely to a close and constant 
 study of the artist's "swells" in Punch. Tom Taylor 
 — the author of the play and another Punch-m^in — had 
 not proposed to make of Dundreary anything buc a 
 subordinate part— that of an ordinary stage-booby. 
 Sothern saw its capacities on Leech's lines, and with 
 official sanction made of it what became, perhaps, the 
 most finished and irresistible comic portrait of the day. 
 The host took the keenest delight in the historical 
 incident, as he called it, of this first meeting of 
 Dundreary's parents. As for such a witness as myself, 
 I think that of the three, at that age, I regarded Sothern 
 with the greatest awe.
 
 TH ACKER A K 40 
 
 When all the links were taken from his chain, 
 Thackeray left Charterhouse in May, 1828. How he 
 enshrined the place afterwards in " The Newcomes " the 
 world well knows. Many an after-visit may have re- 
 freshed his memory ; but none the less the power of 
 observation must have been early at work, in the boy 
 who " couldn't get Dr. Russell to think " that there was 
 good to be got out of him, but could afterwards make 
 his "Grey Friars " famous in such a description as this : 
 
 " Under the frreat archway of the hospital you look at the quaint 
 old square with its blackened trees and garden, surrounded by 
 ancient houses of the build of the last century, now slumbering 
 like pensioners in the sunshine — the old men creeping along in their 
 black gowns under the ancient arches, whose struggle of life is over, 
 whose hope and noise and bustle have sunk into that grey calm. 
 There is an old Hall, a beautiful specimen of the architecture of 
 James's time : an old Ilall ? many old Halls ; old staircases, old 
 passages, old chambers decorated with old portraits, walking in the 
 midst of which, we walk as it were in the early seventeenth century. 
 In their Chapel, where assemble the boys of the school, and the 
 fourscore old men of the Hospital, the Founder's tomb stands. 
 There he lies, Fundator Nosier, in his ruff and gown, awaiting the 
 great Examination Day. A plenty of candles lights up this chapel, 
 and this scene of age and youth and early memories. How solemn 
 the well-remembered prayers are ! How beautiful and decorous the 
 rite ; how noble the ancient words of the supplication which the 
 priest utters, and to which generations of fresh children and troops 
 of bygone seniors have cried Amen ! " 
 
 Has not this passage a moral of its own ? Thackeray 
 made himself no name in classic scholarship, probably 
 because of Dr. Russell's dull discouragement. But 
 being no fool, he read and he loved his Greek and 
 Latin, and became, amongst other things, an intimate 
 
 4
 
 50 LIFE OF THACKERAY. 
 
 Horatian. To me, the impress of a classic training is 
 upon every line of his work, in its force of idiom, its 
 scholarliness of thought, its simplicity of expression. 
 Only a classic training breeds such an English scholar ; 
 and the decried value of Greek and Latin finds a con- 
 spicuous champion in a man who was neither dunce nor 
 professor, plucker nor plucked — and neither of these is 
 a fair test — but one who took things as he found them, 
 and made average use of his opportunities. Men talk 
 of " Greek and Latin " like a hard-and-fast quantity. 
 Why, it means everything. Philosophy through a 
 Plato ; History through Thucydides ; Tragedy through 
 ^schylus ; Comedy through Aristophanes ; Poetry 
 through Homer ; — what you will ! Greek and Latin are 
 the conduit-pipe of all true study, and without them, 
 Scholarship is not. Science can never take the place 
 of Letters, and is unwise to try. For Letters are the 
 art of Expression, and of all things Science needs Expres- 
 sion most.
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 (By Herman Merivale.) 
 
 IF Thackeray's term-times — or halves, as boys more 
 love to call them — at the Charterhouse were after- 
 wards productive of " Grey Friars " and dear old Colonel 
 Newcome, the cherished holiday times of the same 
 period were to lay in that young mind the foundations 
 of " Pendennis." From 1825 to 1831 — which suggests 
 the date of his becoming a day-boarder, just half-way 
 through his school career — his parents rented from Sir 
 John Kennaway a good-sized house in Devonshire called 
 Larkbeare, about a mile and a half from Ottery St. 
 Mary. Among the residents in the neighbourhood was 
 the present Lord Coleridge, then quite young ; and at 
 home, as at school, Thackeray's quiet personality does 
 not seem to have been one of those which leaves tales to 
 tell behind it. Writing to my chronicler, Lord Coleridge 
 says : — " I am sorry to be unable to give you any further 
 help in your most interesting work. Thackeray is a 
 national possession ; and anything I could do to make a 
 notice of him more complete and authentic I wiUingly 
 would. But his residence here was when I was a mere 
 child, and I have never myself heard or known any 
 traditions of it."
 
 52 LIFE OF 
 
 The vicar of the parish, however, Dr. Cornish, ItSed to 
 lend Thackeray books from his hbrary, one being a copy 
 of Gary's " Birds of Aristophanes," which was returned 
 to him illustrated with three humorous water-colour 
 drawings, which Lord Coleridge remembers to have seen 
 in pen and pencil. Coming events may have cast their 
 halo upon those illustrations, and no doubt the good 
 vicar lived to delight in the book so favoured ; but I 
 cannot as a book-lover forbear to speculate upon what 
 his feelings must have been at the time. 
 
 'O'- 
 
 " Aurlax omnia perpeti 
 Gens pupillaris ruit per vetilum et nefas." 
 
 But such are the fashions of the whirligig of Time. If 
 perchance the Charterhouse bookseller who sold that 
 boy his Ainsworth's Latin Dictionary for a shilling 
 sterling, had but known that it was one day to fetch 
 
 £\ 15s- ! 
 
 When Thackeray died, Dr. Cornish was one of the 
 many who added their quota to the store of story. 
 " I remember," he says, " to have read some account 
 of his early days, as given by himself, in which, among 
 other things, he speaks of his having a strong desire to 
 become an artist, but he added that he was discouraged 
 from the pursuit. These little sketches which are now 
 before me show at least how completely he caught the 
 spirit of the author he was illustrating ; and it may well 
 be questioned whether, if he had cultivated his genius 
 in that direction, he might not have won as great dis- 
 tinction in art as he did in literature." I own, my- 
 self, to holding that there can be no question about
 
 THACKERAY. 53 
 
 it, if for artist we say caricaturist. Of his favourite 
 varieties of self-portraiture I have spoken, and his illus- 
 trations of his own works are a perfect gallery of 
 humour. Among the published ones, perhaps those in 
 "The Rose and the Ring," in which he combines so 
 inimitably the three arts of comedy, of drawing, and of 
 verse-writing, are about the most effective, as probably 
 they sinned against the light by being about the most 
 careless. Valoroso at the family breakfast, with his 
 twelve eggs — I have been impelled to count them over 
 and over again, and cannot be mistaken — Baby Betsinda 
 performing her little /^^ seul before him in the garden— 
 and the presentment of her face when she grew up to 
 pretty girlhood, leave no room for surprise that the man's 
 versatile power was tempted in that direction. No 
 wonder that he could not see at once that he was called 
 to the greater way. In Fioich, where he was prose- 
 writer, poet, and draughtsman, it is not only in his 
 illustrations to his own work, but in many of the separate 
 drawings which he contributed in the days of Leech and 
 Doyle, that this gift of his stands out confessed. The 
 " Miseries of an Author " series, for instance, are as 
 effective and as speaking, without the aid of text, as 
 those of any of his cotemporaries. 
 
 But we are still at Ottery St. Mary, though the good 
 vicar's discourse on the " Marginalia " tempted us ahead. 
 I am again indebted to my chronicler for the following 
 extract from a book of Dr. Cornish's, called "Short 
 Notes on the Church and Parish of Ottery St. Mary, 
 Devon," in which there is one note headed " Clavering 
 St, Mary and Pendennis." Thus it runs :—
 
 54 LIFE OF 
 
 " No person of these parts can read ' Pendennis ' with- 
 out being struck with the impression which the scenery 
 of this neighbourhood must have made upon his mind, 
 to be reproduced in that remarkable story after a lapse 
 of more than twenty years. The local descriptions 
 clearly identify Clavering St. Mary, Chatteris, and Bay- 
 mouth, with Ottery St. Mary, Exeter, and Sidmouth ; 
 and in the first edition, which is ornamented with vig- 
 nettes in the margin, an unmistakable representation of 
 the * cock-tower ' of Ottery St. Mary is introduced. But 
 though Clavering St. Mary and Chatteris are locally 
 identified with Ottery and Exeter, the characteristics of 
 tlie story found no counterpart in the inhabitants of 
 either locality. 
 
 "In Fraset^s Magazine for November, 1854, there is 
 an article entitled ' Clavering St. Mary, and a Talk about 
 Devonshire Worthies,' which confirms this identity, 
 where it speaks of the birthplace of Pendennis, ' that 
 little old town of Clavering St. Mary, past which the 
 rapid River Brawl holds on its shining course, and which 
 boasts a fine old church with great grey towers, of which 
 the sun illuminates the delicate carving, deepening the 
 shadows of the great buttresses, and gilding the glittering 
 windows and flaming vane.' Things have, however, 
 changed at Clavering since Mr. Thackeray spent many 
 a summer holiday there in his boyhood. The old Col- 
 legiate Church has been swept and garnished, and 
 bedizened until it scarcely knows itself. Wapshot boys 
 no longer make a cheerful noise, shuffling with their feet 
 as they march into church and up the organ-loft stairs, 
 but walk demurely to their open seats in the aisle."
 
 THACKERA V. 55 
 
 At this point I come upon a lovely touch of that little 
 half-conscious spirit of autobiography which lights so 
 many of the greater novels of the world. Who does 
 not remember how the calf-love of the boy Pendennis 
 came out in flaming verse (" with which he was perfectly 
 satisfied ") in the County Chronicle and Chatteris Cham- 
 pion^ what time he was (all unconscious) about to be 
 jilted by the beautiful Fotheringay, and inspired the 
 Poet's Corner of that established journal ? 
 
 " 'Papa,' said Miss Milly, 'ye wouldn't be for not sending the 
 poor boy his letters back ? Them letters and pomes is mine. 
 They were very long, and full of all sorts of nonsense, and Latin, 
 and things I couldn't understand the half of: indeed I've not read 
 'em all ; but we'll send 'em back to him when the proper time 
 comes.' And going to a drawer. Miss Fotheringay took out . . . 
 (from the Chronicle) the verses celebrating her appearance in the 
 character of Imogen, and putting by the leaf upon which the poem 
 appeared (for, like ladies of her profession, she kept the favourable 
 printed notices of her performances), she wrapped up Pen's letters, 
 poems, passions, fancies, and tied them with a piece of string neatly, 
 as she would a parcel of sugar." 
 
 And thus deliciously inspired by the amazing and 
 elderly burlesque Cupid who figures as the initial letter 
 of Chapter Twelve of the famous story, with the weil- 
 known Thackeray sign-manual of the Crossed Spectacles, 
 Mr. Arthur Pendennis entered at a blushing age upon 
 that career of letters which he was afterwards to make 
 newly illustrious. Even at the same age, at the same 
 place, and in the same way, did Mr. Michael Angelo 
 Titmarsh enter upon the same misguided calling. Not 
 for the same cause, perhaps. At all events, history and 
 Dr. Cornish are silent. But Thackeray was very fond of
 
 56 LIFE OF 
 
 the stage. Years — many years — afterwards, I remember 
 liis asking a friend at the old Garrick, when I was dining 
 with the great man to be " taken to the play" — always a 
 delight to him when he could catch his boy : " Don't you 
 like the play, So-and-So?" "Well — yes — Hike z.good\)\?c^r 
 "Oh, go along!" said Thackeray — "you don't under- 
 stand what I mean ! " So is it that I cannot believe that 
 the Fotheringay episode had not its root in an experience 
 of his own. What in the world, to a stage-stricken boy, 
 resembles, or ever will resemble, the wild infatuation for 
 his goddess of another world, the " Dea certe " who lives 
 another life and speaks another language, and in the 
 robe of Ophelia or Imogen has no resemblance to the 
 common round ? If he may only see her across the foot- 
 lights, and sometimes watch her on her homeward way, 
 it is Romance. But — if he can but manage to " know 
 her off," as poor Pen did his Emily, it is Poetry! So, 
 when Pen began to write " Lines to Miss Fotheringay, 
 of the Theatre Royal — of the most gloomy, thrilling, and 
 passionate cast," he signed himself no longer A^('J>, but 
 Eros. And the "adorable simplicity" of the divinity 
 who relaxed from Poetry only to " make a Poy," shone 
 all the brighter through its self denying contrast in the 
 youthful poet's mind. The story is too vivid to be all 
 fancy. Notwithstanding those quiet ways of his, and 
 the absence of legend about him, I entertain a secret 
 belief that somewhere or other, in the narrow precincts 
 of the little Exeter theatre of the day, young Thackeray 
 wooed, loved, and lost, an Emily Fotheringay. But, 
 unlike Dr. Portman, I do not believe that Dr. Cornish 
 ever knew anything about it.
 
 THACKERAY. 57 
 
 I dream, however, as dream one must when one tries 
 to construct for oneself, out of the many fragments, so 
 complicated yet so human a mortal as was this. It was, 
 however, at this period of existence, it seems likely, that 
 Thackeray did make that momentous " first appearance 
 in print " which may mean so much, when it doesn't 
 happen to be the last too. And it was in the county 
 papers, and it was in verse. Not love-verse, unluckily 
 for my theory ; for it was " a parody of an intended 
 speech of Lalor Shell's upon Penenden Heath, which he 
 was not allowed to deliver" (Dr. Cornish again), "but of 
 which, before he left town to attend the meeting in 
 question, he had taken the precaution to send copies to 
 some of the leading journals for insertion. This little 
 jeu d'esprit Thackeray allowed me to send to the 
 Western Lunmiary ; and I question whether this was 
 not the first appearance in print of an author who was 
 destined by-and-by to occupy so distinguished a place 
 among the most classical English writers of the present 
 rUy." The verses were these : 
 
 "IRISH MELODY. 
 
 {^?r, ' The Minstrel Boy:) 
 
 " Mister Sheil into Kent has gone, 
 
 On Penenden Heath you'll find him; 
 Nor think you that he came alone, 
 There's Doctor Dcyle behind him. 
 
 'Men of Kent,' said the little man, 
 
 ' If you hate Emancipation, 
 You're a set of fools.' He then began 
 
 A cut and dry oration.
 
 58 LIFE OF 
 
 He strove to speak, but the men of Kent 
 
 Began a grievous shouting, 
 When out of his waggon the little man went, 
 
 And put a stop to his spouting. 
 
 'What though these heretics heard me not,' 
 Quoth he to his friend Canonical, 
 
 ' My speech is safe in the Times, I wot, 
 And eke in the Morning Chronicle,''" 
 
 Not very much in these to give any great promise, 
 perhaps; but suggestive even then of the simpHcity of 
 expression and facility of rhyme ahvays characteristic of 
 this branch of Thackeray's work. They shadow, too, 
 beforehand his love of playing round Irish subjects, 
 with a fun that had no vice to it, but recognized a spirit 
 of fun like his own. One vaguely wonders what he 
 would make of his favourite subject-matter to-day. 
 Surely a certain article of dress — till now supposed to 
 be unmentionable, but now a party emblem — would 
 have inspired some Kr?j/«a Iq au in the form of a Celtic 
 ode. But it would have been matter for nothing but 
 serious reprobation. Jokes are now licensed upon those 
 premises no more. 
 
 Dr. Cornish was himself a scholar and a poet, as we 
 read, and an intimate friend of Keble. Such a mind 
 can have had on Thackeray's no influence but for good, 
 and he saw in his young friend, it may be suspected, 
 something that Dr. Russell could not see. But the links 
 of the Charterhouse chain were at last unwound, and 
 Pendennis again shall speak for the impression of Ottery 
 St. Mary upon the mind of the boy whose holidays there
 
 THACKERAY. 59 
 
 must to him have been a delightful contrast to the 
 uncongenial life of the school. 
 
 " Looking at the little old town from the London Road, as it 
 runs by the lodge at Fairoaks, and seeing the rapid and shiny 
 Brawl " (the "Otter ") " winding down from the town, and skirting 
 the woods of Clavering Park, and the ancient church tower and 
 peaked roofs of the houses rising up among trees and old walls, 
 behind which swells a fair background of sunshiny hills that stretch 
 from Clavering westward towards the sea, the place looks so cheery 
 and comfortable that many a traveller's heart must have yearned 
 toward it from the coach-top, and he must have thought that it was 
 in such a calm friendly nook he would like to shelter at the end of 
 life's struggle."
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 (By Herman Merivale.) 
 
 ** 1\ /T ^^^ ^^ token," wrote the late Master of Trinity, 
 iVJ. Dr. Tliompson, some years later, " that it was 
 in that place " (the " studious cloister pale " which forms 
 the court of the famous Cambridge college) " that I was 
 first made aware of the name of a tall, thin, large-eyed, 
 full and ruddy-faced man with an eye-glass fixed en 
 permanence — the glass he has immortalized, or ought to 
 have done so, for, on consideration, he supplied its place 
 in his portrait of Titmarsh with a pair. I did not know 
 him personally until his second year, when a small 
 literary society was made up of him, Jol n, now Arch- 
 deacon, Allen, Henry, afterwards Dean, Alford, Robert, 
 now Archdeacon, Groome, and Young of Caius, with 
 another of whom I am not sure, and myself. We were 
 seven. I don't know that we ever agreed on a name. 
 Alford proposed the ' Covey,' because we ' made such a 
 noise when we got up ' — to speak, that is ; but it was left 
 for further consideration. I think Thackeray's subject 
 was 'Duelling,' on which there was then much diversity 
 of opinion. We did not see in him even the germ of 
 those literary powers which, under the stern influence of 
 riecessity, he afterwards developed. One does not see
 
 LIFE OF THACKERAY. 61 
 
 the wings in a chrysalis. He led a somewhat lazy (?) 
 but pleasant and ' gentlemanlike ' life in a set mixed of 
 old schoolfellows and such men as the two archdeacons 
 named above ; with them and with my friend Edward 
 Fitzgerald he no doubt had much literary talk, but not 
 on 'University Subjects.' He sat, I remember, opposite 
 to me at the ' May Examination ' ; he was put in the 
 fouith class" (for himself, Thackeray had hoped no better 
 than a fifth). " It was a class where clever ' non-reading 
 men ' were put, as in a limbo. But though careless of 
 University distinction, he had a vivid appreciation of 
 English poetry, and chanted the praises of the old 
 English novelists, especially his model, Fielding. He 
 had always a flow of humour and pleasantry, and was 
 made much of by his friends. At supper-parties, though 
 not talkative — rather observant — he enjoyed the humours 
 of the hour, and sang one or two old songs with great 
 applause. ' Old King Cole ' I well remember to have 
 heard from him at the supper I gave to celebrate my 
 election as scholar. It made me laugh excessively, not 
 from the novelty of the song, but from the humour with 
 which it was given. Thackeray, as you know, left us at 
 the end of his second year, and for some time I saw him 
 no more. Our debating club fell to pieces when he 
 went." 
 
 Such is the description of Thackeray, the under- 
 graduate, in the days of Pendennis's Oxbridge life. 
 Written by a man who was himself one of the keenest 
 observers, as he was one of the most polished scholars 
 and most humorous companions of his day, it is a 
 picture worth study and remembrance — part, certainly,
 
 62 LIFE OF 
 
 of a very consistent whole as we follow the novelist's 
 career. Thompson must, I think, have been very con- 
 genial to him. He himself was quite in the Thackeravian 
 vein. He was discoursing one day to me at Kissingen, 
 many years later, in his dry fashion upon the superior 
 courtesy of the polished foreigner to anything his insu- 
 larity could arrive at. " You saw," he said, " how affably 
 that gentleman acknowledged me." He was himself 
 most domestically, if not even seedily, dressed, and we 
 had just been crossed by a gorgeous Russian in furs 
 and jewels of price, who made a condescending bow. 
 "It was affable," I answered; "even princely. Who is 
 he?" "That," he said, "is my courier." 
 
 A very different man was Dr. Thompson's predecessor, 
 Whewell, in the famous office of which he said that 
 there were many bishops, but only one Master of 
 Trinity, He was Thackeray's tutor, before he reached 
 the Mastership, on the young Carthusian's arrival in 
 Cambridge in February, 1829. It is not certain whether 
 the boy read with a private tutor in the interval between 
 leaving Charterhouse in May, 1828, and the date of his 
 matriculation. There was something of the kind 
 suggested ; but it has been said that his step-father 
 himself undertook the necessary work of preparation. 
 However this may have been, our chronicler is quite 
 right in regretting as a great mistake that Thackeray 
 went up to Cambridge in February, for the Lent 
 term, instead of entering for the Michaelmas term in 
 October. At Oxford the choice of month makes little 
 difference, though there too October is that of the 
 majority. But I began my own Oxford life in January,
 
 THACKERAY. 63 
 
 and am aware of no difference it made. At the sister 
 university the Michaehiias has always been the fresh- 
 man's term, with very rare exceptions ; and, thanks to 
 the consequent arrangement of lectures and studies, the 
 Lenten freshman may be at a great disadvantage amongst 
 his fellows. This was the case with Thackeray, and 
 may go far to account for his university life having been 
 uncompleted. But the boy — now by the mystic rite of 
 matriculation a " man," of the class of men most jealous 
 of the title, even while qualified as " fresh " — was well 
 content to enter on his independence without reflexions 
 of that kind. As in dealing with his school-life, so at 
 the university, I can follow no better authority than that 
 of the family chronicler, and let the story tell itself as 
 much as may be in Thackeray's own words, as he kept 
 up the habit of journalizing to his mother. 
 
 " I am now about to begin my first journal, my dearest mother," 
 he writes under date "Saturday, 28 February, 1829," "which I 
 hope will be always sent with the regularity which it is my full 
 purpose to give to it. After father left me, I went in rather low 
 
 spirits to S of Corpus, and with him strayed about among the 
 
 groves, or rather fields, which skirt the Colleges of King's, 
 Trinity, &c." 
 
 Then, after the delight of seeing a boat-race, he eats 
 "a vast dinner in state in the Hall," and going to 
 chapel with his new surplice and new cap, he is 
 inducted, early indeed, and without respect of place, 
 into the freshman's first mystery. The new cap dis- 
 appears, and " a wretched old thing " is left in its place. 
 To the undergraduate's " trencher-board," as to the 
 umbrella of maturer life, no right of property has ever
 
 64 LIFE OF 
 
 been known to attach. A certain acute American's 
 receipt for getting a new umbrella was to wait in a porch 
 in the rain till you see an umbrella pass that you would 
 like, then go straight up to the possessor and claim it as 
 yours. " Sir, he will give it you at once. For hoio is he to 
 knoiv it isti'tV Thackeray's cap having gone the way of 
 all flesh, in all the flush of his early pride in it, he con- 
 soles himself by having two friends to tea, who "are just 
 gone, and have left me to write these few lines to my 
 dearest mother, to remind her of her affectionate son, 
 W. M. T." On Sunday, the ist of March, he goes to 
 chapel morning and evening, and to St. Mary's (the 
 University Church both of Cambridge and Oxford), and 
 " in the evening to drink tea at old Mrs. Thackeray's " 
 (then ninety-one years of age), " where I saw the Vice- 
 Provost of King's, who invited me to come and see him 
 often and soon. The old lady said she loved the name 
 of Thackeray." On Monday he makes the acquaintance 
 of Mr. Fawcett, his private tutor (a lesser star than the 
 tutor proper, and popularly called a coach), and I grieve 
 to say sketches him in pen and ink on the margin of his 
 journal as one 
 
 "who looks a decidedly reading chcaracter. I am to go to him 
 every evening, and read Classics and Mathematics alternately. I 
 read Algebra with him this evening, and like his method much. 
 To-morrow I hope to be elected at the Union. I have some 
 thoughts of writing, for a college prize, an English Essay on ' The 
 influence of the Homeric Poems on the Religion, the Politics, the 
 Literature and Society of Greece,' but it will require much reading, 
 which I fear 1 have not time to bestow on it." 
 
 How characteristic is the glimpse we gel again of the
 
 THACKERAY. 65 
 
 Thackeray of magnificent intentions, with the frank 
 freshman's admission that he " may not have the time 
 to bestow " upon the modest subject-matter of that por- 
 tentous essay, which is certainly not to be found in any 
 collected edition of his works. Who can have got that 
 prize ? Undergraduate Gladstone must then have been 
 at Oxford, and in his beloved line of study must here 
 have been spared a formidable competitor. On Tuesday 
 the young alumnus has a ten-mile " grind," as the walk 
 after a capacious college meal is known to men; is 
 elected a member of the Union, "where was a debate 
 on the Catholic question " ; and finishes with three 
 friends to tea. On Wednesday, Mr. George Thackeray, 
 a fellow of King's, calls upon him, and he goes to call 
 on the Vice-Provost of King's, "whom I much like." 
 Then 
 
 " to a wine-party at Game's, but was obligated to go away for 
 an hour and a half to my tutor ; by this I was saved about seven 
 glasses of wine. I find that sleeping from twelve until seven o'clock 
 is quite enough for me. When it is lighter I shall go to my tutor 
 from six to seven in the morning, and not at six in the evening, as 
 I do now. . . . Good-night, dear mother. I have obeyed your 
 injunctions and sent you a drawing of my rooms; next them is the 
 tower where Newton ' kept.' " 
 
 On the margin of this letter the rooms are sketched in 
 water-colour, with a ground-plan showing the position of 
 the table and book-case, and Dr. Thompson identified 
 them thus : " They are in the Great Court, opposite the 
 Master's lodge, ground floor, adjoining on the left the 
 Great Gate, just under Newton's rooms. Letter E, right 
 hand. Ground - floor, is the official description." 
 
 5
 
 66 LIFE OF 
 
 Thackeray furbished and furnished and painted, and 
 thought his rooms "have as great convenience and 
 comforts as any rooms in college." Taste and finish 
 were sure to be characteristic of a man of such unvarying 
 neatness, and such capacity for pains in all he carried 
 through. His very handwriting was, in the later days, a 
 fine art with him as much as his drawing, and he loved 
 to elaborate it with quaint scrolls and borders and 
 arabesques, especially after he had furnished himself 
 with the favourite " gold pen " which he made the 
 theme of one of the most graceful of his excursions into 
 verse. 
 
 This record of Thackeray's first few college days gives 
 promise of a pleasantly full life for an undergraduate 
 then well furnished with the sinews of war, and with a 
 mind bound to suck scholarship out of everything, even 
 if through channels less vulgar and tremendous than the 
 influence of Homer upon Greek Politics, Literature, and 
 Society. And even at eighteen years old he was at once 
 initiated into the early mysteries of undergraduate profit 
 and loss; for if he sacrificed a cap, did he not save 
 seven glasses of wine, at some five glasses to the hour ? 
 How we might be tempted to moralize upon these flying 
 glimpses into the opening scenes and floating schemes of 
 youth, where tliat great intellect was feeling its way to 
 Day, unmarked of any in its promise of power ! 
 
 I borrow from my chronicle a few more extracts at 
 second hand, written very closely in a very small hand, 
 and often crossed, it tells me that the week's story might 
 be contained in a sheet. For did not postage in those 
 days, from Cambridge to Larkbeare, cost elevenpence ?
 
 THACKERAY. 67 
 
 '^ April 2g. — I had six to dinner one day. Soup, smelts, soles, 
 boiled turkey, saddle of mutton, wild ducks, creams, jellies, &c., 
 composed it. The ' Sauterne ' is much admired. This morning 
 from half-past seven till one at Classics. We are going to establish 
 an Essay Club. There are as yet but four of us, Browne, Moody, 
 Young, and myself, all Carthusians. We want no more Charter- 
 house men ; if we get ten we shall scarcely have to write three 
 essays a year, so that it will take up but little of our time. I am 
 always up now by seven, but I find it very expensive, seeing that 
 my brown loaf diminishes with much greater rapidity than it was 
 wont when I kept later hours." 
 
 " Breakfasted at Young's this morning to meet the essay men. 
 I went to a wine-party at my tutor's the other day ; such fun ! If 
 you can fancy Dominie Sampson giving a wine-party. He and I 
 get on very well ; he is very v/ell-meaning, and patient to a miracle, 
 just the thing for a beginner. I am just beginning to find out the 
 beauties of the Greek Play ; I pursue a plan of reading only the 
 Greek without uttering a word of English, and thus having the 
 language in itself, which I find adds to my pleasure in a very extra- 
 ordinary manner, and will if I pursue it lead me, I hope, to think 
 in Greek, and of course will give me more fluency." 
 
 ^^ April l6. — To-day has been an idle day with me rather. But 
 a little idleness doth one good. This day last year did I leave 
 Charterhouse ; now I am sitting at Cambridge writing a letter 
 home, with a mind perfectly contented with the change the year has 
 wrought in my situation. I have been going about in my walks 
 lately drawing churches : here is one " (a vignette of Grandchester 
 Church attached). " The country is ugly in the extreme, but there 
 are a number of quaint old buildings, and pretty bits scattered about. 
 I think I shall take solitary walks, and see how I get on in the way 
 of drawing. I called yesterday at one o'clock on a man to walk, 
 and found him in bed ! Men are here very fond of going to bed 
 late and getting up late— the former of these I like not, nor, I hope, 
 the latter. ... I have been drinking tea at Dr. Thackeray's, 
 reading yEschylus and Mathematics and ' Zillah' " (a novel), " and 
 playing two games at chess, having been in-doors almost all day
 
 68 LIFE OF 
 
 from the rain. Dr. T. has a young son, an Etonian of course. 
 I have asked the little fellow to come and see me. I cannot read 
 Mathematics of an evening. I in general have a man, or go to a 
 man and have a chat for an hour or two." 
 
 " I had a conversation with my private tutor this morning, and 
 he told me that in May we shall have a week's examination of eight 
 hours a day. It has rather put me on my mettle, but when I look 
 at the men about me I shall think myself lucky if I have as many 
 below me as above me. I cannot, however, do more than my best, 
 which I am determined to do. I saw the Vice-Provost of King's 
 to-day, who recommends me to keep 'Non-ens.' He says he will 
 ask Peacock (one of our tutors) what plan he would recommend. 
 Keeping 'Non-ens' will detain me another year at college." 
 
 ^^ March 22, 1829.— I called on the two young Mr. Thackerays 
 to-day. The eldest (the Fellow) asked me to wine with him on 
 Monday. I have bought a set of foils and tackle. I have been 
 fencing almost every day since I came here. . . ." 
 
 " Stinday.—l have no news to-day, but strong resolutions for 
 to-morrow. I purpose to begin a more regular course of reading 
 than I have hitherto done, for though I have read this week, I have 
 not done so with the regularity essential to my well-doing. I 
 shall therefore begin to-morrow and read from half-past eight 
 o'clock till half-past one, and then again with my private tutor on 
 alternate days from 4.30 to 5.30, or from five to six. The former is 
 the more convenient time of the two, for that is the time when the 
 wine-parties commence; I can therefore always plead an engage- 
 ment on those days." 
 
 "We had a grand feast to-day in Hall : after dinner an imnnense 
 silver cup was brought round filled with Audit Ale— good it was, 
 but not so good as what we had at Dr. Thackeray's in bottle. We 
 have a delightful organ in our chapel which you would like to hear. 
 Farewell till to-morrow night, dear mother, when I will tell 
 you the result of resolutions.— W. M. T., his mark," [Here follows 
 a monogram almost exactly the same as that he used in after-life,]
 
 THACKERAY. 69 
 
 " Monday. — I have just been wining with ISIr. Joseph Thackeray, 
 of King's. I read all the morning, and walked till Hall. Ttiesday. 
 —I have followed up my reading to-day rather vigorously, though I 
 find it a hard, hard matter ; it goeth very much against the grain. 
 ... I went to see our library to-day, and to get out five stout 
 quartos. It is a most splendid room. Friday.—! have just been 
 drinking three cups of tea at Dr. Thackeray's, and another at a 
 freshman's of our college of the name of Badger ! He and I are 
 going to read Greek Play together from eleven until twelve every 
 day. I am getting more and more into the way of reading now. 
 I go to Fawcett every other morning from eight to nine, to Fisher 
 (the Mathematical lecturer) from nine to ten, and to Starr (the 
 Classical one) from ten to eleven ; then with Badger from eleven to 
 twelve ; twelve to half-past one Euclid or Algebra, and an hour in 
 the evening at some one or other of the above, or perhaps at some 
 of the collateral reading connected with the Thucydides or .^schylus. 
 This is my plan, which I trust to be able to keep— when therefore I 
 say nothing you may know I have kept it. . . . Tell father I 
 answered five questions out of the twelve (four of them were props. 
 in Euclid, and the other a long Algebraical one), and they were done 
 most correctly." 
 
 *' Sunday.— I went to the Vice-Provost of King's to wine yester- 
 day. He tieated me with some rich hock ; never did I drink such. 
 Mr. Thackeray told me that he thought every man should go 
 abroad after he had taken his degree. . . . Remember me to 
 George. I will send him my speech on the character of Napoleon, 
 and some very interesting Algebraic Formula:, with which, and 
 discussion on the Greek Article, I think to amuse him. Whewell 
 strongly recommends me not to go down at Easter ; he says that it 
 would be very much to my disadvantage. I have not spoken about 
 your letter, your long, kind letter, but will do so more at length 
 in another sheet of paper — so good-bye for the present, dearest 
 mother." 
 
 ** Sunday night, April, 1S29.— I have just sent off my letter, 
 and have no news, but I like to have something in hand, gome link 
 between me and home. I fell asleep today over the ' Life of
 
 70 LIFE OF 
 
 Cardinal Wolsey.' "When I come home I will bring with me the 
 ' Revolt of Islam,' by Percy Bysshe Shelley ; it is (in my opinion) a 
 most beautiful poem— though the story is absurd, and the republican 
 sentiments conveyed in it, if possible, more absurd. Monday. — 
 Badger and I are regular at the Greek Play. He came to me, 
 however, to-day, rather indisposed, and so we read nothing, but 
 instead looked over a splendid folio of prints taken from the statues 
 in the Museum of Florence, which I have got out of the Trinity 
 library to try and copy the hands and feet. I am going to wine at 
 George Thackeray's to-morrow ; he will be elected Fellow in a 
 week or two. I do not know whether I should ask him in return — 
 whether his dignity would allow him to come. I should much like 
 to take to riding. I have been reading a great part of to-day in our 
 magnificent library, which I had no business to do. My private 
 tutor says that as I have not had tlie benefit of him in the whole 
 term he will give me a fortnight's tuition in the vacation, which I 
 think is handsome of him. . . . We have been into an examination 
 in Algebra with the college tutor to-day, and I succeeded very 
 tolerably." 
 
 " I have unluckily left my examination paper in the lecture-room, 
 which, as it was adorned with a sweet little cherub, may strike the 
 lecturer with admiration." 
 
 " I have just returned from a long debate at the Union, at which I 
 had intended to offer my opinions ; the meeting, however, adjourned 
 to next Tuesday, when perhaps I may be more prepared. Shelley 
 appears to me to have been a man of very strong and good feelings, 
 all perverted by the absurd creed which he was pleased to uphold ; 
 a man of high powers, which his conceit led him to over-rate, and 
 his religion prompted him to misuse. But I am talking to 
 uninitiated ears. I think I said I should bring home Shelley's 
 ' Revolt of Islam,' but I have rather altered my opinion, for it is an 
 odd kind of book, containing poetry which would induce me to read 
 it through, and sentiments which might strongly incline one to 
 throw it into the fire. I saw to-day the engravings of Canova's 
 works, in which I was very much disappointed ; they look so mean 
 and meagre and stiff and studied, to my ill-judging eye, that I can- 
 not conceive how any man by such works could have risen to fame."
 
 THACKERAY. 71 
 
 " A ' poem of mine ' hath appeared in a weekly periodical here 
 published, and called The Snob. I will bring it home with me. 
 In a month's time I trust to be at home. My private tutor, for a 
 wonder, was not up when I went to him at six this morning. I cut 
 lecture this morning, and breakfasted with two Charterhouse 
 masters. Penny and Dickens — who are Charterhouse masters all 
 over. Young had a pleasant wine-party, at which for a short time 
 I attended. ' Timbuctoo ' received much laud. I could not help 
 finding out that I was very fond of this same praise. The men 
 knew not the author, but praised the poem ; how eagerly I sucked 
 it in ! ' All is vanity 1' " 
 
 "If I get a fifth class in the examination I shall be lucky. . . . 
 The Snob goeth on prosperously. I have put ' Genevieve ' into it 
 with a little alteration. Sunday I was at St. Mary's, and heard a 
 sermon from Blunt on the undesigned coincidences in Scripture. 
 He was very ingenious, almost too much so. We had ' I know that 
 my Redeemer liveth ' in chapel. The organ was beautiful." 
 
 We have it on the authority of Trollope that " Tim- 
 buctoo " was a burlesque upon the prize poem of the 
 year, written by Tennyson. Strange conjunction of the 
 names to be ! When I wrote in an earher chapter of 
 the portentous years which produced the four great 
 Englishmen, I might have added the fifth. Two of 
 Thackeray's stanzas ran thus : 
 
 " In Africa — a quarter of the world — 
 
 Men's skins are black ; their hair is crisped and curled ; 
 And somewhere there, unknown to public view, 
 A mighty city lies, called Timbuctoo. 
 • ••••• 
 
 I see her tribes the hill of glory mount, 
 And sell their sugars on their own account, 
 While round her throne the prostrate nations come, 
 Sue for her rice, and barter for her rum."
 
 72 LIFE OF 
 
 I do not know that I see much promise of such a May 
 in this. I do not know that readers will find much 
 merit in the extracts from the young Cambridge diarist, 
 which none the less I feel sure must interest them, even 
 as they interest me. I am not sure that the interest is 
 not in some sort the result of the absence of what, from 
 a literary standpoint, men may call merit. Thackeray 
 was a late-flowering plant, after all ; and in this simple 
 and touching record of home-loving young life, one is as 
 slow as Dr. Thompson was to augur the future greatness 
 of the prose-poet of " Vanity Fair." It is even younger 
 in expression, I think, than the average expression of 
 eighteen. I have known — and do know — men of worthy 
 account in English letters, cotemporaries of my own, 
 whose style has not surpassed, and does not now, the 
 force that informed it in university life. This diary of 
 Thackeray's is distinctly but a boy's — original only, per- 
 haps, in its criticism on Shelley and Canova ; striking 
 only in its anticipation of the two great subjects of his 
 pen— the " Snob " and the " All is Vanity." Curious 
 that little outburst to his mother even then, before the 
 cup of vanity had been either tasted or filled. 
 
 On the other hand, how delightful the consistent 
 development of that idle-industrious mind, and the dear 
 little domestic pharisaisms that all nice boys write home. 
 If the child liked Chiswick because " there were so many 
 good boys to play with," and the boy meant "to get up 
 at five o'clock every morning, and so get four hours' 
 reading before breakfast," did not the youth propose to 
 "think in Greek," to trace the influence of Homer upon 
 everything in general if he could but find the time, and
 
 THACKERA V. 73 
 
 upon the recurring Sunday to " have strong resolutions 
 for to-morrow " ? And all these same propositions and 
 resolutions were to end in — " Vanity Fair." Thackeray 
 is not the only mighty man of valour and of power who 
 has set up for ever, in a place very different from the 
 Tartarean Shades, his especial fragment of the pavement 
 of Good Intent ! On the whole, we are inclined to 
 think from the record that Thackeray did with his 
 Cambridge days very much the best he could have 
 done. He acquired a good general basis of classic 
 scholarship, whereon to build an English as good as the 
 best of them. He won and left behind him the name he 
 envied and loved the best, and was " pray God, a gentle- 
 man." And he made to himself friends who endured 
 and valued — Thompson and Brookfield, Edward Fitz- 
 gerald and Mitchell Kemble, Monckton Milnes and 
 James Spedding, John Sterling and Alfred Tennyson. 
 Yet to the curious inquirer sometimes, as with a sense of 
 tears and of regret, among these world-known names will 
 come a vision of that " Freshman of our College " of the 
 curious name, by diary the most faithful of them all. 
 What became of Badger ? 
 
 The blow of grace to Thackeray's college career seems 
 to have been that mysterious '' JVon-ens." It was — is, 
 perhaps — a corruption in Granta's vernacular of " Non- 
 annus " — a No-year Man ; one, that is, who came up, as 
 early in this chapter it was told how Thackeray did, in 
 the Lent term instead of in October. Being so behind 
 the rest, he had to meet in the May examination men 
 with three months' advantage of him, or to hold back for 
 a whole year in order to have as much advantage of them.
 
 74 LIFE OF 
 
 So, at least, the phrase is described to me. And because 
 of the compHcations rising out of this hard condition of 
 non-entity, and very likely from other reasons also, con- 
 nected with health and brains, strength and an ample 
 independence, and Russellian views in high places about 
 his qualifications for well-regulated use, Thackeray left 
 Cambridge at the age of nineteen. 
 
 This chapter of his life should close here, but for 
 one word. To the sons of England's great Universities, 
 whose name is legion, there is no more attractive passage 
 in fiction than that which was the fruit of those two 
 years of residence, the Oxbridge episode of Mr. Arthur 
 Pendennis. How deliciously fanciful is the jumble 
 between the two sister-seats, though the true parent is 
 palpable enough to the initiate. How pleasantly the gyp 
 and the scout are harmonized in the skip ; and how 
 young-man-like and conceited and self-conscious alto- 
 gether Master Pen's entrance upon the fascinating 
 course, on which the author moralizes in his truest 
 philosophic vein. How pleasant the investment in the 
 "pretty college cap," and how odd that Thackeray 
 should have forgotten to introduce its early extinction, 
 and the "wretched old thing" left instead. How real 
 that "atrocious little Foker," Mr. Buck the tutor, and the 
 rest ; and poor Pen's early stumbles on the youthful 
 Road to Ruin. And the smart new clothes for the Long 
 Vacation, and the new French watch and chain that 
 replaced the poor father's portly chronometer, and Pen's 
 bills, and Laura's sacrifice, and Helen's tears. Never has 
 the old old story been better told, down to the time when 
 " the melancholy figure might be seen shirking about the
 
 TRACK ERA V. 75 
 
 lonely quadrangles in his battered old cap and torn 
 gown," and on the day of the appearance of the class- 
 list a certain " dreadful rumour rushed through the 
 University — 
 
 " ' I have not got my degree. I — I'm plucked, Sir.' 
 
 • Was it— was it done in public. Sir ? ' the Major said." 
 
 One wonders from which of his many allies or 
 acquaintances, or from whom of them combined, 
 Thackeray drew Arthur Pendennis. In this case 
 certainly, unlike the process usually attributed to 
 authors and their heroes, not from himself — unless, 
 indeed, in one instance my rash conjecture have a 
 base, and there was an Emily Fotheringay in the flesh 
 to suggest to parents and guardians a course of Uni- 
 versity-cure. All that our poor Pen then was, Thackeray 
 in his honourable course at that critical time was not. 
 Neither selfish nor conceited, not noisy and dissipated at 
 college, ungrateful and loveless at home — but full of 
 home-thoughts and loving-kindness, tender, modest, and 
 uanly, well-graced and pure.
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 (By Herman Merivale.) 
 
 THACKERAY, the Junior Soph— as the second 
 year men were then called — left Cambridge de- 
 greeless before he was nineteen, and after his two years 
 of residence. He did not care to follow out the mathe- 
 matical course necessary to the full term, and the "tall 
 figure, with plenty of colour and masses of dark hair " — 
 not then yet at its full height of six feet and more — was 
 transferred to the larger stage of life. Among his later 
 studies he appears to have ensued something of Political 
 Economy, and attended lectures on the Inspiring Science. 
 Those lectures may have been the final blow to the 
 novelist's academical ambitions. Many years afterwards 
 a friend of his remembers the sudden arrival of Thackeray 
 at his house in a cab full of drawing-room mirrors, and 
 offering to make him a present of as many as he liked. 
 In a back street of what he called " Sohovia," says his 
 friend, he had seen some children crying for bread. 
 Their father was ill and out of work. He was a maker 
 of looking-glasses for the trade, and had these left upon 
 his hands. Whereupon Thackeray bought them all at 
 the maker's own price. Very bad political economy 
 indeed ! But Thackeray had a science of his own where
 
 LIFE OF TRACKER A V. 77 
 
 doing kindnesses was concerned. Somewhere have I read 
 of the friend who found him in his Paris hotel, inscribing 
 on a large pill-box in his own hand, " One to be taken 
 when required." He had come across some old gentle- 
 woman past work and in need, and he had made up his 
 prescription in the pill-box. It was sovereigns. 
 
 I like to think of Thackeray's entrance into the big 
 world outside. There are few better openings out there 
 than his, with his little private fortune (^20,000 it has 
 been called, but I believe it was 3^500 a year), his large 
 sound frame and health, and his brain of corresponding 
 build, which to him at all events must now have been 
 more than whispering the promise of To Be — if it had 
 puzzled his aunt in childhood, it was to weigh 58^ oz. 
 when he died. And with this hope and power before 
 him he entered on the great education of travel. He 
 wandered through Europe and dwelt in her capitals, and 
 gathered his experience of her ways. Paris and Rome, 
 Dresden and Weimar — he trod their pavements and 
 stored up their lessons; and became one of the com- 
 pletebt men of the world who was ever likewise one of 
 its greatest authors. " Mores homifium multorum vidit et 
 tirbes " — and, idle and unprofitable dog that he was, he 
 forgot nothing. If others have owned the Epitome of 
 Knowledge, his was the Epitome of Observation. In 
 Paris he was as true a Parisian as the veriest stepper of 
 the Boulevards, as much in the manner of the " Land of 
 Bohemia " of that forgotten day, as a Musset or a Murger 
 himself — ready to sing of "Bouillabaisse" or the New 
 Street of the Little Fields ; or out of that deeper power 
 of his to revive the Revolution, like a panorama in the
 
 78 LIFE OF 
 
 " Chronicle of the Drum," — in the pages of " The New- 
 comes" to photograph Boulogne and its cliffs and nurses, 
 and in Madame de Florae and her son to picture two 
 different phases of French-in-English with a delicacy of 
 touch, half laughter and half tears, that we are not like 
 to see again ; then to be as much at home with so great 
 a variety as the gaming Duchess of Ivry and poor little 
 Antoinette : 
 
 ^' Potirqttoi? Mamma used never to speak to me except some- 
 times before the world, before ladies — that understands itself. 
 When her gentleman came, she put me to the door ; she gave me 
 tapes, oh oui, she gave me tapes ^ 
 
 And if this was not enough, he would meet Clive and 
 Ethel on a mountain pass, as if he had lived in the 
 tourist-world all his hfe; he would be the Bursch in 
 Germany and the art-student in Rome. Monte Carlo 
 might read its story and its types in Thackeray at Baden; 
 Pumpernickel recall the little German Courts ; and the 
 " Rhine in the distance flashing by the Seven Mountains " 
 record how varied and watchful was that aimless traveller's 
 taste. Go thou with Clive and J. J. by the steamboat to 
 Antwerp (irresistibly suggestive in passing of that other 
 giant and his Ankworks Package so very like a whale — 
 "I wish it was in Jonadge's belly, I do"), and, if thou 
 love pictures, as thou scarce hvest if thou dost not, then — 
 
 " Imagine how the two young men rejoiced in one of the most 
 picturesque cities in the world ; where they went back straightway 
 into the sixteenth century ; where the inn at which they stayed 
 (delightful old Grand Laboureur, thine ancient walls are levelled ! 
 thy comfortable hospitalities exist no more ! ) seemed such a hostelry
 
 THACKERAY. ?9 
 
 as that where Quentin Durward first saw his sweetheart ; where 
 knights of Velazquez or burgomasters of Rubens seemed to look 
 from the windows of the tall gabled houses and the quaint porches ; 
 where the Bourse still stood, the Bourse of three hundred years ago, 
 and you had but to supply figures with beards and ruffs, and rapiers 
 and trunk-hose, to make the picture complete ; where to be 
 awakened by the carillon of the bells was to waken to the most 
 delightful sense of life and happiness ; where nuns, actual nuns, 
 walked the streets, and every figure ir the Place de Meir, and 
 every devotee at church, kneeling and draped in black, or entering 
 the confessional (actually the confessional), was a delightful subject 
 for the new sketch-book," 
 
 Rolling Stones gather no moss, they say. This one 
 did. He began at Godesberg, of course. I never 
 could understand why for so long a period everybody 
 did. Our parents always took or sent us there. It was 
 the case with mine. Yet Godesberg was nothing in 
 particular, just too far from the Rhine not to be near it. 
 Now it is a suburban paradise of flowers for graceful 
 Bonn, to rejoice the eye with beauties of its own. 
 Then it was one road, two inns, and a ruined tower, like 
 a toy spy-glass. But there Thackeray stayed for a month, 
 with a friend, to improve his German, to see many duels 
 of Bonn students and illustrate them in his letters home, 
 and to buy Schiller in eighteen volumes. He had taken 
 introductory German lessons from a certain Herr Trop- 
 peneger, in London, and July 30, 1830, finds him writing 
 from Coblentz of the beauties of the Rhine as " almost 
 equal to the Thames " ; delighting in the beauties of the 
 Prussian military music, and meeting 
 
 " with some good figures among the people. Here are two (full- 
 lengths) who were on board the steamer. The boy with the pipe
 
 80 LIFE OF 
 
 was exactly like Raphael, and the man would have made a good 
 study for a Buccaneer." 
 
 It is clear that Drawing was the art which still held 
 Thackeray most. 
 
 At Weimar the traveller who had begun with Napoleon 
 went on with Goethe, and readers of Lewes's life may 
 find his description of their interview, though there 
 appears to have been more than one, from the account 
 given to his mother. The introduction was on Oct. 20, 
 1830, where he describes the German sage as having 
 received him with great kindness and consideration, at 
 a tea-party, to which he had especially invited him at 
 midday, amongst other English and some of his par- 
 ticular favourites in the town. 
 
 " Everybody talks French here," he writes, "so that I have had 
 more practice for my French than for my German. There is a Court 
 twice a week ; tea and cards, the latter for the elder part of the 
 community. The gentlemen are obliged to stand from seven till 
 half-past nine, when all the world at Weimar goes to bed. The 
 weather is wliat is called hiinmlisch hiibsch — that is to say, warm 
 enough to roast you in the day, and cold enough to freeze you in 
 .the evening. . . . Madame de Goethe is very kind. . . . The 
 other evening I went to call on her, and found her with three 
 Byrons, a Moore, and a Shelley on her talkie ! " 
 
 About two months later — for Thackeray's visit to 
 W^eimar lasted some little time — he had an opportunity 
 of being impressed by the old Teuton's characteristic 
 vitality. Goethe burst a blood-vessel at eighty-three, 
 was nearly carried off at the moment, and within a few 
 days impressed his young acquaintance by writing and
 
 TH ACKER A V. 81 
 
 drinking harder than ever. He " is a noble poet, and an 
 interesting old man to speak to and look upon as I ever 
 saw," says Thackeray. And indeed it is useless to make 
 laws for brains and constitutions of this kind. They go 
 their own road to the end. Thackeray, however, much 
 as he admired Goethe's works, had a strong personal 
 preference for Schiller's. He may have been something 
 swayed in this, perhaps, by personal sympathies. Loose- 
 livers hke the older poet were not to Thackeray's mind, 
 with his chivalrous respect for women, his simple and 
 living faith, and his sympathy with tears and pain. He 
 liked good people best, and Schiller's life was blameless 
 as his own. But beyond that — perhaps as a necessary 
 consequence of it — his literary sympathies took the same 
 flight. William Tell spoke more to his heart than 
 Faust, with the former's sweet presentment of the love 
 of home. There are many of us who in our hearts 
 cherish much the same weakness of preference for the 
 lesser name, and feel a gratitude to Thackeray for his 
 outspoken opinion. " I have been reading Shakespeare 
 in German ; if I could ever do the same for Schiller in 
 English, I should be proud of having conferred a benefit 
 on my country. ... I do believe him to be, after 
 Shakespeare, The Poet." Truly this was a man of 
 many schemes, casting about for that which was within 
 him, and proposing to translate Schiller at the outset of 
 his life, even as at the close of it he had stocked his 
 library with materials for a history of the reign of Queen 
 Anne. Meanwhile he sketched and laughed, and watched 
 and lived, and, like everybody else, apparently went the 
 way of all flesh, and found a flame in Weimar which 
 
 6
 
 82 LIFE OF 
 
 went out, and left nothing but cinders. So, at least, he 
 wrote to his mother, to whom he continued to pour out 
 all his schemes and dreams, in letters not meant for 
 public use, save at the wish of his nearest at some later 
 day, full of boylike merriment (he was not yet twenty,) 
 and sacred tenderness : 
 
 " ' This world is empty, 
 This heart is dead, 
 Its hopes and its ashes 
 For ever are fled.' 
 As Schiller says ; or rather as is said in an admirable translation 
 of that great poet by a rising young man of the name of 
 Thackeray." 
 
 Such was this Romeo's epitaph on his whilome Rosaline, 
 whose name history records not. I think she must have 
 been fair and flaxen, with round light blue eyes and a 
 peach complexion ; that she said " Ach wujiderschon ! " 
 when he talked his young dreams to her; that she 
 taught him quite as much German as his professors ; 
 and that she certainly figures somewhere amongst those 
 much-discussed phantoms, his " originals." And I think 
 I should like to believe that she married Badger. 
 
 Thackeray was still meditating a profession, wishing to 
 be an attach^, but nearly decided on the Bar, and feeling 
 that the beginning of life in earnest must be soon, for 
 one who had a competence but no more, and had no 
 mind to be nothing but an idler. But I suspect that it 
 was that life at Weimar that fixed the bent before he 
 knew it, and riveted, " in der Stille," the chains with which 
 Literature binds her true votaries, whether they will or 
 no — sure of her own in time, whatever profession it may
 
 THACKERA V. 83 
 
 choose them to think they follow. What else could the 
 life at Weimar do ? The very name is suggestive of a 
 Court of Letters which has no parallel in story; and 
 that a young man like Thackeray, fervent of heart, eager 
 of years, and imaginative of brain, should come out of 
 the living presence of Goethe, and scarce less living 
 memory of Schiller, unspoiled for the learned professions, 
 and anything other than an author foredoomed, was — as 
 his Fraulein must have told him — '* ganz unmoglich." 
 His only regret was that he was too late for the full 
 fruition of that earthly paradise. " It must have been a 
 fine sight twenty years ago," he writes, " this little Court, 
 with Goethe and Schiller and Wieland and the old Grand 
 Duke and Duchess to ornament it." It must indeed. 
 If we were permitted to choose for ourselves certain 
 glimpses into the life of the past, few of those who bathe 
 at the fount of letters but would ask for a plunge into 
 the high-tide of Weimar. It is curious to find that, 
 when Thackeray was there, Society agreed with him in 
 voting Schiller to be the greater man. Why Thackeray 
 did is clear — as the reasons for his literary verdicts always 
 are clear, whether on Shelley and Schiller in his youth, 
 or on his English brother humourists in his manhood. 
 But that this should have been the general verdict is a 
 puzzle: unless the key is to be looked for in that odd old 
 weakness of mankind in literary and artistic matters, 
 when it wants to be thought critical. Goethe was still 
 guilty of not being dead. 
 
 A translation of Schiller was not the only literary 
 scheme which Weimar suggested to the traveller's young 
 mind. He ipeditated, when spring should come, a
 
 84 LIFE OF 
 
 pedestrian tramp over the Hartz Mountains, artd again 
 over Saxon Switzerland, and at some later date a return 
 to the less-known tracts of Germany, with sketch-book 
 and note-book, and " I fear still a dictionary," in order 
 to book-make a little on his own account. 
 
 "The People of Germany are not known in England," he writes, 
 " and the more I learn of them, the more interesting they appear to 
 me — customs, and costumes, and National songs, stories, &c., with 
 which the country abounds, and which I should be glad to know, 
 and the 'British Public' also, I think." 
 
 Oh, schemes of youth ! oh, dreams of the hour ! 
 Dmis ses chateaux d^Espagne qu^on est Men a vingt ans ! 
 But this time, and in this case, the dreams had in them 
 more stuff than dreams are made of, and more of sub- 
 stance than the mere promise of May, For the rest of 
 his time at Weimar Thackeray studied, and sketched in 
 pen-and-ink for children, sketches still to be found in 
 albums in the town, and some of which it was his pride to 
 know that Goethe had approved. He " took a little 
 recreation in the fields of Civil Law," and was not amused 
 by Justinian. He did not look forward to the Law as a 
 pleasure, but as a " noble and tangible object, an honour- 
 able profession, and / trust in God " (so as afterwards, 
 and always, reverently,) "a certain fame." And quaint 
 and delightful was his confession that his way of winning 
 the fame, so far, was to lie on the sofa and read novels ; 
 and— think about it. Meanwhile he enjoyed that friendly 
 German city-life to the full : was received with all hospi- 
 tality at the Court as elsewhere; knew all the little 
 "Gesellchaft," and found that the chief obstacle to learning
 
 THACKERAY. 85 
 
 German was that all the young ladies spoke English so 
 well. " I think," he wrote in after years, " I have never 
 seen a society more simple, charitable, courteous, gentle- 
 manlike, than that of the dear little Saxon city where the 
 good Schiller and the great Goethe lived and lie buried." 
 Free he escaped out of the place, however, perhaps by 
 grace of the shadowy Fraulein. For he found certain old 
 ladies well disposed to him, and hinting that they did 
 not want much for Melanie and Eugenie, but only a 
 competence. He was not disposed to share his just then, 
 and left Weimar full — how full it must have been — of as 
 mighty a genius loci as ever mastered men. It can 
 scarcely be a mere imagination of my own to hold that 
 the world owes a debt to Goethe and Schiller over and 
 beyond those it acknowledges — Thackeray.
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 (By Herman Merivale.) 
 
 AT twenty years old Thackeray was in chambers in 
 Plare Court, Temple. The Inns of Court, the 
 dinners, and the Templar's life, found, like his other 
 experiences, full expression through his pen. Poor little 
 trumpery Fanny Bolton seems to wander with us in our 
 walks abroad in the Temple Gardens, now with the 
 exquisite Pen, and now with dirty Sam Huxter. It 
 makes small difference to her. 
 
 " ' You remember your poem of " Ariadne in Naxos ? " ' Warring- 
 ton said, — 'devilish bad poetry it was, to be sure.' 
 
 *' ' Aprh?^ asked Pen, in a great state of excitement. 
 
 «« < "When Tlieseus left Ariadne, do you remember what happened 
 to her, young fellow ? ' 
 
 •' ' It's a lie, it's a lie ! You don't mean that I ' cried out Pen, 
 starting up, his face turning red. 
 
 " • Sit down, stoopid,' Warrington said, and with two fingers 
 pushed Pen back into his seat again. • It's better for you as it is, 
 young one.'" 
 
 Still does Hare Court suggest mine honest Laura Bell 
 in all the witchery of cap and gown — first promise of the 
 sweet girl-graduates who blush no longer, as she did, at 
 their academic dress ; and years later, when I was myself
 
 LIFE OF THACKERAY. 87 
 
 living on a third floor in Garden Court — number three it 
 was — I remember how the great man honoured me by 
 bringing one of his gracious favourites, Lady Colvile, to 
 tea in the little rooms, and his pleasure at finding in them 
 the genuine originals of Chevalier Strong's chambers in 
 Shepherd's Inn, with the water-pipe and gutter which 
 served him as a retreat from his creditors, watchful 
 behind the sported oak, into Costigan and Bows' nest 
 next door. Modern improvements have rebuilt Garden 
 Court ; the noisy little fountain which babbled at its 
 head has been very properly silenced, and the classic 
 place of the ChevaHer knows him no more. But there 
 they were in my youth, to witness if I lie. Thackeray 
 had his originals in brick and mortar, as in flesh and 
 blood. 
 
 It is to be feared that Thackeray did not take kindly 
 to the Law. In a letter to his mother he sketched him- 
 self in a blue coat on a high stool, while a queer client, in 
 the shape of an old gentleman with an umbrella, stands 
 on one side, and a very small clerk in a green coat on 
 the other, trying to get at his master with five folios by a 
 step-ladder. On the same letter he sketched himself in 
 Indian ink, asleep on a pallet-bed, with a dream-pro- 
 cession of W. M. T. in wig and gown — then horsemen, 
 coaches, and carriage, with the Lord Chancellor inside — 
 and at the foot of the bed — Death. Soon he writes : — 
 
 " I go pretty regularly to my pleader's, and sit with him till past 
 five, and sometimes six ; then I come home and read and dine till 
 about nine or past, when I am glad enough to go out for an hour 
 and look at the world. As for the theatre, I scarcely go there more 
 than once a week, which is moderate indeed for me. In a few days 
 come the Pantomimes : huzza !
 
 8^ LIFE OF 
 
 " I have been to Cambridge, where I stayed four days feasting on 
 my old friends, so hearty and liospilable. ... I could have stayed 
 there a month, and fed on each. . . . 
 
 " If ever tliere was I was going to say something against the 
 
 law, but won't. ... I have read the last of Walter Scott's novels, 
 ' Castle Dangerous,' and thought it mighty poor. One gets tired of 
 descriptions of helmets and surcoats. ... On Christmas day I dine 
 with my uncle Frank. ... He is very kind, but asks me to dinner 
 too often— three times a week." [Uncles ! remember young Nature, 
 and beware !] 
 
 " This lawyer's preparatory education is certainly one of the most 
 cold-blooded, prejudiced pieces of invention that ever a man was 
 slave to. ... A fellow should properly do and think of nothing 
 else than L A W. Never mind. I begin to find out that people 
 are much wiser than I am (which is a rare piece of modesty in me), 
 and that old heads do better than young ones, that is in their 
 generation, for I am sure that a young man's ideas, however absurd 
 and rhapsodical they are, though they mayn't smack so much of 
 experience as those of these old calculating codgers, contain a great 
 deal more nature and virtue. ... As far as reading history merely 
 to know facts, I apprehend that such a knowledge would enable a 
 man to show of! in society, but would do little else for him. . . . 
 May 22, 1832. . . . The sun won't shine into Taprell's chambers, 
 and the high stools don't blossom and bring forth buds. ... I do 
 so long for fresh air, and fresh butter I would say only it isn't 
 romantic. . . . Yesterday I took a long walk to Kensington 
 Gardens, and had a pleasant stroll on the green banks of the Ser- 
 pentine. I wonder people don't frequent them more : they are far 
 superior to any of the walks in Paris that are so much admired and 
 talked of." 
 
 It is amusing to find in these little scraps of diary the 
 raw material so well worked up in " Pendennis," to 
 proves that, if Law be a jealous mistress, Literature is a 
 more seductive wife. Who maun to Cupar will to 
 Cupar ; and who must write will write. There was no 
 affinity between Thackeray and the woolsack whatsoever.
 
 THACKERAY. 89 
 
 " On the other side of the third landing, where Pen and Warring- 
 ton live, till long after midnight sits Mr. Paley, who took the 
 highest honours, and who is a fellow of his college, who will sit and 
 read and note cases until two o'clock in the morning ; who will rise 
 at seven, and be at the pleader's chambers as soon as they are open, 
 where he will work until an hour before dinner-time ; who will come 
 home from Hall and read and note cases again until dawn next day, 
 when perhaps Mr. Arthur Pendennis and his friend Mr. Warring- 
 ton are returning from some of their wild expeditions. How 
 differently employed ]\Ir. Paley has been. He has not been throwing 
 himself away : he has only been bringing a great intellect laboriously 
 down to the comprehension of a mean subject, and in his fierce 
 grasp of that, resolutely excluding from his mind all higher thoughts, 
 all better things, all the wisdom of philosophers and historians, all 
 the thoughts of poets ; all wit, fancy, reflection, art, love, truth 
 altogether — so that he may master that enormous legend of the law, 
 which he proposes to gain his livelihood by expounding. Warring- 
 ton and Paley had been competitors for university honours in former 
 days, and had run each other hard ; and everybody said now that 
 the former was wasting his time and energies, whilst all people 
 praised Paley for his industry. There may be doubts, however, as 
 to which was using his time best. The one could afford time to 
 think, and the other never could ; the one could have sympathies 
 and do kindnesses, and the other must needs be always selfish. He 
 could not cultivate a friendship or do a charity, or admire a work of 
 genius, or kindle at the sight of beauty or the sound of a sweet song — 
 he had no time, and no eyes for anything but his law-books. All 
 was dark outside his reading-lamp. Love and Nature and Art 
 (which is the expression of our praise and sense of the beautiful 
 world of God) were shut out from him. And as he turned off his 
 lonely lamp at night, he never thought but that he had spent the 
 day profitably, and went to sleep alike thankless and remorseless. 
 But he shuddered when he met his old companion Warrington on 
 the stairs, and shunned him as one that was doomed to perdition," 
 
 If I give this extract at length rather than choicer 
 passages, it is because, as far as space and means will 
 allow, it is my object rather to trace the story and
 
 90 LIFE OF 
 
 character of Thackeray the man than to dwell at length 
 upon his creations and his plots. The last would be 
 difficult, because he never made any. He let his stories 
 weave themselves : and this has curiously saved him 
 from the novelist's fate of the " dramaturge malgri lui^ 
 Scott and Dickens have made the fortunes of many 
 managers ; but he would be a bold man who tried to 
 make a play out of " Pendennis," or " The Newcomes." 
 Yet, in the perversity of human ambitions, I believe there 
 is nothing Thackeray would have liked better than to 
 see himself " made a play of." 
 
 This was no law-lover then ; and with the truest 
 sympathy will fellow-sufferers read his views of those 
 dreadful summer afternoons in the pupil's room of the 
 Conveyancer or Special Pleader, devoted to doing your 
 master's work for him and paying him for the privilege, 
 and with no visible prospect of return whatever. Often, 
 I feel sure, must Thackeray's sympathy with some 
 suffering young legal Badger have induced him to 
 sacrifice the pleasures of the parchment to a friend's 
 wish for a day up the river. But there is a reverse to 
 the medal. If he had gone further, I know no man 
 who would have relished more than Thackeray the 
 delights of circuit life. Those are of course rapidly 
 vanishing, with all the other charms of leisure, before 
 the crushing march of Fuss. But they were delightful 
 in my own day — must have been more so in his. To 
 travel from town to town with some especial chum or 
 chums — to be welcomed at the pleasantest houses and 
 in the pleasantest scenes — to rejoice in the brightest 
 talk and keenest rub of wits — the summer cricket-match,
 
 TH ACKER A Y, 91 
 
 the winter rubber, and the cheery mess — to receive the 
 domicihary visit of a Httle brief, paid angel-wise, with out- 
 ward rejoicing and secret discontent — all this at the age 
 when youth is at its friendliest and best, is an experience 
 not to be regretted. As of a classic education, so say 
 I of the early curricle of " the called " : that, even for 
 the idlest of the prentices, in securing for scholarship and 
 letters a knowledge of the wider world, there is, to the 
 man with his wits about him, no training like it. The 
 pleasantest company of talkers are still the Bar. 
 
 If Thackeray had gone a little further than Paley's 
 chambers, what a circuit-novel he would have written. 
 But here a new departure tempted him. It is a mistake 
 to suppose that his candidature for Oxford proved a 
 new or superficial interest in politics. 1832 was the 
 famous Reform year; and it would have been strange 
 if that great intelligence had been indifferent to the stir 
 around him. Just one month after the letter from 
 Taprell's chambers, that unseductive man had lost his 
 truant pupil for a time, just at full law-tide, when — as 
 usual with him — he ought to have been most industrious. 
 
 "June 25, 1832. POLWELLAN, WEST LODE, CORNWALL. 
 " Are you surprised, dear Mother, at the direction ? Certainly 
 not more prepared for it than I was myself, but you must know 
 that on Tuesday in last week I went to breakfast with Charles 
 Buller, and he received a letter from his constituents at Liskeard 
 requesting him immediately to come down ; he was too ill, but 
 instead deputed Arthur Buller and myself — so off we set that same 
 night by the mail, arrived at Plymouth the next day, and at Liskeard 
 the day after, where we wrote addresses, canvassed farmers, and 
 dined with attorneys. Then we came on to Mr. Buller's, and here 
 I have been very happy since last Friday. On Wednesday last I
 
 92 LIFE OF 
 
 was riding for twelve hours' canvassing — rather a feat for me, and 
 considering I have not been on horseback for eight months, my 
 stiffness yesterday was by no means surprising ; but it is seven o'clock 
 of a fine summer's morning, so I have no fatigue to complain of. 
 / have been lying awake this morning meditating on the ivise and 
 proper manner I shall employ my fortune in when I come of age, 
 ■which, if I live so long, will take place in three weeks. First, I 
 do not intend to quit my little chambers in the Temple, then I ivill 
 take a regular monthly incovie which I zvill never exceed. . . . God 
 bless you, dear Mother; write directly and give your orders. . . . 
 Charles Buller comes down at the end of next week — if you want 
 me sooner I will come, if not I should like to wait for the Reform 
 rejoicings which are to take place on his arrival, particularly as I 
 have had a great share in the canvassing." 
 
 This picture seems to me very vivid. The young 
 guerilla hero, at the personal age, and in the historic 
 crisis, of very Sturm und Drang — the Annual Registers 
 and chronicles of the time give us something of an 
 insight of what the commotion was — " turned his charger 
 as he spake," and shakes the dust off his feet upon the 
 stools at Taprell's, which had dust enough already, and 
 rides away for a twelve hours' stretch over the moors of 
 Cornwall, to plunge headlong into the feverish delights 
 of platform and canvassing — perhaps the keenest form 
 of interest and excitement that can occupy the human 
 brain. How it held Thackeray's, let " The Newcomes " 
 tell. It is impossible once to indulge in it, and, for 
 whatever reason, to give it up, without feeling a blank 
 in the activities of life which is very difficult to fill. 
 One can imagine how Thackeray threw himself into the 
 battle, by the side of such a friend as Charles Buller. 
 But still, in the middle of it, comes the same old 
 saving clause : to please his mother and appease him-
 
 THACKERA V. 93 
 
 self, what a very good boy he is going to be when 
 he joins the regulars— some day. Wise and proper he 
 will be before all things; and that regular monthly 
 income he will never — no never — exceed. It was a 
 modest bachelor's income after all. But alas for Taprell's ! 
 alas for the monthly income I and alas for the woolsack 
 and for the generous young dreamer 1 As Dickens 
 writes in his " Hard Times " — " These things were 
 never to be." On August 8th the wanderer is writing 
 from Paris — to tell how the young Napoleon is gone : — 
 
 " I read the other day in the papers— ZTzVr .S". M. a envoyi compli- 
 menter PAmbassadeur de V Aiitriche stir la viort du Due de 
 Reichstadt. It is as fine a text for a sermon as any in the Bible— 
 this poor young man dying, as many say, of poison, and L. P. 
 presenting his compliments on the occasion. Oh, Genius, Glory, 
 Ambition, what ought you to learn from this? and what might I not 
 teach, only I am hungry and going— to breakfast ! " 
 
 This last passage seems to me the first in his journals 
 and letters to suggest the natural Thackeray style. And 
 about this time came the evil days. Tempted with 
 other youngsters into the toils of sharpers, he lost much 
 of his money at play — and more of it in two newspapers 
 in which he invested with his step-father, one called 
 The Constitutional, and the other The Natiotial Standard 
 — a Journal of Literature, Science, Music, Theatricals, 
 and the Fine Arts. Quid feret hoc niagfio ? Well, not 
 much. This mighty weekly, born on the 5th of 
 January, 1833, obiit the ist of February, 1834. 
 Thackeray's editorship began about the nineteenth 
 number, and he seems to have done a good deal of 
 variety -work for the paper, of which I quote part of a
 
 94 UFE OF 
 
 mock sonnet, written to illustrate a drawing of Braham, 
 the tenor, in a sailor's dress, standing by the sea-shore, 
 with the traditional clothes'-bag and three-hatted Hebrew 
 in the background, and a Jew's-harp in the sky with a 
 chaplet of boys round it. The sonnet is ascribed to 
 '• W. Wordsworth." 
 
 " Say not that Judah's harp hath lost its tone, 
 Or that no bard hath found it where it hung 
 Broken and lonely, voiceless and unstrung, 
 Beside the sluggish stream of Babylon : 
 Slowman repeats the strain his fathers sung, 
 And Judah's burning lyre is Braham's own." 
 
 Again, in a review of a poem of Montgomery's ("The 
 Angel of Life,") Thackeray emulates Macaulay in a 
 way of his own, by quoting a dozen lines in inverted 
 order, as the result of a supposed mistake of the 
 printer's, who didn't correct it because they read as 
 well one way as the other. How like Mr. Yellowplush's 
 later views of some rather mixed similes in the "Sea 
 Captain!" Then comes a humorous tale called the 
 " Devil's Wager," and a portrait of Louis Philippe as a 
 kind of Robert Macaire, with some lines of no note 
 except that they anticipate the novelist's great war with 
 Snobbery by first applying the epithet to the " man with 
 the umbrella " — which historic name for the Citizen 
 King, by the by, was invented by Thackeray. In "Lovel 
 the Widower" Mr. Batchelor has something of this 
 venture to tell ; and Mr. Adolphus Simcoe, in Punch, 
 suffering from a combined love of drink and letters, 
 finishes himself by starting a journal called The Lady's
 
 THACKERA Y. 95 
 
 Lute. It runs for six months, when "... its chords were 
 rudely snapped asunder, and he who had swept them 
 with such joy went forth a wretched and heart-broken 
 man." 
 
 Indian Banks being responsible for further losses 
 besides this ill-starred hterary start, Thackeray turned to 
 his first love, Art, and went to prepare a home in Paris 
 for his parents and himself. They left Devonshire 
 about this time. On the 23rd of December, 1833, he 
 writes : — 
 
 " I have been very comfortably installed in the new house for ten 
 days, and like much my little study and my airy bedroom. I am 
 sure we shall be as happy here as possible ; and I believe that 
 I ought to thank Heaven for making me poor, as it has made me 
 much happier than I should have been with the money. I spend all 
 day now, dear Mother, at the Atelier, and am very well satisfied 
 with the progress that I make. I think that in a year, were I to 
 work hard, I might paint something worth looking at, but it re- 
 quires at least that time to gain any readiness with the brush. , . . 
 The theatres are not very brilliant. I go to the Italian Opera, 
 where the company is very good, and where there is » beautiful 
 creature called Grisi." 
 
 Thackeray had always his say upon the theatrical 
 favourites of the day ; and the published letters tell us 
 how seventeen years later he thought Madeleine Brohan 
 beautiful but affected, and how he was taken to Ad^le 
 Page's loge. 
 
 *' Not a box, but O ! gracious goodness, a dressing-room. The 
 peignoir of black satin which partially enveloped her perfect form, 
 only served to heighten, &c., which it could but partially do, &c. 
 Her lips are really as red as, &c. Jtjer voice is delicious, her eyes,
 
 96 LIFE OF 
 
 O 1 they flashed, &c., upon me . . . and 01 mon Dieii, she has 
 asked me to go and see her . . . la ravissante, la semilla7i(e, la 
 fritillante Adele^ 
 
 The sequel of the Uttle adventure is worth noting. 
 Thackeray ventured and went ; was received in a yellow 
 satin drawing-room where he was assured that the'lady's 
 only fault was that her heart was too good, paid her 
 unblushing compliments, and left her to think that 
 "the enormous old Englishman is rapturously in love 
 with her. But she will never see him again, that faithless 
 giant. I am past the age when Fotheringays inflame." 
 That passage confirms my theory that there was once 
 a real Fotheringay somewhere about in Devon; and if 
 such a method of constructing the story of a life wants 
 precedent, it is to be found in Thackeray's own treat- 
 ment of Dicky Steele — that boy who, "besides being 
 very kind, lazy, and good-natured, invariably went into 
 debt with the tart-woman . . . exhibited an early fond- 
 ness and capacity for drinking mum and sack, and 
 borrowed from all his comrades who had money to 
 lend." Whereon Thackeray remarks that he has no 
 authority whatever for such a libel, except that the boy 
 being father to the man, that is simply what Dicky 
 Steele must have been. 
 
 In 1836 Thackeray first attempted authorship in 
 London and Paris at once, by issuing a small folio with 
 six tinted lithographs, called " Flore et Zephyr : Ballet 
 mythologique dedie a— par Theophile Wagstaffe." A- 
 good description of it is given in The North British Eeview, 
 as illustrated on the cover, between i and/^/-, by Flore 
 herself, rosy and bedizened, with jaded smirk and eyelids
 
 THACKERAY. 97 
 
 down, oppressed with modesty and glory — with a long 
 nose, thin sinewy hands, and a petticoat like an in- 
 verted muslin tulip, at top of a very professional pair 
 of legs in the only attitude impossible to the genuine 
 article. The first plate gives Flore and Zephyr tripping 
 to the footlights as La Danse making an offering on the 
 altar of Harmony (an old fiddle), the dancers paying, 
 characteristically, no attention to the altar behind them, 
 and a great deal to our friends in front. And the two 
 last are the Retraite de Flore, where the lady is to be 
 found with her mother and two admirers, Zephyr being 
 conspicuous by his absence. 
 
 "This," says the writer of the Review^ "is in Thackeray's 
 strong, unflinching line. One lover is a young dandy without fore- 
 head or chin, sitting idiotically astride his chair. To him the old 
 lady, who has her slight rouge, too, and is in a homely shawl and 
 muff, having walked, is making faded love. In the centre is the 
 fair darling herself, still on tiptoe, and wrapped up, but not too 
 much, for \iQ\- fiacre. With his back to the comfortable tire, and 
 staring wickedly at her, is the other lover, a big, burly, elderly 
 man, probably well-to-do on the Bourse, and with a wife and family 
 at home in their beds. The last exhibits Les delassements de Zephyr. 
 That hard-working and homely personage is resting his arm on the 
 chimney-piece, taking a huge pinch of snuff from the box of a 
 friend, with a refreshing expression of satisfaction, the only bit of 
 nature as yet.. A dear little innocent pot-boy, such as only 
 Thackeray knew how to draw, is gazing and waiting upon the two, 
 holding up a tray from the nearest tavern, on which is a great 
 pewter-pot of foaming porter for Zephyr, and a rummer of steaming 
 brandy-and-watcr for his friend, who has come in from the cold air. 
 These drawings are lithographed by Edward Morton, son of * Speed 
 the Plough,' and are done with that delicate strength and truth for 
 which this excellent but little known artist is always to be praised. In 
 each corner is the monogram, W. T. , which appears so often after- 
 
 7
 
 98 LIFE OF TH ACKER A V. 
 
 wards with the M. added, and is itself superseded by the well- 
 known pair of spectacles. Thackeray must have been barely five-and- 
 twenty when this was published by Mitchell in Bond Street. It 
 can hardly be said to have sold." 
 
 The article proceeds to comment on the ridicule 
 Tliackeray always loved to cast on anything ugly and 
 absurd in his love of truth and pureness.
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 (By Frank T. Marzials.) 
 
 IT is a thousand pities, though the fancy may seem 
 quaint, that Thackeray could not, speaking as it were 
 ab extra, have included in the series of his Lectures on 
 the Humourists, a lecture upon himself. Had this been 
 possible, had he been able, for such a purpose, to divest 
 himself of his own personality, and treat of his own life 
 and works in ignorance that they were his own, and with 
 the same detachment of spirit, though all loving and 
 kindly, as he treated, for instance, of the life and works 
 of Goldsmith— had such a lecture, in short, come within 
 the sphere of practical literature, what an admirable 
 lecture it would have been ! And no passages in it 
 would have been more brilliant, more full of a genial and 
 tolerant philosophy, than those which described the 
 struggles and vicissitudes, the sorrows and pleasures, all 
 the ups and downs of his career, between the time when, 
 being still a very young man, he lost his money, and the 
 time, some dozen years later, when he stepped, as the 
 author of " Vanity Fair," into the first rank of the 
 world's novelists.
 
 100 LIFE OF 
 
 But though such a lecture is not and could not be, 
 
 and though Thackeray, with all his fondness for half- 
 confidences and glimpses of self-revelation, wrote nothing 
 that can be regarded as direct autobiography, yet still it 
 is not impossible to reproduce from his works a fairly 
 accurate picture of his life and its surroundings during 
 the years in question. Dickens, Thackeray's great 
 rival, was not a bookish man, and in his novels 
 ignores the world of letters. Amid the throng of his 
 characters one looks in vain for a specimen of the writer 
 class, or only finds, at most, some slight caricature, 
 like the rival editors in " Pickwick," or the staff of 
 the Rowdy Journal^ in " Martin Chuzzlewit," or Mr. Slum, 
 the poet, in *' The Old Curiosity Shop." True, in 
 " David Copperfield," the best beloved of his books, and 
 also the most autobiographical, the hero is successively 
 reporter, journalist, successful novelist, all that Dickens 
 himself had been. But for anything that we hear of him 
 specially as a literary man, David Copperfield might just 
 as well have belonged to any other profession. Except 
 when he is studying short-hand, we never see him at 
 work. We have no means of following his career as an 
 author. We are not introduced to his editors, his 
 publishers, his companions of the pen. All that is 
 literary about him is kept quite in the far background. 
 His story, after he has once mastered the reporter's craft, 
 furnishes scarcely a hint that would be of use in writing 
 the story of Dickens's purely literary career. And this is 
 the only one of his novels in which Dickens introduces 
 any writer who might not be a character in a farce. But 
 with Thackeray it is quite different. He introduces us
 
 THACKERAY. 101 
 
 to the world of letters constantly. Bookish himself, 
 largely read, a keen critic, a student of literature as well 
 as of life, and of literature in its relation to life, he is 
 always pleased when he can take us with him into the 
 society of bookmen and pressmen. Henry Esmond 
 moves among the wits of the Augustan time of Anne, — 
 does not disdain to compose a play, or imitate Steele's 
 papers in The Spectator. George Warrington, the twin- 
 hero of " the Virginians," is a playwright too, a writer of 
 tragedies if you please, and tries, in his day of poverty, 
 to make what living he can by his pen. And coming to 
 Thackeray's tales of contemporary life, which indeed are 
 alone important for my present purpose, are not the 
 heroes of " Pendennis " and " Philip " both writers ? Do 
 we not follow their literary careers in a particularly close 
 manner ? Are we not made the confidants of their 
 struggles ? Are we not introduced familiarly to the world 
 in which they move, the world of journalists, authors, 
 editors, publishers ? And in these books Thackeray 
 recorded his own experiences. Of that there can be no 
 manner of doubt. Pendennis is not only to a great 
 extent, as Thackeray more than half acknowledges in a 
 letter to Mrs. Brookfield, a piece of self portraiture, but 
 there is also very striking similarity in the circumstances 
 and experiences of Pendennis, and of Thackeray himself. 
 Thackeray loses money, partly by his own fault : so does 
 Pendennis. Thackeray has chambers in the Temple, 
 and reads for the bar : Pendennis does the same. 
 Thackeray very soon abandons the study of the law, and 
 devotes himself to periodical literature — writes essays, 
 reviews, art criticism, stories, burlesques, verses : Pen-
 
 102 LIFE OF 
 
 dennis follows in his footsteps with the greatest exacti- 
 tude. And Thackeray without doubt intended us to 
 regard Pendennis as occupying the same kind of hterary 
 position that he himself had occupied in his younger 
 days. For Pendennis is nothing if not light, brilliant, 
 fanciful, and versatile. He never poses as the social or 
 political philosopher. He leaves such weightier matters 
 to his friend George Warrington. 
 
 " 'I can't fly upon such a wing as yours,* he says to the latter. 
 ' But you can on your own, my boy, which is lighter and soars 
 higher, perhaps,' answers his friend. ' Those Httle scraps and verses 
 which I have seen of yours show me, what is rare in these days, a 
 natural gift, sir. . . . You have got the sacred flame — a little of the 
 real poetical fire, sir, I think ; and all our oil-lamps are nothing com- 
 pared to that, though ever so well trimmed. You are a poet. Pen, 
 my boy.'" 
 
 Then when Pen is, not unnaturally, over elated at this 
 praise, Warrington bursts out upon him : — 
 
 "'Why, you young goose, . . . you don't suppose that you are a 
 serious poet, do you, and are going to cut out Milton and ^schylus ? 
 Are you setting up to be a Pindar, you absurd little tom-tit, and fancy 
 you have the strength and pinion which theTheban Eagles bear, sailing 
 with supreme dominion through the azure fields of air ? No, my boy, 
 I think you can write a magazine article, and turn out a pretty copy 
 of verses ; that's what I think of you.' ' By Jove ! ' answers Pen ; 
 ' I'll show you that I am a better man than you think for I ' " 
 
 And so he did : and so Thackeray did. As a novelist, 
 as a prose-writer he soared immea3urably above the aver- 
 age magazine article. But Warrington's criticism can 
 scarcely be bettered as a judgment upon his verse. 
 
 With Philip Thackeray has far fewer points of re- 
 semblance than with Pendennis. Philip, to begin with,
 
 THACKERAY. 103 
 
 is a bear, and Thackeray, though he may have had his 
 moods, was a gentleman of courteous manner and 
 address. Again PhiHp, as a writer, seems to have been 
 rather below than above mediocrity. He was a very 
 ordinary foreign correspondent and hack journalist, and 
 evidently far happier with the scissors and paste than 
 with the pen. Thus, neither as a man nor as an author 
 does he bear any likeness to Thackeray. But yet in the 
 story of his life Thackeray had interwoven many of his 
 own experiences. For Philip, having at first been rich in 
 this world's goods, is suddenly compelled to turn to 
 journalism for a living. He goes to Paris as the 
 correspondent of a London newspaper. He is engaged 
 while there to an officer's daughter. He marries on an 
 income barely sufficient, and precarious. He takes up 
 his dwelling in dear old professional Bloomsbury, and 
 children are born to him, and sorrows and anxieties 
 accumulate. All this, mutatis mutandis^ is but a chapter 
 in Thackeray's own life, briefly summarized. 
 
 Some little more detail may, however, seem desirable, 
 even to the least exacting of readers. It has been told, in 
 a previous chapter, how Thackeray and his stepfather, 
 Major Carmichael Smyth, had invested money in a 
 newspaper. The National Sta?idard afid Jotirnal of 
 Literature, Science, Music, Theatricals, and the Fine Arts. 
 This journal had but a brief existence. Major Car- 
 michael Smyth, as there is good reason to believe, stood 
 for the portrait of Colonel Newcome, and it may be 
 that he was, like that good officer, not only a preux 
 chevalier without fear and without reproach, but also 
 an ineffective financier. Anyhow money was dropped
 
 104 LIFE OF 
 
 over The Naiional Standard.^ Mr. Batclielor, in " Lovel 
 the Widower," wlio had embarked, unsuccessfully, on a 
 similar venture, observes : — 
 
 " I dare say I gave myself airs as editor of that confounded Museum, 
 and proposed to educate the public taste, to diffuse morality and 
 sound literature throughout the nation, and to pocket a liberal 
 salary in return for my services. I dare say I printed my own 
 sonnets, my own tragedy, my own verses. ... I dare say I wrote 
 satirical articles, in which I piqued myself on the fineness of my 
 wit, and criticisms, got up for the nonce out of encyclopaedias and 
 biographical dictionaries ; so that I would be actually astounded at 
 my own knowledge. I dare say I made a gaby of myself to the 
 world : pray, my good friend, hast thou never done likewise ? If 
 thou hast never been a fool, be sure thou wilt never be a wise 
 
 Is this passage also autobiographical ? To some slight 
 extent, perhaps, and making all due allowance for the 
 writer's readiness to satirize himself as well as other 
 people. But that the editor of The Natmial Standard 
 appeared to the world in the light of a "gaby "may 
 well be doubted. He put some excellent work into 
 the paper ; and within a few months of its demise we 
 find him, as it were enthroned, among the contributors 
 to Fraser's Magazine. 
 
 Yes, there he figures as one of " the Fraserians " in 
 Maclise's picture published with the number of the 
 magazine for January, 1835. " ^"^^ r^ot a bad assembly 
 
 ' According to other accounts the loss would seem rather to have 
 occurred in connection with The Co)istitutional, and in 1836-37. 
 There was, no doubt, loss over both papers ; and Major Carmichael 
 Smyth had certainly a large pecuniary interest in The Constitutional^ 
 to which Thackeray acted as Paris correspondent.
 
 TH ACKER A V. 105 
 
 either," to quote Robert Browning, as we watch them 
 sitting round the convivial board and Hstening to an 
 after-dinner speech — " God knows what about," says the 
 accompanying letterpress — from the lips of the editor, 
 Dr. Maginn. Two men of genius at least, Coleridge 
 and Carlyle, are among the company ; and it includes also 
 several men who, without being exactly men of genius, 
 were men of mark, as Southey and Barry Cornwall, and 
 Edward Irving, and Lockhart, and the Ettrick Shepherd, 
 to say nothing of Theodore Hook and Count D'Orsay. 
 There, too, among these worthies, sits Thackeray — a young 
 Thackeray, with hair dark and abundant, and an eye- 
 glass instead of spectacles, and a neck swathed in one 
 of those enormous stocks which must, as one can but 
 think, have made the Thirties a period of great personal 
 discomfort. 
 
 On what precise grounds was he made to figure 
 among "the Fraserians," in January, 1835? What 
 had he written for Regina before that date? Biblio- 
 graphy answers the inquiry with a very uncertain voice. 
 In August and September, 1832, the magazine had 
 published, under the title of " Elizabeth Brownrigge," 
 a somewhat ghastly burlesque of Bulwer's "Eugene 
 Aram " ; and Dr. John Brown, and Mr. Swinburne, 
 with Mr. Shepherd following suit, seem to think it at 
 least probable that Thackeray had tried upon this tale 
 the 'prentice hand that was afterwards, under the in- 
 fluence of a very similar inspiration, to fashion forth the 
 story of the murderess Catherine. This, however, is no 
 more than hypothesis, and beyond its glimmer we 
 are in almost total darkness. Even so patient an
 
 106 LIFE OF 
 
 investigator as Mr. Shepherd has not ventured to 
 ascribe to Thackeray any other papers in the columns 
 of Fraser anterior to 1835. And yet it is clear that some 
 at least of his work must lie hidden among the anony- 
 mous and pseudonymous contributions. Else how 
 should he be in the picture ? And I think we may also 
 conclude from his presence there — for even kindly 
 editors are not too fond of advertising their connection 
 with the absolutely obscure — that he had already made 
 some little mark in the world of journalism and letters. 
 
 Not, however, as yet a very distinguished mark. 
 That was not to come till thirteen years later. Mean- 
 while, in the earlier days of which I am speaking, 
 he must probably have been recognized by his fellow- 
 craftsmen, rather than by the general public, as a man 
 ready, versatile, and full of ability of various kinds. 
 He himself was clearly feeling his way, more or less 
 assiduously. It even took him some time to discover 
 whether he should trust for a living to his pen or to his 
 pencil. Serious art, the art of the painter, as opposed 
 to the art of the book illustrator and caricaturist, he 
 had probably abandoned long ere this. In the diary of 
 Macready, under date of the 27th of April, 1836, there 
 is this entry : " At Garrick Club, where I dined and 
 saw the papers. Met Thackeray, who has spent all his 
 fortune, and is now about to settle in Paris, I believe as 
 an artist." And at this date, though he was doubtless 
 writing apace, he was also looking out for work as an 
 illustrator. On the 20th of April, just a week before 
 the entry in Macready's diary, Seymour, who was to 
 have designed the illustrations for "Pickwick," died by
 
 THACKERAY. 107 
 
 his own hand, and it must have been within the next 
 few days that Thackeray offered to take his place. " I 
 can remember," 'Said Thackeray in a speech at the 
 Academy dinner in 1858, "when Mr. Dickens was a very 
 young man, and had commenced delighting the world with 
 some charming humorous works in covers which were 
 coloured light green and came out once a month, that 
 this young man wanted an artist to illustrate his writings; 
 and I remember walking up to his chambers in 
 Furnival's Inn, with two or three drawings in my hand, 
 which, strange to say, he did not find suitable." Again, 
 "Flore et Zephyr," published in this same year 1836, 
 is a caricaturist's, not a writer's, book, and the illus- 
 trations to Douglas Jerrold's " Men of Character," pub- 
 lished in 1838, are by Thackeray. 
 
 Some little doubt appears to have existed among 
 Thackeray's biographers as to the precise date of his 
 marriage. Trollope assigns the event to 1837, ^"^^ the 
 anonymous author of " Thackerayana " says it took place 
 shortly after the failure of The Constitutional, which would 
 still be in 1837, as the last number of the paper appeared 
 on the ist of July in that year. The real date, however, 
 was the 20th of August, 1836, as is shown by an extract, 
 to the following effect, from the " Register Book of 
 Marriages in the House of the British Ambassador in 
 Paris " :— 
 
 " William Makepeace Thackeray of the Parish of St. John 
 Paddington in the County of Middlesex Bachelor and Isabella 
 Getkin Eneagh ' Shawe of the Parish of Donerail in the County 
 
 ' Though my extract is duly sealed and certified, there seems 
 little doubt that these names should really be read as " Gethin "
 
 108 LIFE OF 
 
 of Cork Spinster and a Minor were mnrried in this House with 
 consent of her Mother Isabella G. Shawe this twentieth day of 
 August in the year one thousand eight hundred and thirty-six. By 
 me, M. H. Luscombe, Bishop and Chaplain. This marriage was 
 solemnised between us W. M. Thackeray, I. G. E. Shawe. In the 
 presence of V. Spencer, I. G. Shawe, Senior, J. W. Lemaire." 
 
 The marriage seems scarcely to have been a pru- 
 dent one, according to the views prevailing in this last 
 decade of the nineteenth century. But fifty years ago 
 the struggle for life was not so keen, nor were the means 
 of existence so difficult to obtain, and what we regard 
 as wise foresight would have been condemned, in our 
 fathers' days, as want of courage and worldliness. This 
 is how Thackeray wrote, many years afterwards, to Mr. 
 Synge •? — 
 
 »' I married at your age with ^400 paid by a newspaper which 
 failed six months afterwards, and always love to hear of a young 
 fellow testing his fortune bravely in that way. If I can see my way 
 to help you, I will. Though my marriage was a wreck, as you 
 know, I would do it over again, for behold Love is the crown and 
 completion of all earthly good. A man who is afraid of his fortune 
 never deserved one. I wish you the very best. The very best and 
 pleasantest house I ever knew in my life had but ;^300 to keep it." 
 
 Nor would it be at all difficult to cull analogous passages 
 from Thackeray's published writings, all tending to show 
 
 and " Creagh." This was pointed out by my friend, Mr. Denny 
 Urlin, in a letter to 77^1? Athenmiin, commenting on a letter of 
 mine stating the right date of the marriage. Mrs. Thackeray is 
 the daughter of Colonel Matthew Shawe, who, it is stated, had 
 been military secretary to the Marquis of Wellesley in India. 
 
 ' The passage is quoted by Mr. Merivale in Chapter XII., but I 
 repeat it here as illustrating Thackeray's views on marriage.
 
 THACKERAY. 109 
 
 that he was quite impenitent as regards any imprudence 
 of which he may have been guilty, and quite prepared 
 to urge his fellow-men to go and do likewise. 
 
 Prudent or imprudent, the marriage seems to have 
 been a very happy one until it was practically annulled 
 by a calamity almost more terrible than death. 
 Thackeray took his young wife to live in Great Coram 
 Street, near the Foundling, and manfully set himself to 
 the task of keeping the wolf from the door. In the years 
 from 1837 to 1842 he wrote a great deal, even if we take 
 count only of what can be distinctly ascribed to his pen. 
 Novelettes, stories, adaptations, reviews, miscellaneous 
 articles, criticisms on art, foreign correspondence, ballads 
 — nothing came to him amiss. Now he would be 
 coming forward as one of the fiery spirits of Eraser's 
 Magazine — for Fraser was no milksop in the Thirties and 
 Forties — and assailing Lytton Bulwer, whom the staff of 
 Fraser hated, with a rudeness which he lived to regret. 
 Now he was writing for the New MontJdy Magazine, or 
 AinswortK s Magazine, or reviewing for the Times or 
 Westminster Review. Cruikshank's acquaintance he 
 probably formed at this time, at a club called the 
 Rationals, which used to dine at four o'clock on Saturday 
 afternoons, at " The Wrekin," in Broad Street, Drury 
 Lane ; ^ and for Cruikshank's literary ventures, the 
 Comic Almanack, George CmikshatiK s Omnibus, he 
 wrote, and in excellent style. In 1839 Mr. Cole, 
 afterwards well known in connection with the Science 
 and Art Department, is sending a sketch of his to 
 Cobden, and recommending him for service in the 
 « " Thackeray and Cruikshank," by W. E. Church.
 
 110 LIFE OF 
 
 great Anti-Corn-Law Movement. "The artist," says 
 Mr. Cole — and his words have a curious interest in 
 the Hght of Thackeray's later fame — 
 
 " The artist is a genius both with his pen and his pencil. His 
 vocation is literary. He is full of humour and feeling. Hitherto 
 he has not had occasion to think much on the subject of Corn 
 Laws, and therefore wants the stuff to work upon. He would like 
 to combine both writing and drawing when sufficiently primed, and 
 then he would write and illustrate ballads, or tales, or anything. 
 I think you would find him a most useful auxiliary." ' 
 
 In brief he was ready for any kind of task: not too 
 proud to do hack-work, but rather putting his pride in 
 doing it well, and figuring, Proteus-like, in the periodi- 
 cal literature of the time, now as Launcelot Wagstaff, 
 now as Michael Angelo Titmarsh, now as Samuel 
 Titmarsh, now as Charles Yellowplush, and now as 
 George Fitz-Boodle. The most important of the stories 
 produced at about this date were, " The Fatal Boots," 
 "Cox's Diary," "Catherine," "The Shabby-genteel 
 Story," and " The Great Hoggarty Diamond." 
 
 A peculiar and pathetic interest attaches to the last 
 named of these stories. It " was written," as Thackeray 
 himself has told us, "at a time when the writer was 
 suffering under the severest personal grief and calamity " 
 — " at a time," as he says in one of his letters, " when my 
 heart was very soft and humble — Ich habe audi viel 
 geliebtr His married life had commenced with every 
 prospect of happiness. Though we know very little 
 about Mrs. Thackeray— and there really is no need why 
 
 • See Cole's " Fifty Years of Public Work."
 
 THACKERAY. Ill 
 
 we should know more — yet we know enough to be able 
 to say that her husband was greatly attached to her. 
 Writing to Mrs. Brookfield, while " Vanity Fair " was in 
 progress, he says, " You know you are only a piece of 
 Amelia, my mother is another half, my poor little wife 
 y est pour beaiicoi/p." And again, on another occasion, 
 when he is taking his daughters up the Rhine, and being 
 very happy in their enjoyment, he writes to the same 
 correspondent, " I sat with the children, and talked with 
 them about their mother last night. It is my pleasure to 
 tell them how humble-minded their mother was." And 
 in this connection there is a pathos in the story which 
 tells how an old groom in Trollope's stables once said to 
 Thackeray: "I hear you have written a book upon 
 Ireland, and are always making fun of the Irish ; you 
 don't like us." " God help me ! " said Thackeray, turn- 
 ing his head away as his eyes filled with tears, "all that 
 I have loved best in the world is Irish." Did not 
 Isabella Shawe come from " the parish of Donerail, in 
 the County of Cork " ? "I was as happy as the day 
 was long with her," he told his cousin Mr. Bedingfield. 
 
 So, for a time Love was lord of all in the home in 
 Great Coram Street. A daughter was born — Anne 
 Isabella — destined thereafter, as the authoress of "The 
 Story of Elizabeth," and "The Village on the Cliff," to 
 add new lustre even to such a name as Thackeray. 
 Then came a second daughter, bringing sorrow with 
 her, for she died in infancy. Then appeared a third 
 daughter, Harriet Marion, who was to marry Mr. Leslie 
 Stephen, and now too has passed into the Silent Land. 
 After the birth of this third child Mrs. Thackeray's
 
 112 LIFE OP 
 
 health failed. She was afflicted with some mental 
 disease, not apparently, even at first, violent in its 
 character, but totally unfitting her for her duties as 
 a wife and mother. It became imperative that she 
 should be placed under proper care,^ and the home be 
 practically broken up. 
 
 At what precise date this happened is not very clear. 
 Thackeray, in a letter to Mrs, Brookfield, says : — 
 
 " As I am waiting to see Mrs. Buller, I find an old review with 
 an advertisement in it, containing a great part of an article I wrote 
 about Fielding in 1840, in The Times. . . . My wife was just 
 sickening at that moment ; I wrote it at Margate, where I had 
 taken her, and used to walk out three miles to a little bowHng 
 green, and write there in an arbour — coming home and wondering 
 what was the melancholy oppressing the poor little woman. T/ie 
 Times gave me five guineas for the article. I recollect I thought it 
 rather shabby pay, and twelve days after it appeared in the paper 
 my poor little wife's malady showed itself. . . . God help us what 
 a deal of cares, and pleasures, and struggles, and happiness I have 
 had since that day in the little sunshiny arbour, where, with scarcely 
 any money in my pocket and two little children (Minnie was a 
 baby two months old), I was writing this notice about Fielding. 
 Grief, Love, Fame, if you like : I have had no little of all since 
 then. (I don't mean to take the fame for more than its worth, or 
 brag about it with any peculiar elation.)." 
 
 From this extract, and the preface to "The Great Hoggarty 
 Diamond," it is clear that Thackeray set down the year 1840 
 
 ' She is described to me, by one who saw her long, long years 
 after this, as an old lady, very quiet and gentle, and taking a 
 pecuhar pleasure in children— she used to give dolls to my inform- 
 ant's sister— but liable to strange agitation if her husband's name 
 was mentioned.
 
 THACKERAY. 113 
 
 as that in which his wife's illness declared itself; and we 
 have evidence that he was in Paris, with his children, in 
 the winter of 1840 and spring of 1841, writing "The 
 Second Funeral of Napoleon,"^ and "The Chronicle of 
 the Drum " — for his daughter, Mrs. Ritchie, tells us as 
 much, adding : " I can just remember the snow upon the 
 ground, and a room opening upon a garden in the 
 Champs Elysees, where he used to write." Sir F. 
 Pollock, however, in his " Personal Remembrances," 
 says he recollects " dining with Thackeray at the 
 modest abode occupied by him in Great Coram Street 
 — or as we usually called it Great Jorum Street" — 
 early in 1842, and that Thackeray's wife was present. 
 But how this can have been is not quite clear. The 
 evidence seems to point rather to the conclusion that 
 the separation took place in 1840, that Thackeray 
 placed his two little daughters under his mother's care 
 in Paris in that same year, and that though he retained 
 the house in Great Coram Street for some time longer,^ 
 he only occupied it fitfully, and that bachelorwise. 
 
 " I can't live without the tenderness of some woman," 
 says Thackeray in the correspondence from which several 
 passages have already been quoted ; " and expect when 
 I am sixty I shall be marrying a girl of eleven or 
 twelve, innocent, barley-sugar-loving, in a pinafore." 
 
 * •' Have you read Thackeray's little book, ' The Second Funeral 
 of Napoleon ' ? If not, pray do, and buy it, and ask others to buy 
 it : as each copy sold puts 7^d. in T.'s pocket : which is not very 
 heavy just now, I take it." — Fitzgerald's Letters, February 18, 
 1841. 
 
 * He appears as the occupant in the Directory for 1842. 
 
 8
 
 114 LIFE OF THACKERAY. 
 
 This was the man who, before he was thirty, had to 
 face a hfelong separation from the wife he loved, and 
 a long separation from his children. People afterwards 
 called him cynical because he saw so clearly the evil 
 in things good as well as the good in things evil. But 
 the wonder rather is that he did not come out of such 
 an ordeal soured, dispirited, disenchanted with life itself 
 — doubting if it be indeed worth living — and preaching 
 to others revolt and despair. This effect his trial never 
 had. It left him with a heart saddened indeed, but full 
 of courage, and full especially of a great tenderness for 
 all human sorrow and suffering.
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 (Cy Frank T. Marzials.) 
 
 SO Thackeray's home was broken up — he was still, 
 it should be remembered, under thirty — and thence- 
 forward, for several years to come, he lived a Bohemian 
 kind of hfe : a life of clubs, and to some extent of 
 taverns, a life in which many evenings were spent at the 
 Cyder-cellars and Evans's, and other places of similar 
 resort — the life in short — I am using the expression 
 with no suggestion of evil — of a man about town. 
 Here is his own inimitable description, published 
 many years afterwards, of the Bohemia in which he 
 had then dwelt : — " A pleasant land, not fenced with 
 drab stucco like Tyburnia or Belgravia ; not guarded 
 by a huge standing army of footmen ; not echoing 
 with noble chariots; not replete with polite chintz 
 drawing-rooms and neat tea-tables ; a land over which 
 hangs an endless fog occasioned by much tobacco ; 
 a land of chambers, billiard rooms, supper rooms, 
 oysters ; a land of song ; a land where soda-water flows 
 freely in the morning ; a land of tin dish-covers from 
 taverns and frothing porter ; a land of lotus-eating (with
 
 116 LIFE OF 
 
 lots of cayenne pepper) ; of pulls on the river, of delicious 
 reading of novels, magazines, and saunterings in many 
 studios : a land where men call each other by their 
 Christian names ; where most are poor, where almost all 
 are young, and where, if a few oldsters enter, it is because 
 they have preserved more tenderly and carefully than 
 others their youthful spirits, and the delightful capacity 
 to be idle. I have lost my way to Bohemia now, but it 
 is certain that Prague is the most picturesque city in the 
 world." 
 
 At the same time, though an inhabitant of "Prague," 
 Thackeray was working uncommonly hard, and with 
 no particular reward either in praise or pelf. "The 
 Great Hoggarty Diamond " had been offered to Black- 
 wood, and rejected, before it finally found a place in 
 Frasers Magazine ; and though some few good judges 
 greeted it with admiration, and notably John Sterling, who 
 asked, " what is there better in Goldsmith or Fielding " ? 
 yet the public cast it carelessly aside, and the editor 
 even made the unpleasant suggestion that it should 
 be curtailed. Nevertheless Thackeray held on un- 
 daunted, and with a courage all the more praiseworthy 
 that he was very sensitive, and keenly affected by all 
 adverse influences. He continued to contribute to 
 Fraser's Magazine, not indeed abandoning his con- 
 nection with that periodical till January, 1847,^ on the 
 very eve of the pubhcation of the first number of 
 "Vanity Fair." He threw himself with zest into the 
 
 ' There was one later contribution, the satirical " Mr. Thackeray 
 in the United States," published in Eraser's Magazine ior January, 
 
 1853-
 
 THACKERAY. 117 
 
 service of Punch, then — in 1842 — entering upon the 
 second year of its existence. And in June of that 
 same year, being apparently desirous of breaking new 
 ground, and seeing what could be made of Ireland as 
 a subject for a book, he betook himself to Dublin. 
 
 What he saw during his tour of the Emerald Isle 
 will be found recorded in the " Irish Sketch Book." 
 From Dublin he went southward to Waterford and Cork, 
 thence westward, by the lovely Glengarriff route to lovely 
 Killarney — thence again to Limerick and Galway and 
 Connemara — Clew Bay, as well it might, exciting his 
 enthusiastic admiration — and thence back to Dublin, to 
 Wicklow, to Belfast, to the Giant's Causeway — and so 
 finally to Dublin once more. About all that he saw 
 and heard during this pretty comprehensive peregrina- 
 tion he has much to say, and as a picture of Ireland 
 in 1842, of the Ireland that could be seen in a few 
 weeks' tour by a keen-sighted observer, the "Irish 
 Sketch Book" has, and will always retain, distinct 
 historical value. Then, too, the book is Thackeray's, 
 and any book of Thackeray's is worth reading.' 
 
 But in connection with this Irish tour we get what, 
 for my present biographical purpose, is more interesting 
 than reflections on Ireland, and that is a near view of 
 Thackeray himself, as he appeared in the year 1842, 
 
 ' The compiler of the Bibliography appended to " Sultan Stork " 
 —whom I take to be Mr. Shepherd — says that Thackeray wrote a 
 preface for the second edition of the " Irish Sketch Book," advo- 
 cating the disestablishment of the Irish Church, and the Repeal of 
 the Union. This preface, however, if it really exists, has never 
 been published.
 
 118 LIFE OF 
 
 and before he became famous. Lever, the great Lever, 
 most typical of Lish novehsts and good fellows, and 
 already well known as the author of " Charles O'Malley " 
 and " Harry Lorrequer," was then living near Dublin, 
 and editing The Dublin University Magazi7ie. Thackeray 
 brought over a letter of introduction to Lever. An 
 invitation to dinner followed ; and, fortunately, among 
 
 the guests was a certain Major D , who has written 
 
 an account of what took place on the occasion. Now 
 
 Major D , as he confesses, had never heard of 
 
 Thackeray before, and knew no more of him than 
 what he had been told by Lever; and Lever's own 
 knowledge seems scarcely to have gone very much 
 beyond what was to be learnt from a letter of introduc- 
 tion. This would naturally say that Thackeray was a 
 humourist, and accordingly those assembled felt some 
 little surprise, and apparently disappointment, that instead 
 of adopting a jocular tone, " his manner was at first 
 reserved, earnest, and quiet ; . . . what was most ob- 
 servable seemed to be that he was, himself, carefully 
 observing, and desirous of not being drawn out, at 
 least not prematurely." 
 
 This reserve, however, gave way under the genial 
 influences of the table : — 
 
 "As dinner proceeded, and after the ladies had retired, the two 
 protagonists began to skirmish, endeavouring to draw each other 
 out. Neither knew much of the other, beyond what could be 
 gleaned from their published works. Thackeray had as yet written 
 only under assumed names or anonymously ; it was not so easy to 
 get at him through his writings : Lever on the contrary had put his 
 name to one or two works of so marked a character, that it seemed
 
 Thackeray. li9 
 
 quite natural to connect his own individuality with that of some of 
 his earlier heroes, who were, as we know, somewhat flighty and 
 eccentric. The conversation had been led by Lever on the subject 
 of the battle of Waterloo. . . . Thackeray soon joined in ; he did 
 not pretend to know anything about the great battle, but he evi- 
 dently wished to spur on Lever to identify himself with Charles 
 O'Malley. ... I have already alluded to Thackeray's ideas, imputing 
 want of truthfulness to the Irish ; he seemed always to wish to 
 betray every Irishman he met into boasting in some shape or on 
 some subject; he often reminded me of \hQ agents provocateurs oi 
 the Continental police in this respect. . . . Lever . . . quickly 
 perceiving his antagonist's game . . . met his feints with very quiet 
 but perfectly efficacious parries. It was highly interesting, and 
 not a little amusing, to observe how these two men played each a 
 part, seemingly belonging to the other ; Thackeray assuming what 
 he judged to be a style of conversation suitable for Lever, while 
 the latter responded in the sarcastic and sceptical tone proper to 
 an English tourist in Ireland." 
 
 A graceful piece of praise, however, brought about a 
 pleasanter state of feeling. Thackeray 
 
 "paid Lever the very handsome compliment of saying that he 
 would rather have written Lorrequer's English version of the 
 Student Song, ' The Pope he leads a happy life,' &c., than anything 
 he had himself done in literature. Lever . . . was very much 
 pleased, and also finally convinced that Thackeray really meant 
 what he said. I suspect that the first stone of the foundation of 
 their future friendship was thus laid ; certainly from that moment 
 they became more cordial to each other, and the conversation ran 
 smoother and with less restraint than it had previously done. 
 Passing on to French authors, full justice was done to the celebrities 
 of the day, Dumas, Alphonse Karr, Balzac, George Sand, &c. 
 Thackeray criticized the French theatre very sharply, and came 
 out with a strong bit of humorous representation, which convulsed 
 us with laughter. It had reference to some drama, or opera, I 
 forget what, in which the principal male character comes on the 
 stage with a pirouette, and waving his hand in a majestic manner
 
 120 LIFE OF 
 
 to a chorus, representing Jews in exile in Babylon, says, ' Chantdz 
 nous une chanson de Jerusalem.' Thackeray rose from his seat 
 and did the thing, pirouette and all, most inimitably : by the way, 
 he was fond of exhibiting his French pronunciation, also of carica- 
 turing very cleverly that of his own countrymen, the English. 
 Siborne and I willingly accepted the part of tcmoins to the brilliant 
 conversational encounter that ensued, in which the two principals 
 exerted themselves to their utmost to please each other. How 
 much both delighted and excelled in conversation must be known 
 to many of their friends, but perhaps neither ever showed to greater 
 advantage than when contrasted with the other, when so many 
 differences of nationality, early association, and habit of thought 
 were brought into vivid relief. Thackeray's conversation flowed 
 more easily on the whole, like the deeper current of a river 
 meandering through a cultivated country, and only occasionally 
 quickening its pace and gathering force to dash over some well- 
 selected point ; Lever's, on the contrary, resembled a mountain 
 torrent, leaping over rocks and precipices from pool to pool, in 
 clouds of sparkling spray." ' 
 
 Does not this extract seem to bring us near to the 
 Thackeray of 1842 ? But not, I think to the Thackeray, 
 even of 1842, in his best and kindhest aspect. Major 
 
 D seems to have seen a good deal of him during his 
 
 stay in Dublin — took him to witness a review, accom- 
 panied him to Maynooth, compared sketches — and 
 though evidently hking and admiring the brilliant English 
 visitor, was also somewhat disagreeably impressed by a 
 certain suspiciousness and occasional censoriousness and 
 want of temper. But if there was ever any element 
 
 of acidity in Thackeray's relations with Major D , 
 
 there was none certainly, at least after the beginning 
 of their first interview, in his relations with Lever. In 
 
 ' This extract is from the very interesting "Reminiscences" 
 of a Major D , in Dr. Fitzpatrick's " Life of Charles Lever."
 
 TH ACKER A V. 121 
 
 Lever's house he was only kindly and genial, thoroughly 
 laying himself out to please and to be pleased. That 
 he should be a favourite with the children was a 
 matter of course. The smaller folk he always loved. 
 " He had a particular delight in boys, and an excellent 
 way with them," says Dickens, adding, " I remember his 
 once asking me, with fantastic gravity, when he had been 
 to Eton, where my eldest boy then was, whether I felt as 
 he did in regard of never seeing a boy without wanting 
 instantly to give him a sovereign." There is again the 
 prettiest little glimpse of him at Rome, during the 
 Christmastide of 1854, drawing the pictures in the 
 " Rose and the Ring" for the amusement of a group of 
 expatriated children, and carrying the sketches, as he 
 drew them, to a sick maiden who, "starting up eagerly, 
 and tossing back her thick hair," would stretch out her 
 hot hand for the pages. ^ 
 
 So Lever's children, as was natural, took to him ; and 
 with Lever himself he conferred in friendliest fashion — 
 discussing many things, and offering every " assistance, 
 pecuniary or otherwise," if Lever would consent — a step 
 which Thackeray strongly urged — to leave Dublin, and 
 carry his literary wares to the greater market of London. 
 In describing these conferences afterwards to a friend, 
 " Lever pronounced Thackeray to be the most good- 
 natured man alive," but added — and the remark throws a 
 curious light on contemporary opinion — " that help from 
 him would be worse than no help at all. . . . He is like 
 a man struggling to keep his head over water, and who 
 offers to teach his friend to swim." Thackeray, according 
 ' Mrs. Ritchie's preface to "The Orphan of Pimlico."
 
 122 LIFE OP 
 
 to I,ever, was a man who " would write for anything, and 
 about anything, and had so lost himself that his status in 
 London was not good." Kind, generous Thackeray, what 
 a characteristic trait is that offer of assistance ! However 
 poor he might be, and at this time he was very far from 
 rich, he still longed to help a friend. The world called 
 him a cynic, and some of his utterances no doubt gave 
 colour to the accusation, but Lever's '* most good- 
 natured man alive " — a description afterwards echoed 
 in almost the same words by Anthony Trollope — is 
 nearer to the truth. 
 
 Thackeray was back in England early in 1843, for 
 the dedication of the "Irish Sketch Book," to "Dr. 
 Charles Lever," is dated "London, April 27th" in that 
 year ; and he at once threw himself into his old work 
 with almost more than the old zest. If Lever had 
 warned him against "writing for anything and about 
 anything," the warning was clearly thrown away. He 
 writes more than ever for Fraser's Magazine. He fur- 
 nishes art criticism, at the rate of a guinea a column, for 
 an illustrated paper — The Pictorial Times — which the 
 enterprising Mr. Henry Vizetelly had just started. He 
 supplies an occasional story to Colbnrn^s Neiv Monthly 
 Magazine, an occasional review to The Morning Chronick.^ 
 He continues his contributions to Fufich. No wonder 
 that Edward Fitzgerald, writing on the 24th of May, 
 1844, should announce : Thackeray "is in full vigour, 
 play and pay, in London, writing in a dozen reviews and 
 
 ' Charles Mackay says, I know not how truly, that Thackeray 
 tried to obtain the post of sub-editor of the Monititg Chj-onicle, 
 but that he, Charles Mackay, was appointed.
 
 THACKERA V. 123 
 
 a score of newspapers : and while health lasts he sails 
 before the wind." 
 
 And within a very short time he sails before the wind 
 in more literal fashion. On the 20th of August he is 
 dining at a club, unnamed, with two friends, a " Mr. 
 William " and a " Mr. James," the latter of whom is just 
 about to start on an excursion to the Mediterranean, 
 Why should not Thackeray go too ? 
 
 "The idea of beholding these famous places — Malta, Athens, 
 Smj-rna, Constantinople, Jerusalem, Cairo " — inflamed his 
 mind, " and the charms of such a journey were eloquently 
 impressed upon him by Mr. James. ' Come,' said that kind and 
 hospitable gentleman, 'and make one of my family party; in all 
 your life you will never probably have a chance again to see so 
 much in so short a time. Consider — it is as easy as a journey to 
 Paris or to Baden.' Mr. Titmarsh considered all these things ; but 
 also the difficulties of the situation : he had but six-and-thirty hours 
 to get ready for so portentous a journey — he had engagements at 
 home— finally, could he afford it ? In spite of these objections, 
 however, with every glass of claret the enthusiasm somehow rose, 
 and the difficulties vanished. And when Mr. James, to crown all, 
 said he had no doubt that his friends, the Directors of the Peninsular 
 and Oriental Company, would make Mr. Titmarsh the present of a 
 berth for the voyage, all objections ceased on his part. . . . And on 
 the 22nd of August the Ladj/ Maiy Wood was sailing from South- 
 ampton with the ' subject of the present memoir,' quite astonished 
 to find himself one of the passengers on board." 
 
 The Eastern question is "perennial ; and in 1S40, as 
 will be remembered, it had reached one of its acute 
 phases, and almost led to a rupture between England and 
 France. A considerable interest in things Eastern was 
 the result, lasting on into the next few years. Those 
 were the days when Mr. Kinglake wrote "Eothen" —
 
 124 LIFE OP 
 
 wrote it " with the savage energy of a dyspeptic English- 
 man," as a harsh critic remarked — and when EHot War- 
 burton wrote " The Crescent and the Cross." That 
 Thackeray too went Eastward Ho ! is not, therefore, 
 to be wondered at, nor that he should have recorded 
 his two-months' experiences in a book. And an 
 excellent little book " From Cornhill to Grand Cairo " 
 is, and far superior in interest and pleasurableness 
 to the "Irish Sketch Book." Thackeray was in happy 
 mood when he went on this tour, happy in his com- 
 panions, happy in the sights he saw. He describes 
 these latter with a corresponding felicity, and moralizes 
 throughout in his best vein. Nor need it be said that 
 the humourist that was in Thackeray never obtrudes 
 his motley out of season, or shakes his cap and bells 
 unduly and in hallowed places. " Titmarsh at Jerusalem 
 will certainly be an era in Christianity," wrote Fitzgerald 
 on the loth of October, while his friend was away. 
 Titmarsh's visit marked no such era. He behaved with 
 all reverence in the Holy Places, feeling and expressing 
 a sense of awe. There be humourists and humourists, 
 indeed; and this humourist, though ready enough to 
 laugh at pretentiousness and overblown sentiment, knew 
 when his laughter ought to be hushed. 
 
 Thackeray's tour in the East did not last much more 
 than two months, for he was back at Malta by the 27th 
 of October, and then, if we may believe Mr. Samuel 
 Bevan/ he took Rome on his way homewards : — 
 
 ^ "Sand and Canvas." I have some doubt, however, noUvith- 
 standing the " on his way from Cairo," whether the visit to Rome 
 here spoken of belongs to this winter of 1844. It mast, however,
 
 THACKERAY. 125 
 
 " Of the great men who visited Rome during this winter M. A. 
 Titmarsh was among the most popular. Himself an artist, he 
 dropped among us on his way from Cairo, no one knowing when he 
 came, or when he went away. Installed in a quiet bedroom at 
 Franz's, on the Condotti, he appeared to amuse himself, like 
 Asmodeus, with peering into the studios of his countrymen, and 
 while he rummaged over their dusty portfolios, or critically scanned 
 the pictures on the wall, would unconsciously read their secret 
 thoughts, as it were the arcana of their pockets, without allowing 
 them for a moment to imagine that he intended aught save a friendly 
 visit. Many, however, were the poor devils who managed to push 
 through the winter on the strength of the timely fillip administered 
 by Titmarsh." 
 
 Thackeray, after this, was back in London, still in 
 1844, as I gather, and working apace. We do not, 
 however, catch any glimpse of him again, except in his 
 writings, until the 12th of June following, when there 
 occurs this graphic and amusing passage in Fitzgerald's 
 correspondence : — 
 
 " If you want to know something of the exhibitions . . . read 
 Fraser's Magazine for this month ; there Thackeray has.a paper on the 
 matter full of fun. I met Stone in the street the other day; he took 
 me by the button, and told me, with perfect sincerity and with 
 increasing warmth, how, though he loved old Thackeray, yet these 
 yearly outpourings of his " — i.e. , his annual reviews of the pictures in 
 the various exhibitions — " had sorely tried him. . . . Stone worked 
 himself up to such a pitch under the pressure of forced calmness, 
 that he at last said Thackeray would get himself horsewhipped one 
 day by one of these infuriated Apelleses. ... In the meanwhile 
 old Thackeray laughs at all this, and goes on in his own way, writing 
 hard for half a dozen reviews and newspapers all the morning ; 
 
 have occurred shortly after 1844, if not in 1844, for "Sand and 
 Canvas" was published in 1849; and anyhow the glimpse of 
 Thackeray is a pleasant one.
 
 126 LIFE OF 
 
 dining, drinking, and talking of a night ; managing to preserve a 
 fresh colour and perpetual How of spirits under a wear-and-tear of 
 thinking and feeding that would have knocked up any other man I 
 know two years ago at least." 
 
 But all this time I have been keeping in the back- 
 ground Thackeray's connection with Punch. Punch, 
 as we know, came into this world a hump-backed, 
 and if the truth must be told, at first somewhat 
 ricketty little creature, on the 17th of July, 1841. 
 But though his back never grew straight, he soon 
 waxed strong and gave promise of longevity. Leech 
 helped to foster him from an early date (his first carica- 
 ture appeared on the 7th of August), and Thackeray, 
 Leech's old schoolfellow at the Charterhouse, soon after 
 came to help to nurse the little crazy cripple into health. 
 " It was a good day for himself, the journal, and the 
 world," said Shirley Brooks, one of the succession of 
 Punch's editors, when " Thackeray found Pu?ich." At 
 first I should gather that he had doubts as to the ad- 
 visability of joining in the new and, so far, not very 
 promising venture; and on the 22nd of May, 1842, we 
 find Fitzgerald uttering a warning note, and writing to a 
 common friend, *' Tell Thackeray not to go into Punch 
 yet." However, his hesitation must soon have been 
 overcome. Several of the contributors he certainly 
 knew. Leech was his old schoolfellow. With Douglas 
 Jerrold he had foregathered, in Paris, at least as far 
 back as the winter of 1835. These would do all to 
 enlist the services of so promising a recruit. And then 
 what an opening did a young comic journal offer to a 
 humorist and wit conscious of such superb versatile
 
 THACKERAY. 127 
 
 original power ! Nor was ever periodical better 
 served. During ten years he poured into its pages 
 ballads, songs, burlesques ; lectures on English history ; 
 stories ; short pungent notes on the events of the day ; 
 notes of travel ; papers humorous, witty, wise, pathetic ; 
 parodies absolutely incomparable of the works of other 
 novehsts. Now he was " Punch's Commissioner," now 
 "Our fat Contributor" in the East, now "Our stout Com- 
 missioner " pretty well everywhere, now addressing the 
 world as " Policeman X " ; now as Jeames, and in 
 Jeames' jargon, telling the story of that aspiring flunkey's 
 lucky speculations and ultimate downfall during the 
 year of the railway mania ; and now in his own person — 
 " as one of themselves " indeed he called it — writing of 
 " the Snobs of England." 
 
 Between the Snob papers and "Vanity Fair" there 
 is a kind of overlapping, for the last of the former 
 appeared in Punch on the 27th of February, 1847, 
 and the first number of " Vanity Fair " had been pub- 
 lished at the commencement of the previous month. 
 And looking back from this point — which is so marked 
 and important in Thackeray's career — it is scarcely 
 possible to avoid a kind of wonder at the tardiness 
 with which success smiled upon him. How was it, 
 one is tempted to ask, that a writer who had done 
 such admirable work should have had to wait for the 
 publication of "Vanity Fair" before he was recognized 
 as a master ? Of the fact itself there can be no question 
 at all. "I can suit the magazines," he wrote to his 
 cousin, Mr. Bedingfield, " but I can't hit the public — be 
 hanged to them." "The Great Hoggarty Diamond "had
 
 128 LIFE OF 
 
 gone begging to Blackwood before it was finally accepted 
 by Fraser, and the editor of Fraser wished it to be cur- 
 tailed. Later, in 1845, there is an incident perhaps even 
 more significant. Macvey Napier was, at that date, the 
 editor of The Editibiirgh Review. As such it would be 
 part of his business to keep himself acquainted with the 
 names of any men of note in literature. Yet so little 
 had he ever heard of Thackeray, that he could, on the 
 1 2th of April, write to Hayward in the following terms : — 
 
 " Will you tell me, confidentially of course, whether you know 
 anything of a Mr. Thackeray, about whom Longman has written 
 me, thinking he would be a good hand for light articles ? He says 
 (Longman) that this Mr. Thackeray is one of the best writers in 
 Punch. One requires to be very much on one's guard in engaging 
 with mere strangers. In a journal like the Edinhro' it is ahvays of 
 importance to keep tip in respect of names." ' 
 
 Nay, when Thackeray had been admitted — probably 
 on the recommendation of Hayward, who afterwards 
 did him an even better turn — to the charmed circle of 
 the Edinburgh reviewers, and had written his article, 
 the editor treated it with very scant consideration. He 
 evidently used the amputating knife unsparingly, as the 
 following note of Thackeray, dated October 16, 1845, 
 will show : — 
 
 " I have just received, and acknowledge with many thanks, your 
 bankers' bill. From them or from you I shall always be delighted 
 to receive communications of this nature. From your liberal pay- 
 ment I can't but conclude that you reward me not only for labouring, 
 but for being mutilated in your service. I assure you I suffered 
 cruelly by the amputation which you were obliged to inflict upon my 
 
 ' " A Selection from the Correspondence of Abraham Hayward, 
 Q.C."
 
 Thackeray. i29 
 
 poor dear paper. I mourn still — as what father can help doing for 
 his children ? — for several lovely jokes and promising faceticr, which 
 were born and might have lived but for your scissors urged by 
 ruthless necessity. I trust, however, there are many more which 
 the future may bring forth, and which will meet with more favour in 
 your eyes. ... O, to think of my pet passages gone for ever ! " * 
 
 This, for all its grace, is not the letter of a man who 
 feels he can take a high hand with an editor. Think of 
 Macaulay accepting such treatment, and in such a spirit ! 
 And later still, as if to show that the Fates were deter- 
 mined to be adverse, even to the very last, " Vanity 
 Fair" itself, "Vanity Fair," one of the unquestioned 
 masterpieces of English literature, was rejected by 
 ColburrCs Magazine. 
 
 And yet, as one can but repeat, Thackeray had done 
 admirable work before 1847. His literary criticism, 
 hack-writing though it may have been, was much of it 
 excellent.^ Take his review of Carlyle's French Revolu- 
 tion in The Times of the 3rd of August, 1837. He 
 seizes on the chief beauty of the book — its superb 
 qualities of graphic presentation, its living force, its 
 wonderful lucidity in the midst of seeming disorder — and 
 dwells on these. Carlyle himself was, naturally, only 
 half pleased. Prophets do not like to be praised for the 
 beauty of their style. His rather grudging remark on 
 the review was: "The critic is one Thackeray, a half- 
 
 ' " Selections from the Correspondence of thelateMacvey Napier." 
 
 * Few authors have been subjected to such an ordeal as 
 
 Thackeray, whose every known scrap of ephemeral writing has 
 
 been exhumed and published ; and, it may be added, very few 
 
 writers could have borne such an ordeal so well. 
 
 9
 
 130 LIFE OP 
 
 monstrous Cornish giant, kind of painter, Cambridge 
 man and Paris newspaper correspondent, who is now 
 writing for his Hfe in London. ... His article is rather 
 like him, and I suppose calculated to do the book good." 
 But to those, and they are many, who go any length in 
 admiring Carlyle the writer, but refuse to bow the knee 
 to Carlyle the prophet, Thackeray's judgment will seem 
 both right and final.' 
 
 Again, his art-criticism, without being "epoch-making" 
 like the art-criticism of Winckelmann, or Lessing, or 
 Mr. Ruskin, or even of Diderot, was of very good 
 quality, and, though only meant to serve an ephemeral 
 purpose, has some permanent value. Setting aside the 
 question of literary style — and the excellence in that 
 respect of any work of Thackeray's may be assumed — 
 it shows knowledge, insight, discrimination, and a fear- 
 less honesty. Nor have its judgments been reversed, so 
 far as the main positions are concerned, by the later 
 judgments of yesterday and to-day. Mulready, whom 
 he so admired, is still regarded as a sound and excellent 
 painter ; Maclise as a draughtsman, though no colourist ; 
 Etty as a colourist, though not a strong draughtsman ; 
 Landseer as an artist of great capabilities, who too often 
 
 ' An examination of Thackeray's papers on French literature 
 would require far more space than I have at command. They are 
 curiously English in tone considering how" much he had lived in 
 Paris, and how fond he was of the incomparable City. De Quincey 
 long ago complained that criticism was becoming too cosmopolitan, 
 and that English critics, when judging a French book, reflected too 
 often the judgment of Paris, instead of throwing on the subject a 
 new light of their own. Thackeray was certainly open to no such 
 charge.
 
 THACKERAY. 181 
 
 squandered his gift in obedience to the dictates of 
 fashion ; Turner as a mighty and bewildering genius 
 whose subhmity sometimes overshot itself. And when, 
 writing of a humourist in black and white, Thackeray 
 had to deal with some congenial theme like the art of 
 Cruikshank, his criticism took an inexpressible charm 
 and grace. In his article on Cruikshank, as afterwards 
 in a kindred article on Leech, he is at his very happiest. 
 
 Then again, in addition to literary and art criticism, 
 and a considerable number of miscellaneous papers, 
 Thackeray had, before 1847, produced several stories 
 which, as we look on them now at least, seem to give 
 promise of his future greatness. There is great pathos 
 in " The Great Hoggarty Diamond." There is humour 
 and to spare in " Cox's Diary" and "The Fatal Boots." 
 " Catherine " is extremely clever in its grim way. The 
 series of "Men's Wives" contains some admirable 
 touches. 
 
 Perhaps, however, on the whole, if Thackeray had 
 produced nothing beyond the critiques and stories just 
 referred to, there would not be so much room for wonder 
 that he had not made a conspicuous mark in literature 
 before the publication of " Vanity Fair." All this 
 work, good as it was, was not so strikingly good as to 
 compel the attention of a careless world. But what 
 shall we say of "Barry Lyndon " and the Snob papers? 
 Here at least we have work of supreme quality, that 
 could not be beaten. " Barry Lyndon," the auto- 
 biography of the Irish adventurer, gambler, and 
 scoundrel, is a masterpiece. It is a worthy precursor 
 of "Esmond" in the difficult field of the historical
 
 132 LIFE OP 
 
 novel. The hero is a scamp of the last century, 
 not of ours. The world in which he moves is a world 
 of long ago, a world as yet unshrivelled in the fire of 
 the French Revolution. And it is a real world. We 
 never feel doubt or hesitation about that. The charac- 
 ters, adventures, surroundings, all produce on us the 
 impression of life. In the telling of the story, too, what 
 witchery of style. How eloquent, for instance, the pas- 
 sage in which Barry Lyndon defends gambling — how ad- 
 mirable the long episode of the ill-fated love of the 
 Princess Olivia, and of her terrible end ! 
 
 ** Barry Lyndon " appeared in Fraser during the 
 greater part of 1844, and one may legitimately wonder 
 that the world did not then discover that a great novelist 
 was writing for its amusement and edification. And 
 perhaps an even greater work was to follow. On the 
 28th of February, 1846, appeared in Punch the first of 
 the Snob papers. 
 
 Of these papers what shall one say ? Thackeray has 
 been accused of seeing snobbery everywhere and over- 
 much. 
 
 " Thackeray," says Trollope, " tells us that he was bom to hunt 
 out snobs as certain dogs are trained to find out truffles. But we 
 can imagine that a dog, very energetic at producing truffles, and not 
 finding them as plentiful as his heart desired, might occasionally 
 produce roots which were not genuine — might be carried on in his 
 energies till to his senses every fungus root became a truffle. I 
 think that there has been something of this with our author's snob- 
 hunting — and that his zeal was at last greater than his discrimina- 
 tion." 
 
 Possibly so ; and Thackeray, as we know, came to
 
 THACKERAY, 133 
 
 regard this book rather with disfavour. And yet, in their 
 main positions, the Snob papers are sound enough. 
 Pretence, meanness, vulgarity, the desire to thrust oneself 
 unduly forward into the society of persons of rank, or 
 wealth, or influence, or, as one may add, exceptional 
 mental gifts — all these are the most legitimate subjects 
 for satire. The satirist is not the philosopher, and is not 
 concerned — especially in writing for Pimch — to inquire 
 how far England's snobbishness may be only the shadow 
 of the restlessness and energy, the desire for personal 
 advancement, which have made her great. It is enough 
 for him that the fault should be there. His mission is to 
 cover it with ridicule, and at the same time to amuse. 
 And if any one fails to be amused by " The Book of 
 Snobs," he must be singularly constituted. The wit and 
 humour displayed are inimitable. There is a circum- 
 stantiality in the fun, a power of illustrating by con- 
 crete example, not to be surpassed. Take for example 
 the following apologue, intended, in the author's words, to 
 illustrate the truth " that there are many things in society 
 which you are bound to take down, and . . . with a 
 smiling face." 
 
 " I am naturally averse to egotism, and hate self-laudation con- 
 sumedly : but I can't help relating here a circumstance illustrative 
 of the point in question, in which I must think I acted with con- 
 siderable prudence. 
 
 " Being at Constantinople a few years since — (on a delicate 
 misiion) the Russians were playing a double game, between our- 
 selves, and it became necessary on our part to employ an extra 
 ne^oitator—Lcckeihiss Pasha, of Rounielia, then chief Galeongce 
 of the Porte, gave a diplomatic bancpiet at his summer palace of 
 Bujukdere. I was on the left of the Galeongee, and the Russian
 
 134 LIFE OF 
 
 agent, Count de Didloff, on his dexter side. Didlofif is a dandy who 
 would ' die of a rose in aromatic pain ' : he had tried to have me 
 assassinated three times in the course of the negotiation ; but of 
 course we were friends in public, and saluted each other in the most 
 cordial and charming manner. 
 
 *'The Galeongee is — or was, alas ! for a bowstring has done for 
 him — a staunch supporter of the old school of Turkish politics. 
 "We dined with our fingers, and had flaps of bread for plates ; the 
 only innovation he admitted was the use of European liquors, in 
 which he indulged with great gusto. He was an enormous eater. 
 Amongst the dishes a very large one was placed before him of a 
 lamb dressed in its wool, stuffed with prunes, garlic, assafoetida, 
 capsicums, and other condiments, the most abominable mixture that 
 ever mortal smelt or tasted. The Galeongee ate of this hugely ; 
 and pursuing the Eastern fashion, insisted on helping his friends right 
 and left, and when he came to a particularly spicy morsel, would 
 push it with his own hands into his guests' very mouths. 
 
 " I never shall forget the look of poor Didlofif when his Excel- 
 lency, rolling up a large quantity of this into a ball, and exclaiming, 
 • Buk, buk ' (it is very good), administered the horrible bolus to 
 Didloff. The Russian's eyes rolled dreadfully as he received it : he 
 swallowed it with a grimace that I thought must precede a convul- 
 sion, and seizing a bottle next him, which he thought was Sauterne, 
 but which turned out to be French brandy, he drank off nearly a 
 pint before he knew his error. It finished him : he was carried 
 away from the dining-room almost dead, and laid out to cool in a 
 summer-house on the Bosphorus. 
 
 " When it came to my turn, I took the condiment with a smile, 
 said ' Bismillah,' licked my lips with easy gratification, and, when 
 the next dish was served, made up a ball myself so dexterously, and 
 popped it down the old Galeongee's mouth with so much grace, 
 that his heart was won. Russia was put out of court at once, and 
 the treaty of Kabobanople was signed. As for Didlofif, all was over 
 with Mm : he was recalled to St. Petersburg, and Sir Roderick 
 Murchison saw him, under the No. 3967, working in the Ural 
 mines. " 
 
 Defoe himself never achieved greater verisimilitude.
 
 TH ACKER A V. 135 
 
 What an air of truth in the whole story, what a profu- 
 sion of detail — extending even to poor Didloff's ultimate 
 fate— and what an admirable style, clear, bright, full of 
 effect, and yet effect obtained without the slightest affec- 
 tation of language, and by the most legitimate means ! 
 
 In short, don't read *' The Book of Snobs " with too 
 keen an eye to its philosophy — though even that is 
 scarcely calculated to do any one harm. Read it rather 
 with a view to the wealth of illustration, the fun, the 
 satire, the perfection of the style. Read it for such 
 descriptions as that of the dinner given by the briefless 
 barrister to old Goldmore, the wealthy city director, 
 or the visit to the Pontos at their country house. Read 
 it to enjoy speeches like the following, which the writer 
 puts into the mouth of Captain Spitfire, R.N., one of 
 the political club snobs : — 
 
 "Why wasn't the Princess Scragamoffsky at Lady Palmerston's 
 party, Minns? Because s/ie canH show — and why can't she show? 
 Shall I tell you, Minns, why she can't show? The Princess Scrag- 
 amoffsky's back is flayed alive, Minns — I tell you it's raw, sir! 
 On Tuesday last, at twelve o'clock, three drummers of the Preo- 
 bajinski regiment arrived at Ashburnham House, and at half-past 
 twelve, in the yellow drawing-room at the Russian Embassy, before 
 the ambassadress and four ladies'-maids, the Greek Papa, and the 
 Secretary of Embassy, Madame de Scragamoffsky received thirteen 
 dozen. She was knouted, sir, knouted in the midst of England — 
 in Berkeley Square — for having said that the Grand Duchess Olga's 
 hair was red. And now, sir, will you tell me Lord Palmerston 
 ought to continue minister? " 
 
 No wonder that Minns ejaculates, "Good Ged ! " 
 and " follows Spitfire about, and thinks him the greatest 
 find wisest of human beings,"
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 (By Frank T. Marzials.) 
 
 THE first monthly part of "Vanity Fair" was pub- 
 lished in January, 1847. Thackeray had not pre- 
 viously issued any novel in this form, or indeed in 
 separate form at all — his previous stories having appeared 
 in magazines; and he felt that life was slipping away, 
 and that, with his new venture, it was time to make 
 some serious bid for fame and fortune. This is 
 clearly expressed in a letter written on the 2nd of 
 the month, to his friend Aytoun : — 
 
 " I think I have never had any ambition hitherto, or cared what 
 the world thought my work, good or bad ; but now the truth forces 
 itself upon me, if the world will once take to admiring Titmarsh 
 all his guineas will be multiplied by ten. Guineas are good. I 
 have got children, only ten years more to the fore say, &c. ; now 
 is the time, my lad, to make your A when the sun at length has 
 begun to shine. Well, I think if I can make a push at the present 
 minute — if my friends will shout, Titmarsh for ever ! hurrah for, 
 &c., &c. — I may go up with a run to a pretty fair place in my 
 trade, and be allowed to appear before the public among the first 
 fiddles. But my tunes must be heard in the streets, and organs 
 nmst grind them. Ha ! now do you read me?
 
 LIFE OF THACKERAY. 137 
 
 " Why don't Blackwood give me an article ? Because he refused 
 the best story I ever wrote?" ("The Great Hoggarty Diamond.") 
 " Colburn refused the present ' Novel without a Hero,' and if any 
 man at Blackwood's or Colburn's, and if any man since — fiddle-de- 
 dee. Upon my word and honour I never said so much about myself 
 before; but I know this, if I had the command of Blackwood, and 
 a humouristical person like Titmarsh should come up, and labour 
 hard and honestly (please God) for ten years, I would give him 
 a hand. Now try, like a man, revolving these things in your soul, 
 and see if you can't help me. . . . And if I can but save a little 
 money, by the Lord I'll try and keep it. 
 
 " Some day, when less selfish, I will write to you about otlier 
 matters than the present ego. ... I have my children with me, 
 and am mighty happy in that paternal character — preside over 
 legs of mutton comfortably — go to church at early morning and 
 like it — pay rates and taxes, &c., &c. Between this line and the 
 above a man has brought me 77^1? Times on the ' Battle of Life.' 
 'Appy Dickens ! But I love Pickwiclc and dummies too much 
 to abuse this great man. Aliquando bo7ins. And you, young 
 man, coming up in the world full of fight, take counsel from a 
 venerable and peaceful gladiator who has stripped for many battles. 
 Gad, sir, this caution is a very good sign. Do you remember how 
 complimentary Scott and Goethe were ? I like the patriarchal air 
 of some people." 
 
 Thackeray, however, a few days after preferring his re- 
 quest to Aytoun, evidently came to the conclusion that it 
 savoured too much of "log-rolling," for on the 13th 
 of January, 1847, he writes : — 
 
 "I have been thinking of the other matter on which I unbosomed 
 myself to you, and withdraw my former letter. Puffs are good, and 
 (so is) the testimony of good men; but I don't think these will make 
 a success for a man, and he ought to stand as the puljlic chooses 
 to put him. I will try, please God, to do my best, and the money 
 will come, perhaps, some day ! Meanwhile a man so lucky as 
 myself Iws no reason to complain. So let all pufling alone, though,
 
 188 LIFE OF 
 
 as you know, I am glad if I can have, and deserve, your private 
 good opinion. The women like ' Vanity Fair,' I find, very much, 
 and the publishers [are quite in good spirits regarding that venture. 
 "This is all I have to say — in the solitude of midnight — with a 
 quiet cigar, and the weakest gin-and-water in the world, ruminating 
 over a child's ball, from which I have just come, having gone as 
 chaperon to my little girls. One of them had her hair plaited in 
 two tails, the other had ringlets and the most fascinating bows of 
 blue ribbon. It was very merry, and likewise sentimental. We 
 went in a fly, quite genteel, and law 1 what a comfort it was when 
 it was over 1 Adyou." ' 
 
 How natural it all is — the desire for the pufif of 
 friendly wind that should urge on the new venture, 
 the nobler determination to do without adventitious aid, 
 and the half-pathetic, half-humorous touches telling of 
 the father's pleasure in his restored home and the 
 society of his children. No. 13, Young Street, Ken- 
 sington, these letters are dated from. There Thackeray, 
 after living a bachelor life of lodgings, in Jermyn 
 Street, and elsewhere, for the last six or seven years — 
 had once more become a householder. There the later 
 childhood of his daughters was passed, and Mrs. Ritchie 
 doubtless acquired the love for " Old Kensington," which 
 finds such pleasant expression in the book of that name. 
 Passing by this house, in after-days, with Fields, the 
 American publisher, Thackeray exclaimed " with mock 
 gravity, 'Down on your knees, you rogue, for here 
 " Vanity Fair " was penned ! And I will go down with 
 you, for I have a high opinion of that little production 
 myself.'"^ 
 
 ' Quoted from the " Memoir" of Aytoun, by Sir Theodore Martin. 
 * " Yesterdays with Authors," by James T- Fields.
 
 THACKERA Y. 139 
 
 The " little production " pursued its monthly course 
 from January, 1847, to July, 1848 ; and meanwhile 
 Thackeray, far from relaxing his hold on Punch, was 
 executing some of his very best work for that paper. 
 Simultaneously with his own masterpiece appeared, 
 under the general title of " PuncKs Prize Novelists," a 
 series of parodies of the novels of his contemporaries. 
 They are among the finest things of the kind ever 
 written. My own favourite is " Codlingsby, by B. de 
 Shrewsb&rry, Esq." — under which thin disguise Disraeli 
 stands revealed. One can but admire the audacity of 
 the thing — the amazing perfections and wealth of the 
 hero, Rafael Mendoza ; his magical performances in his 
 Eastern canoe as, " smoking a narghilly," he easily dis- 
 tances the contending eights ; his prowess in the town 
 and gown row ; his gift of " ten thousand pounds to each 
 of the ten children" of the huge bargeman whom he kills 
 in single combat ; his remarks to Lord Codlingsby as they 
 are passing through the outer shop to " a mansion " of 
 more than Oriental magnificence in Holywell Street : " I 
 have sold bundles and bundles of these [pencils]," said 
 Rafael. " My little brother is now out with oranges in 
 Piccadilly. I am bringing him up to be the head of our 
 house in Amsterdam. We all do it. I had myself to see 
 Rothschild in Eaton Place this morning about the Irish 
 loan, of which I have taken three millions : and as I 
 wanted to walk, I carried the [old clothes] bag." And that 
 superb final touch when the Jew, dismissing Codlingsby, 
 whispers, " His Majesty [the French king] is one oius ; 
 ... so is the Pope of Rome ; so is ... a whisper con- 
 cealed the rest." Farce ! Yes, no doubt it's farce. But
 
 140 LIFE OF 
 
 it's farce that hits the weak points in Disraeli's novels ; 
 and the fun is irresistible. Nor much less amusing is 
 "Phil Fogarty, a tale of the fighting Onety-oneth, by Harry 
 Rollicker " — after the reading whereof Lever declared, in 
 all good humour, that he might " shut up shop," and 
 actually changed the character of his novels. 
 
 It is not very clear at what time the world began to 
 be conscious that " Vanity Fair " was a novel of alto- 
 gether exceptional power and vitality. The first numbers 
 appear to have created no very great sensation. Here 
 and there, doubtless, a reader might be found capable of 
 discovering for himself or herself that the book was a 
 Work of genius. Thus on the i6th of September, 1847, 
 Mrs, Carlyle writes to her husband : " I brought away 
 the last four numbers of ' Vanity Fair,' and read one 
 of them in bed during the night. Very good indeed, 
 beats Dickens out of the world." And Charlotte Bronte, 
 as we shall presently see, wanted no one to show her how 
 admirable the book was. But the general reader hesi- 
 tated, and required direction. He was probably a little 
 disconcerted by the absence of heroics on the author's 
 part, and the steady determination to paint mankind 
 with its faults and meannesses, and surrounded by no 
 romantic halo. However, in January, 1848, an article 
 calculated to excite public interest appeared in The 
 Edinburgh Revieiv. It was from the pen of Hayward, 
 the noted social talker, and a friend of Thackeray. 
 Hayward spoke out. He said : " At this moment the 
 rising generation are supplied with the best of their 
 mental aliment by writers whose names are a dead letter 
 to the mass, and among the most remarkable of these is
 
 THACKERAY, 141 
 
 Michael Angelo Titmarsh, alias William Makepeace 
 Thackeray.'' He gave a slight sketch of Thackeray's 
 career, saying, " We well remember ten or twelve years 
 ago finding him day after day engaged in copying pic- 
 tures in the Louvre, in order to qualify himself for his 
 intended profession." And then he uttered words fitting 
 and right as to the quality of the book itself, or rather as 
 to so much of it as had then been published. The 
 review did what it was intended to do, stimulating public 
 curiosity, and, as there seems no reason to doubt, con- 
 tributing to the author's success. Nor can I help thinking 
 that Charlotte Bronte did yeoman's service in the same 
 cause. Her novel of " Jane Eyre " had appeared in 
 the October of 1847, ^^^d taken the world by storm. 
 A second edition was called for, and on the 21st of 
 December — that is before the appearance of the article 
 in The Ed'uibtirgh Revieio — she wrote for that edition 
 a preface, of which the following are the concluding 
 words : — 
 
 "There is a man in our own days whose words are not framed lo 
 tickle delicate ears : who, to my thinking, comes before the great 
 ones of society, much as the son of Imlah came before the throned 
 kings of Judah and Israel ; and who speaks truth as deep, with a 
 power as prophet-like and as vital — a mien as dauntless and as 
 daring. Is the satirist of ' Vanity Fair ' admired in high places ? 
 I cannot tell ; but I think if some of those amongst whom he hurls 
 the Greek fire of his sarcasm, and over whom he flashes the levin- 
 brand of his denunciation, were to take his warnings in time, they 
 or their seed might yet escape a fatal Ramoth-Gilead. 
 
 " Why have I alluded to this man ? I have alluded to him, 
 Reader, because I think I see in him an intellect profounder and 
 more unique than his contemporaries have yet recognized ; because
 
 142 LIFE OP 
 
 I regard him as the first social regenerator of the day — as the very 
 master of that working corps who would restore to rectitude the 
 warped system of things ; because I think no commentator on his 
 writings has yet found the comparison that suits him, the terms 
 which rightly characterize his talent. They say he is like Fielding: 
 they talk of his wit, humour, comic powers. He resembles Fielding 
 as an eagle does a vulture : Fielding could stoop on carrion, but 
 Thackeray never does. His wit is bright, his humour attractive, 
 but both bear the same relation to his serious genius that the mere 
 lambent sheet-lightning playing under the edge of the summer 
 cloud does to the electric death-spark hid in its womb. Finally, 
 I have alluded to Mr. Thackeray because to him — if he will accept 
 the tribute of a total stranger — I have dedicated this second edition 
 of 'Jane Eyre.'" 
 
 Here was no "puff" of private friendship, such as 
 Thackeray had first desired, and then shrunk from. 
 "Currer Bell" knew nothing of Thackeray when she 
 penned these lines. He was no Micaiah, as she sup- 
 posed, no rugged prophet foretelling ruin to Ahab and 
 his host, but an English gentleman — albeit a gentle- 
 man of genius — with the tastes and fastidiousness of 
 his class. Still, though the eulogy may have been 
 misdirected, I cannot but think that words so fiery, 
 coming from the pen of the more popular novelist of 
 the two,' must have contributed powerfully to the success 
 of " Vanity Fair." And, oddly enough, in the world's 
 wonder as to who " Currer Bell " tiiight really be, rumours 
 arose connecting her — for a woman's hand was surmised 
 — with Thackeray. From the union of ignorance and 
 curiosity sprang the usual progeny of lies. The authoress 
 
 ' In November, 1848, Sara Coleridge writes of " Vanity Fait" : 
 " In knowledge of life and delineation of character it seems to me 
 quite equal to ' Jane Eyre,' though it has never been so popular."
 
 TH ACKER A V. 143 
 
 of "Jane Eyre," it was suggested, had been governess 
 to Thackeray's children— she had been, it was darkly 
 hinted, his mistress. They had quarrelled, and avenged 
 themselves, each of the other, in literary fashion, S/ie 
 was the Becky Sharp of "Vanity Fair." He was the 
 Rochester of " Jane Eyre." ' Lies, lies, how they gather 
 round any human being who is prominent among his 
 fellows ! Well might Thackeray, discoursing afterwards, 
 in his inimitable " Roundabout " way, " On a hundred 
 years hence," ask this question : " Good gracious ! how 
 do lies begin ? " 
 
 Quite apart, however, from all aid of puff, praise, or 
 scandal, it is difficult to conceive that "Vanity Fair" 
 should not, as it proceeded, have made its way by sheer 
 inherent power. There it lies before me, in the dear 
 old original edition, with the "illustrations on steel and 
 wood by the author " — illustrations in which there may 
 often be 
 
 " A fault to pardon in the drawing's lines, 
 The body, so to speak," 
 
 ' These rumours were discussed, more than half seriously, in a 
 very unworthy article on "Vanity Fair" and "Jane Eyre" in T/ie 
 Quarterly Review for January, 1849. According to Mr. Wemyss 
 Reid it was " the rumour that " she " had satirized Mr. Thackeray 
 under the character of Rochester, and had even obtruded on the 
 sorrows of his private life," which brought Charlotte Bronte to 
 London, and induced her to reveal her name to her publisher. Mrs. 
 Gaskell, on the other hand, assigns the cause of the journey to a 
 business matter, involving the separate identity of the three sisters. 
 Mrs. Gaskell's account is the more circumstantial, and seems the 
 more probable of the two. But it is, of course, possible that 
 Charlotte Bronte came to London, and took off her anonymous 
 mask, for more reasons than one.
 
 144 LIPE OF 
 
 but in which the soul of the book, the real intention 
 of the writer, shows so clearly. Yes, there it lies, and 
 as one turns over the familiar pages one is carried 
 away from this surrounding every-day world of ours 
 into a world almost aS real and well known. Becky 
 Sharp — and I name her first, for if the novel be 
 "without a hero," it is not without a heroine, and she 
 quite outshines dear good Amelia; — Amelia herself; 
 George Osborne who loves Amelia so ill, and Dobbin 
 who loves her so well; old Osborne, the purse-proud 
 merchant ; Jos. Sedley the numskull Indian civilian ; 
 the various members of the Crawley family — the amazing 
 old coarse miserly baronet, and his sons, Pitt the 
 diplomatist, and Rawdon the heavy dragoon whom 
 Kingsley said he would rather have drawn than any 
 of his own characters; — my Lord Marquis of Steyne; 
 Mrs. Peggy O'Dowd, with her kind heart, brogue, and 
 comicalities; — these and so many more — who does not 
 know them all? No doubt the world in which they 
 move and have their being is not a heroic world. It is 
 a world that shows its seamy side freely, and where there 
 is very little that is good and great, and none, even 
 of that little, altogether without a flaw. Has not 
 Major Dobbin big feet? Does not Amelia, of whom 
 the author is evidently fond, display on more than one 
 occasion lamentable weakness of character ? The " big 
 bow-wow business," as Scott called it, was not at all 
 in Thackeray's way. He took men and women as he 
 found them, certainly never making them "look larger 
 than human," or making them express their sentiments 
 through a speaking-trumpet. And perhaps, in conse-
 
 THACKERAY, l45 
 
 quence, they ire all the more clearly irecognizable as 
 real men and women. 
 
 Then, too, the style, how admirable it is ! Reader, 
 if ever there reach you a whisper in dispraise of 
 Thackeray — and such have been muttered ere now in 
 Boston, Edinburgh, Paris, possibly in London — re-read 
 the chapters of *' Vanity Fair " in which Thackeray, 
 "not claiming to rank among the military novelists," and 
 avowing that his "place is with the non-combatants," 
 describes what happened among his dramatis persona in 
 Brussels, after tlie army had marched out to meet the 
 French at Waterloo. With those chapters fresh in your 
 memory, I venture to aver that all hostile carpings will 
 leave your admiration scatheless. 
 
 In January, 1847, Thackeray had been longing for 
 the success of his new venture, and in 1848 its success 
 was assured.^ Writing on tlie 4th of May, Fitzgerald 
 observes : " Thackeray is progressing greatly in his line : 
 he publishes a novel in Nos. — 'Vanity Fair' — which 
 began dull I thought : but gets better every No., and 
 has some very fine things indeed in it. He is become 
 a great man, I am told : goes to Holland House, and 
 Devonshire House; and for some reason or other will 
 not write a word to me. But I am sure this is not 
 because he is asked to Holland House." And again on 
 the 2nd of July he writes : "Thackeray is a great man : 
 
 * Thackeray is said to have been called to the Bar by the Hon. 
 Society of the Middle Temple on the 26th of May, 1848. This- 
 may have been in view of some goveinment appointment, or an 
 appointment as a police magistrate — either of which Thackeray 
 would seem, at about this time, to have desired. Needless to say 
 he never practised as a barrister. 
 
 10
 
 146 LIFE OF 
 
 goes to Devonshire House, &c. ; and his book (which is 
 capital) is read by the great, and will, I hope, do them 
 good." On the i9lh of May, 1849, another old friend, 
 Monckton Milnes, writes, " Thackeray is winning great 
 social success, dining at the Academy, Sir R. Peel's, 
 &c." Thackeray, in short, now stepped forward into 
 his right position as one of the very foremost writers 
 of his time. And society took him up, as society does 
 take up a successful author who is willing to be made 
 much of and caressed. Equal to the greatest in virtue 
 of his genius, he became the associate and friend of the 
 great, and practically, in social position, a member of 
 the aristocracy.^ 
 
 Was love of society a fault on Thackeray's part? 
 That is a matter with respect to which there has been 
 more than one opinion. Harriet Martineau — who, 
 however, knew him but slightly, and whose pen was 
 not always either kindly or even just^ — puts the adverse 
 case thus : " Mr. Thackeray has said more, and more 
 effectually, about snobs and snobbism than any other 
 man; and yet his frittered life, and his obedience to 
 
 ' Mr. Walter Besant, in his " Fifty Years Ago," says : " I, for 
 one, have never been able to understand how Thackeray got his 
 knowledge of these exclusive circles. Instead of dancing at 
 Almack's, he was taking his chop and stout at The Cock ; instead 
 of gambling at Crockford's, he was writing 'copy' for any paper 
 which would take it. When and where did he meet Miss New- 
 come and Lady Kew and Lord Steyne ? " All this is, I venture to 
 think, founded on a misapprehension as to Thackeray's real social 
 position. 
 
 ' " I confess to being unable to read ' Vanity Fair ' from the 
 disgust it occasions. " These extracts are from the " Autobiography."
 
 TH ACKER A V. 14? 
 
 the call of tlie great are the observed of all observers. 
 As it is so, so it must be ; but ' O the pity of it, the 
 pity of it.' Great and unusual allowance is to be made 
 in his case, I am aware ; but this does not lessen the 
 concern occasioned by the spectacle of one after another 
 of the aristocracy of nature making the ko-too to the 
 aristocracy of accident." Charles Knight, on the other 
 hand, declares : " My conviction was that, beneath an 
 affectation of cynicism, there was a tenderness of heart 
 which he was more eager to repress than to exhibit; 
 tAaf he was no idolater of rank." The truth I take 
 to be that, though a Liberal in his opinions, he was 
 by nature and personal taste an aristocrat. He be- 
 longed originally, it should always be remembered, to 
 quite the upper middle class, — not, like Dickens, to the 
 lower strata of that class, — and society's manners, and 
 speech, and, to a great extent, tone of thought, were 
 congenial to him. Then, too, as should also be borne 
 in mind, he was the novelist of society — society formed 
 great part of his special field of observation. He had 
 to frequent it for the purposes of his art. " If I don't 
 go out and mingle in society," he once said to Mr. 
 Bedingfield's mother, " I can't write." His own record 
 of himself, as given to John Esten Cooke, is : "I like 
 what are called Bohemians, and fellows of that sort. 
 I have seen all sorts of society — dukes and duchesses, 
 lords and ladies, authors and actors and painters, and, 
 taken altogether, I think I like painters the best, and 
 * Bohemians ' generally. They are more natural and 
 unconventional." This is not the language of a man 
 unduly devoted to rank. Nor can I trace any evidence
 
 1-18 LIFE OF 
 
 that he ever jeopardized his own dignity in any way 
 by striving for social distinction. And, for the rest, 
 even if a man has written " The Book of Snobs," he is 
 surely entitled to choose what company he likes. 
 
 Another question, closely allied to this, is the question 
 of the influence which Thackeray's success had upon his 
 
 own character. The Major D who had first met him 
 
 during the Irish tour, gives it as his opinion that " per- 
 haps no man was ever so much improved by success." 
 But this view was clearly not universal among Thackeray's 
 older friends. For instance, he dined with Sir Frederick 
 Pollock on the yth of May, 1849, and the latter records : 
 "Thackeray has grown a little blase, and is not such 
 good company as he used to be." And again, after 
 mentioning a dinner on the 21st of October following? 
 the same writer says : " No one could be more free 
 from egotism than Dickens was. He never talked about 
 himself or his books, and was thus in great contrast with 
 Thackeray who, after he became famous, liked no subject 
 so well." Fitzgerald at first seems not to have had this 
 feeling. He writes in 1849: "I have seen Thackeray 
 three or four times. He is jicst the same. All the world 
 admires 'Vanity Fair,' and the author is courted by 
 dukes and duchesses, and wits of both sexes." But 
 on the 17th of the following April his tone alters : 
 "Thackeray is in such a great world that I am afraid of 
 him ; he gets tired of me, and we are content to regard 
 each other at a distance." And afterwards, notwith- 
 standing the real love that Thackeray continued to 
 entertain for Fitzgerald, the distance evidently grew 
 greater. Writing to Laurence, the painter, on the 7th of
 
 THACKERAY. 149 
 
 January, 1864, and therefore but a few days after the 
 great man's death, Fitzgerald says : " I am surprised 
 almost to find how much I am thinking of him, so little 
 I had seen him for the last ten years ; not once for the 
 last five. I had been told — by you for one — that he was 
 spoiled. I am glad, therefore, that I have scarce seen 
 him since he was ' old Thackeray.' " And again, in 
 similar strain, he writes, at about the same time, of his 
 " interest " in Thackeray having been " a little gone from 
 hearing he had become somewhat spoiled : which also 
 some of his later writings hinted ... of themselves." 
 
 Now for any one who never knew Thackeray to criti- 
 cize the recorded opinions of those who did, may seem 
 presumptuous. Nor would one venture perhaps to do 
 it if all the recorded opinions were unanimous. But 
 
 this is far from being the case. Major D 's view 
 
 has just been quoted. At about the same time that 
 Sir F. Pollock was speaking of Thackeray as being 
 ^^ blase,'' and Fitzgerald as being given over to the 
 society of dukes, Albert Smith, the Bohemian of Bohe- 
 mians, writes to George Hodder : " Last night I met 
 Thackeray at the Cyder Cellars, and we stayed there 
 until three in the morning. He is a very jolly fellow, 
 and no ' High art ' about him." This suggests a very 
 difterent picture. And where the evidence is conflict- 
 ing, the critic may venture to intervene. The fact, I 
 imagine, is that, making allowance for a change in 
 physical health, and a more assured and brilliant social 
 position, Thackeray the successful novelist remained 
 pretty much the Thackeray of less prosperous days. 
 That his old friends thought they saw an alteration
 
 150 LIFE OF 
 
 is comprehensible enough. When a man has walked as 
 an ordinary man among his fellows, and suddenly comes 
 to be recognized as a great man, a certain expectation of 
 arrogance and self-complacency is natural. People 
 imagine that he will be proud, and interpret his actions, 
 even those that are most innocent, accordingly. Is he 
 absent, curt of manner, uninterested, evidently bored ? — 
 then the signs of his being spoilt are manifest — although, 
 Heaven knows, even the unprosperous are not always of 
 faultless temper. And to such misinterpretations this par- 
 ticular great man was singularly open. His health had 
 begun to fail. Manifold labours, habitual late hours, the 
 utter unsettling of his home-life for the last few years, had 
 begun to tell upon him. He was increasingly subject to 
 terrible fits of pain. His peculiarly sensitive nature 
 made him liable to attacks of depression. At one time 
 the most pleasant, genial of companions, frolicsome as a 
 boy and overflowing with high spirits, at another time — 
 and with the same persons, perhaps, and within a few 
 hours — he would be taciturn, almost repellent. *' See how 
 spoilt he is," seemed the natural but false conclusion. 
 He was not spoilt, only weary, ill, and of nerves greatly 
 overstrung. 
 
 But as to all this, it may be well to quote his own 
 defence, written, evidently in sorrow, to his relative, Mrs. 
 Bayne : — 
 
 "When a man gets this character (of being haughty and super- 
 cilious to old acquaintances) he never loses it. . . . This opinion 
 once put forth against a man, all his friends believe it, accommodate 
 themselves to the new theory, see coolness where none is meant. 
 They won't allow for the time an immensely enlarged acquaintance
 
 THACKERAY. 151 
 
 occupies, and fancy I am dangling after lords and fine people because 
 I am not so much in their drawing-rooms as in former days. They 
 don't know in what a whirl a man plunges who is engaged in my 
 business. vSince I began this work, besides travelling, reading, seeing 
 people, dining — when I am forced out and would long to be quiet — 
 I write at the rate of 5,000 letters a year. I have a heap before me 
 now — six of them are about lectures— one from an old gentleman 
 whom I met on the railroad, and who sends me his fugitive poems. 
 I must read them, answer and compliment old gentleman. Another 
 from a poor widow, in bad spelling, asking for help. Nobody 
 knows this work until he is in it ; and of course, with all this, old 
 friends hint you are changed, you are forsaking us for great people, 
 and so forth, and so forth." 
 
 Go where one will in this man's career, one finds 
 acts thoughtful, courteous, or kindly. Take the follow- 
 ing from the history of the years 1848 and 1849. 
 On the 9th of April, in the first of these years, appre- 
 hension reigned in London, for the great Chartist out- 
 break was expected on the following day. Thackeray 
 was dining out, but " the cloth had scarcely been 
 removed when he suddenly started up and said, ' Pray 
 excuse me, I must go. I left my children in terror that 
 something dreadful was about to happen. I am unfit for 
 society. Good-night.' " ' In the same year, too, to take 
 an instance of his courtesy, Mrs. Fanny Kemble records 
 how she wrote to him for an autograph, and how he sent it 
 and then called on her, "and was delightful." And in 
 the spring of 1850 — I am giving an instance here of 
 his kindly sensibility — when Lady Blessington's strange 
 household was broken up, and her goods about to be 
 brought to the hammer, he came, like many of the old 
 
 ' Charles Knight's " Passages from a Working Life."
 
 162 LIFE OF 
 
 /labifues of the place, to look over the house in Kensing- 
 ton Gore ; — but was the only one at all affected, " Mons. 
 Thackeray," wrote the French valet to Lady Blessiugton, 
 who had taken refuge in Paris — " Mons. Thackeray came 
 also, and had tears in his eyes as he spoke. He is per- 
 haps the only person whom I saw really affected by your 
 departure." Thackeray, too, has described this visit in 
 one of his charming letters to Mrs. Brookfield : — 
 
 " I have just come away from a dismal sight : Gore House full of 
 snobs looking at the furniture. Foul Jews ; odious bombazine 
 women, who drove up in mysterious flys which they had hired — the 
 wretches, . . . so as to come in state to a fashionable lounge ; brutes 
 keeping their hats on in the kind old drawing-room,— I longed to 
 knock some of them off, and say, ' Sir, be civil in a lady's room . . .' 
 There was one of the servants there, not a powdered on'c;, but a 
 butler, a xvJiat-d'you-call-it. My heart melted towards him, and I 
 gave him a pound. Ah ! it was a strange, sad picture of ' Vanity 
 Fair.' My mind is all boiling up with it." 
 
 The last number of " Vanity Fair" was published in 
 July, 1848, and the first number of " Pendennis " 
 appeared at the beginning of the following November. 
 This book, as has been already remarked, contains 
 more of Thackeray's own personal history than any 
 of his other books. Clavering, where Arthur Pendennis 
 spends so much of his youth, is, of course, Ottery St. 
 Mary; and in the school life, university life, legal life, 
 literary life of that young man, Thackeray had un- 
 questionably put a great deal of his own experience. 
 Nay, as if to mark how close was the connection be- 
 tween the author and the character he had created, two 
 of the later books, " The Newcomes " and " Philip,"
 
 THACKERA Y. 153 
 
 purport to be written by the imaginary hero of this 
 story. And Thackeray had a great fondness for Arthur 
 Pendennis, " He is a very good-natured, generous 
 young fellow," he wrote to Mrs. Brookfield while the 
 book was being written, "and I begin to like him con- 
 siderably. I wonder whether he is interesting to me for 
 selfish reasons, and because I fancy we resemble each 
 other in many points, and whether I can get the public 
 to like him too." 
 
 " Pendennis," therefore, has a curious semi-auto- 
 biographical interest. But quite apart from that, it is a 
 delightful, a great book, and contains some of the best 
 scenes that Thackeray ever described, some of the best 
 characters he ever painted. Among the latter comes, 
 first and foremost, an old flame of mine, and probably of 
 many men who are now no longer young — I mean, of 
 course, Laura Bell. Thackeray was not usually at his 
 happiest when dealing with good women. *' I am afraid 
 I don't respect your sex enough," he says in the letter to 
 Mrs. Brookfield, from which I have just quoted ; 
 adding, " Yes, I do, when they are occupied with loving 
 and sentiment rather than with other business of life." 
 And so when his women are affectionate, kindly, good, 
 like Amelia, or Mrs. Pendennis julre, or Mrs. Philip 
 Firmin, or Mrs. Shandon, they are apt to be lacking in 
 wisdom. But Laura is an exception. She is not only 
 good all through, with an old-fashioned religious good- 
 ness, but she is capable and clever — a pearl among 
 women. Ascribe it to jealousy if you will — and for 
 writing this sentence I shall be in Mr. Merivale's black 
 books for ever — but I don't consider Master Arthur was
 
 154 LIFE OF 
 
 good enough for her. She gave him a heart of pure 
 gold. He gave her, in exchange, a heart containing gold 
 too, no doubt, but also some alloy of baser metal. 
 
 Then besides Laura, what a crowd of living real 
 characters! As with the characters in "Vanity Fair," 
 to evoke them in thought is like passing into a com- 
 pany of old familiar friends and acquaintances. Here's 
 George Warrington, right sturdy good fellow, and able 
 journalist. Here's Major Pendennis, Half Pay : he is 
 a worldling of the world without question, and hanger- 
 on of the great, but with what admirable skill he routs 
 his rebellious valet Morgan, and defeats Captain Costi- 
 gan ! Then here's Costigan, with his sodden face, and 
 slouching drunkard's manner ; and his daughter, the 
 handsome Fotheringay ; and little Bows, the fiddler, her 
 teacher in the actor's art ; and Altamont, the scoundrel ; 
 and Sir Francis Clavering, the no less a scoundrel, and 
 of a more sneaking kind; and Captain Strong, the citizen 
 of the world; and Mirobolant, the French artist in 
 cookery; and poor little flirting Fanny Bolton; and Foker, 
 the rich brewer's son, with a core of real stuff and sound 
 sense in his otherwise ramshackle character ; and, and — 
 how many more, not forgetting Miss Blanche Amory, the 
 Becky Sharp of " Pendennis." Of this enigmatic young 
 lady, the authoress of " Mes Larnies" much might be 
 said. In general, few occupations can be considered 
 more futile than the endeavour to ascertain what particu- 
 lar person from the actual world served as the model for 
 a character in fiction. The novelist may, like the artist, 
 make use of the living model ; but, like the artist, he 
 alters, corrects, idealizes, recreates, and, except in very
 
 TRACK ERA Y. 155 
 
 peculiar cases, it is only with the ultimate product that 
 the world has much concern. For instance, are we 
 much advantaged when we know that Foker's peculiari- 
 ties are supposed to have been copied from those of a 
 certain Mr. Arcedeckne, who frequented the Garrick 
 Club ? Does such information throw a flood of light on 
 Thackeray's art ? But with regard to Blanche Amory, 
 I own that there is a certain amusement in meeting 
 with her in the real life of Mrs. Carlyle's Correspondence 
 — in thinking that this sham of shams inflicted herself 
 
 upon the Sage of Chelsea. " Not that poor little is 
 
 quite such a little devil as Thackeray, who has detested 
 her from a child, has here represented. But the looks, 
 the manner, the wiles, the iannes, and all that sort of 
 thing, are perfect." — " ' Oh ! my dear,' Mr. Carlyle said 
 when she v/ent away, ' we cannot be sufficiently thank- 
 ful."" 
 
 After the publication of the eleventh number of 
 "Pendennis," in September, 1849, there came a break 
 for four months. Thackeray was ill, sick well-nigh unto 
 death, in the latter part of September and during October 
 and November, and kindly tended by Dr. EUiotson, to 
 whom " Pendennis " was afterwards dedicated, and by 
 Dr. Merriman, of Kensington Square. On the 7th of 
 December Fitzgerald records that he had seen "poor old 
 Thackeray," who was getting " slowly better of a bilious 
 fever that had almost killed him " ; and it is to be feared 
 that the diarist was somewhat of a Job's comforter, if he 
 actually told the convalescent that " Pendennis " was 
 
 ' See vol. ii. of " Letters and Memorials of Jane Welsh Carlyle," 
 pp. 143 to 147, for a full account of Blanche Amory's alter e^p.
 
 156 LIFE OF 
 
 "dull as it got on," and that "he would do well to 
 take the opportunity of his illness to discontinue it alto- 
 gether" — which was the opinion that Fitzgerald formed 
 at the time. Within a few days of this, Thackeray made 
 the personal acquaintance of one who appraised the 
 value of his work more justly. Charlotte Bronte had 
 come to town from the seclusion of the vicarage at 
 Haworth, stipulating with her hosts that she should be 
 expected to meet very few people; but with a strong 
 desire to see and know the great author of " Vanity 
 Fair." They met, this man and woman of genius, and 
 their relations form a curious, interesting chapter in the 
 history of literature. She, as may be gathered from the 
 dedication of the second edition of "Jane Eyre," 
 evidently expected to find in him a prophet full of 
 earnestness and fervour, an iconoclast eager to break in 
 pieces the gods of society. And she found instead a 
 polished man of the world, clever, very clever — in her 
 admiration for his intellectual gifts she never wavered — 
 but with no particular mission to regenerate anything or 
 anybody, and mingling jest and earnest in a way that to 
 her straightforward unconventional mind was extremely 
 disconcerting.^ "Mr. Thackeray . . .," she writes, "is 
 a man of very quiet, simple demeanour ; he is, however, 
 looked upon with some awe, and even distrust. His 
 conversation is very peculiar, too perverse to be plea- 
 sant." And again, after receiving a letter from him: 
 " Thackeray's feelings are not such as can be gauged by 
 
 ' "She told me [Mrs. Gaskell] how diflicult she found it, this 
 first time of meeting Mr. Thackeray, to decide whether he was 
 speaking in jest or in earnest."
 
 tHACKERA Y. 15? 
 
 ordinary calculation : variable weather is what I should 
 ever expect from that quarter. Yet in correspondence, 
 as in verbal intercourse, that would torment me." But 
 to his intellectual power, as I have said, she did full 
 justice. "Thackeray is a Titan of mind. His presence 
 and powers impress one deeply in an intellectual sense ; 
 I do not know him or see him as a man. All the others 
 are subordinate. ... I felt sufficiently at my ease with 
 all but Thackeray ; with him I was fearfully stupid.'' 
 And in the June following, the June of 1850, there was a 
 memorable interview, in which the bold little Yorkshire- 
 woman measured her strength against the colossus. 
 
 " He made a morning call,'' she writes, " and sat above two 
 hours. Mr. Smith only " — her kind host, of the firm of Smith and 
 Elder — " was in the room the whole time. He described it after- 
 wards as ' a queer scene,' and I suppose it was. The giant sate 
 before me ; I was moved to speak to him of some of his short- 
 comings (literary, of course) ; one by one the faults came into my 
 head, and one by one I brought them out, and sought some expla- 
 nation or defence. He did defend himself like a great Turk and 
 heathen ; that is to say, the excuses were often worse than the crime 
 itself. The matter ended in decent amity ; if all be well I am to 
 dine at his house this evening " (12th June). 
 
 What were the crimes thus boldly brought home to 
 the great man ? Alas ! no more than a conjectural answer 
 can be given. Mr. Smith, it would seem, was no Bos- 
 well, and the conversation passed unreported. Thackeray, 
 as we know from Sir F. Pollock's " Personal Remem- 
 brances," felt just a trifle ruffled by the references to 
 himself in Mrs. Gaskell's life of her friend ; and in his 
 admirable short paper, entitled "The Last Sketch," 
 speaks thus : —
 
 158 LIFE OF 
 
 " I saw her [Charlolte Bronte] first just as I rose out of an illness 
 from which I had never thought to recover. I remember the 
 trembling little frame, the little hand, the great honest eyes. An 
 impetuous honesty seemed to me to characterize the woman. Twice 
 I recollect she took me to task for what she held to be errors of 
 doctrine. Once about Fielding we had a disiDutation. She spoke 
 her mind out. She jumped too rapidly at conclusions. (I have 
 smiled at one or two passages in the ' Biography,' in which my own 
 disposition or behaviour forms the subject of talk.) She formed 
 conclusions that might be wrong, and built up whole theories of 
 character upon them. New to the London world, she entered it 
 with an independent, indomitable spirit of her own ; and judged of 
 contemporaries, and especially spied out arrogance and affectation, 
 with extraordinary keenness of vision. She was angry with her 
 favourites if their conduct or conversation fell below her ideal." 
 
 But Still, with all this, we don't know what the 
 disputation was about, for the discussion on Fielding 
 would presumably take place later, after the delivery of 
 Thackeray's Lectures on the Humourists, when Charlotte 
 Bronte, with the miserable tragedy of her brother's life 
 and death still fresh in mind, thought, not unnaturally, 
 that Thackeray had spoken too leniently of Fielding's 
 foibles. 
 
 Yet one extract more from Charlotte Bronte*'s Life. 
 When she had first seen Laurence's portrait of 
 Thackeray, she " stood before it some time in silence," 
 and then her "first words" were : " And there came up 
 a lion out of Judah ! " An engraving from the picture 
 was given her, and " hung up in state " among her house- 
 hold gods. Then she writes : — 
 
 " My father stood for a quarter of an hour this morning examin- 
 ing the great man's picture. The conclusion of his survey was that 
 he thought it a puzzling head ; if he had known nothing previously
 
 THACKERAY. 159 
 
 of the original's character he could not have read it in his features. 
 I wonder at this. To me the broad brow seems to express intellect. 
 Certain lines about the]^nose and cheek betray the satirist and cynic ; 
 the mouth indicates a child-lilie simplicity — perhaps even a degree 
 of irresoluteness, inconsistency — weakness in short, but a weakness 
 not unamiable. ... A certain not quite Christian expression — ' not 
 to put too fine a point upon it ' — an expression of spite, most vividly 
 marked in the original, is here softened, and perhaps a little — a 
 very little of the power has escaped in this ameliorating process."
 
 CHAPTER X. 
 (By Frank T. Marzials.) 
 
 OF the events of 1849 and 1850 there might be 
 many more things to say, with the help of 
 the volume of Thackeray's letters published in 1887, 
 and other scattered reminiscences. But the more things 
 would be small things — such as trips to Paris — by the 
 by he was there enjoying himself a good deal in 
 September, 1849, just before the bilious fever; — little 
 household events and visits ; meetings with friends, 
 acquaintances, and persons of more or less note; rides in 
 the park ; experiences among French actresses and men 
 of letters ; days of energy and days of idleness, — the 
 books read and admired, as Dumas' " Vicomte de 
 Bragelonne," or "David Copperfield;" — the "delight- 
 ful" Sunday morning spent by the loving father with 
 " Annie," " when she read me the * Deserted Village,' 
 and we talked about it," — all the small chronicle in 
 short of a successful, bright, busy, literary life. And 
 what object would it serve to epitomize such a chronicle ? 
 Thackeray's letters are charming. He had the rare gift, 
 the very rare gift, of writing letters that possess all the
 
 LIFE OF T HACK ERA Y. 161 
 
 spontaneity and naturalness of good private correspon- 
 dence, and yet are so dainty of expression, so full of 
 grace, so marked by felicity and a certain unfo?-eseenness 
 of thought and phrase, that they acquire permanent 
 literary interest and value. In his hands the nothings of 
 daily life are transmuted. They change into gold. But 
 to try a shortened paraphrase would be to turn the gold 
 into dross. And for lengthened quotation this is not 
 the place. 
 
 So only one fact shall be mentioned in connection with 
 this time, and that mainly for the purpose of showing 
 how slow, even yet, was the world to recognize his 
 greatness. In January, 1850, Milman and Hallam, two 
 sufficient sponsors one would have thought, tried to get 
 him into the Athenaeum Club. But though supported 
 by Macaulay and Lord Mahon and Croker, — by " every 
 man," Dean Milman asserted, "whose opinion Mr. 
 Thackeray would value," — he was black-balled. Where- 
 upon Thackeray wrote to Hay ward, on the ist of 
 February, a good-tempered note :— 
 
 " I was quite prepared for the issue of the kind effort made at the 
 Athenceum on my behalf; indeed, as a satirical writer, I rather 
 wonder that I have not made more enemies than I have. I don't 
 mean enemies in a bad sense, but men conscientiously opposed to my 
 style, art, opinions, impertinences, and so forth. There must be 
 thousands of men to whom the practice of ridicule must be very 
 offensive ; doesn't one see such in society or in one's own family ? 
 persons whose nature was not gifted with a sense of humour. Such 
 a man would be wrong not to give me a black-ball, or v hatever it is 
 called, a negatory nod of his honest, respectable, stupid old head. 
 And I submit to his verdict without the slightest feeling of animosity 
 against my judge. Why, Doctor Johnson would certainly hav« 
 
 II
 
 162 LIFE OF 
 
 liLick-balled Fielding, whom he pronounced ' a dull fellow, sir, 
 n dull fellow ' ! . . . Didn't I tell you once before that I feel 
 frightened almost at the kindness of people regarding me? May 
 we all be honest fellows, and keep our heads from too anuch 
 vanity." » 
 
 One Other point should, however, be noted as marking 
 the year 1850. In that year, if we except one later 
 flicker in 1854, Thackeray's long connection with Punch 
 died out. This can scarcely have been without a 
 pang. He had done good service for the paper ; 
 and the paper had given him guineas at a time when 
 guineas were scarce and proportionally welcome. He 
 had too, we may be sure, enjoyed to the very fullest the 
 convivialities, the wit-combats, the quips and cranks, all 
 the fun and frolic and laughter, that prevailed among the 
 brilliant little band who gathered round the editorial chair. 
 At the weekly dinners he is said to have sat habitually 
 between Douglas Jerrold, most nimble-witted of the 
 moderns, and Gilbert A'Beckett; and he had, doubtless, 
 contributed his full share to the general hilarity. In 
 May, 1848, eighty citizens of Edinburgh had singled 
 him out, whether as chief of the literary staff, as he 
 unquestionably was, or from particular regard, and sent 
 him a silver statuette of Mr. Punch — which he had 
 acknowledged, it may be added, in a graceful and 
 manly letter. Punch must have seemed scarce Punch 
 without him. Doyle had left the paper because of 
 
 ' " A Selection from the Correspondence of Abraham Hayward, 
 Q.C." The Club, it is but right to say, reversed its judgment a 
 year afterwards, and duly elected Thackeray on the 25th of February, 
 1851. He did much of his work there in after days.
 
 THACKERAY. 163 
 
 its attacks on the Roman Catholics. •' Another mem- 
 ber of Mr. Punch's cabinet," says Thackeray, "the 
 biographer of Jeames, the author of the 'Snob Papers,' 
 resigned his functions on account of Mr, Punch's assauUs 
 upon the present Emperor of the French nation, whose 
 anger Jeames thought it was unpatriotic to arouse." 
 That he left the paper in all friendliness is clear. Writing 
 afterwards, on September 7, 1856, about one of the staft' 
 who had died, and suggesting help for the family, as his 
 kindly manner was, he said : " It is through my connec- 
 tion with Punch that I owe the good chances that have 
 lately befallen me, and have had so many kind offers of 
 help in my own days of trouble that I would thankfully 
 aid a friend whom Death has called away." 
 
 Thackeray was too generous and open-handed to be a 
 very rigid economist. He had always been ready to give 
 when he was poor ; he gave liberally now that he was com- 
 paratively prosperous ; and even apart from his charities I 
 do not gather that he practised the virtue of saving in 
 small things. Anyhow, there must have been some of 
 " that eternal want of pence which vexes public men " to 
 induce him to come forward as a lecturer in 1851. For 
 he was one of the most nervous of mortals. As a 
 speaker, — that is, one who speaks as distinguished from 
 one who reads, — he was a failure. While Dickens de- 
 clared that he had never from the beginning felt the 
 least diffidence in addressing an audience, he, to the end, 
 could not face the necessity for making a speech without 
 quaking. He was miserable in the prospect, pretty sure 
 to break down in the performance, and unhappy in the 
 after sense of a fiasco. On these points the evidence is
 
 164 LIFE OF 
 
 overwhelming.' He himself says in " Philip": "I, for 
 my part, own that I am in a state of tremor and absence 
 of mind before the operation ; ... in a condition of 
 imbecility during the business ; and that I am sure of 
 a headache and indigestion the next morning." And 
 though reading a lecture is a much less formidable 
 matter than making a speech, it is clear that Thackeray 
 looked forward to his course with the greatest trepidation. 
 He told Mrs. Fanny Kemble beforehand that " he was 
 so nervous about it that he was afraid he would break 
 down," — and here is the picture she gives of his con- 
 dition on the afternoon when the first lecture was 
 delivered : — 
 
 " I found him standing like a forlorn disconsolate giant in the 
 middle of the room, gazing about him. ' Oh, Lord I ' he exclaimed, 
 as he shook hands with me, ' I'm sick at my stomach with fright ! ' 
 I spoke some words of encouragement to him, and was going away, 
 but he held my hand like a scared child, crying, ' Oh, don't leave 
 me'! ' But,' said I, 'Thackeray, you mustn't stand here. Your 
 audience are beginning to come in ; ' and I drew him from the middle 
 of his chairs and benches, which were beginning to be occupied, 
 into the retiring-room adjoining the lecture-room. . . . Here he 
 began' pacing up and down, literally wringing his hands in nervous 
 distress. ' Now,' said I, ' what shall I do ? Shall I stay with you 
 till you begin, or shall I go and leave you alone to collect yourself?' 
 ' Oh,' he said, ' if I could only get at that confounded thing (the 
 lecture) to have a last look at it ! ' ' Where is it ? ' said I. ' Oh ! 
 in the next room on the reading-desk.' " 
 
 • She went in to fetch the manuscript, — and in so doing, 
 
 ' See, e.g., Hodder's " Memories of my Time," Fields' "Yester- 
 days with Authors," and Charles Knight's " Passages from a Working 
 Life." -
 
 THACKERAY. 165 
 
 to her great dismay, tumbled it down and disarranged it 
 hopelessly. " My dear soul," said the lecturer, with much 
 kindness and patience, "you couldn't have done better 
 for me. I have just a quarter of an hour to wait here, 
 and it will take me about that to page this again, and it's 
 the best thing in the world that could have happened." ' 
 The lectures to which Thackeray had looked forward 
 so nervously were delivered at Willis's Rooms, — " where 
 the Almack bills are held, a great painted and gilded 
 saloon with long sofas for benches," — says Charlotte 
 Bronte. They were delivered in the height of the 
 season of the Exhibition year, the first being given on 
 the 22 nd of May,=^ and all the world of fashion and 
 letters seem to have been among the audiences. 
 Charlotte Bronte herself was present at the second, 
 and speaks of having been introduced to Lord Carlisle 
 and Monckton Milnes. Caroline Fox mentions Mrs. 
 Carlyle, Dickens, and Leslie, the Royal Academician, 
 as present on the 13th of June, besides "innumerable 
 noteworthy people." Carlyle, ISLacaulay, and Hallam, 
 are said to have heard one or more of the lectures ; and 
 Harriet Martineau, as we know, was present too. As to 
 the effect, produced, Harriet Martineau says nothing. 
 Charlotte Bronte heard the second, which, according to 
 the contemporary account in T/ie Times, was far better 
 
 ' Mrs. Fanny Kemble's "Records of Later Life." 
 * It may be noted, for the benefit of the curious, that the course 
 was delivered for the first time on the Thursday afternoons of the 
 22nd and 29lh of May, 12th, igih, and 26th of June, and 3rd of 
 July, and that the price of admission was £2 2s. for the set of six 
 lectures (reserved seats) ; and 7s. 6d. for a single seat (unreserved). 
 The Times noticed some of the lectures, but not all.
 
 166 LIFE OF 
 
 delivered than the first, Thackeray having " evidently 
 measured the size of the room and the capability of his 
 voice" — and she remarks: "There is a quite di furore for 
 his lectures. They are a sort of essays, characterized by 
 his own peculiar originality and power, and delivered 
 with a finished taste and ease, which is felt but cannot 
 be described." Caroline Fox observes : " Thackeray 
 is a much older looking man than I had expected ; a 
 square, powerful face, and most acute and sparkling 
 eyes, grayish hairs and eyebrows. He reads in a 
 definite, rather dry manner, but makes you understand 
 thoroughly what he is about." 
 
 Here, however, I am in a position to check the 
 contemporary chroniclers to some extent, for, though 
 I did not hear the lectures of 185 1, I did, as a young 
 fellow, hear Thackeray lecture some years afterwards, 
 and have a most definite recollection of his style and 
 manner. These were in marked contrast to the style 
 and manner of Dickens. But then it is right to re- 
 member that the two men, though both readers, were, 
 in effect, pursuing totally different branches of the 
 reader's art. Dickens was the dramatic elocutionist. 
 He took from his works some passage in which the 
 dramatic element predominated, emphasized that 
 element still more by cutting down the narrative 
 portions, and then threw himself into each character, 
 acting it so far as it is possible to act a character by 
 the voice alone. Thus, as you listened to him, you 
 seemed to be hearing Betsy Prig, or Mrs. Gamp, Nancy, 
 Chops the dwarf. Bob Sawyer, or Mrs. Raddle. The 
 thing of its own kind was admirably done. Thackeray's
 
 THACKERAY. let 
 
 objects and aims were quite other. He was a lecturer 
 pure and simple — not a lecturer, like Morley Punshon 
 and J. B. Gough, relying for his effects on impassioned 
 rhetoric, emphasized by voice and gesture — nothing 
 could be less like what is usually called an "oration" 
 than one of his lectures — but a lecturer who, having 
 a piece of beautifully finished, brilliant prose to impart 
 to an audience, delivered it simply, naturally, clearly, in 
 the almost colloquial tones of a very pleasant voice. 
 According to Charlotte Bronte's happy expression, there 
 was " a finished taste and ease " about it all, a some* 
 thing high bred ; and this was also the impression pro- 
 duced on Motley, the historian, who heard the lecture 
 on George III., in 1858 : — 
 
 " I was much impressed," he says, in ahnost the same terms as 
 Charlotte Bronte, " with the quiet, graceful ease with which he 
 [Thackeray] read — ^just a few notes above the conversational level 
 — but never rising into the declamatory. This light-in-hand manner 
 suits well the delicate, hovering rather than superficial style of the 
 composition. He skims lightly over the surface of the long epoch, 
 throwing out a sketch here, exhibiting a characteristic trait there, and 
 sprinkling about a few anecdotes, portraits, and historical allusions, 
 running along from grave to gay, from lively to severe, moving and 
 mocking the sensibilities in a breath, in a way which I should say 
 was the perfection of lecturing to high-bred audiences. . . ." ' 
 
 The expression "hovering," as applied to Thackeray's 
 method, is admirable. Most men, when writing to be 
 heard, not read, instinctively write with a view to broader 
 and simpler effects of language, well knowing that an 
 audience, even when unusually inteUigent, has difficulty 
 
 ' " The Correspondence of John Lothrop Motley."
 
 iG8 LIFE OF 
 
 in at once seizing beauties of a very delicate kind. 
 Thackeray made no such concession. The style of the 
 Lectures on the Humou?ists, first delivered in 1851, and 
 on the Georges, delivered afterwards, is very brilliant 
 without doubt ; but it is also exquisitely finished, and 
 dainty with a perfection that is rather of the literary than 
 the oratorical art. How, then, did he cause the beauty 
 of these lectures to be felt by those to whom they were 
 addressed ? Tiie secret lay in an admirable quiet 
 delivery that, without undue emphasis or pause for 
 effect, gave the hearer the full value of every sentence. 
 M. Renan, who is also a delicate "stylist," fails here as 
 a lecturer. His delivery does not do justice to his 
 manuscript. He is better to read than to hsten to. 
 With Thackeray the pleasure was equal. Indeed, after 
 hearing several of the great litterateur lecturers of my 
 day — Mr. Ruskin, Mr. Froude, Professor Tyndall. Pro- 
 fessor Huxley, Matthew Arnold — I should say that I have 
 never heard exactly the same effect produced. Perhaps 
 Faraday, with great differences, of course, of matter, 
 and some of manner, best gave a similar impression of 
 perfect naturalness. Nor must it be supposed that the 
 ease and conversational tone excluded a certain emotion 
 perfectly felt through all the restraint. It is full thirty 
 years since I heard him, and yet I hold still clear in 
 my memory the very tones in which he spoke of his 
 reputation for cynicism, and afterwards told us how his 
 own child would come to him and ask why he did not 
 " write a book like one of Mr. Dickens's books." 
 
 The matter of the Lectures on the Humourists is 
 excellent. One feels in the reading that Thackeray
 
 T HACK ERA Y. 169 
 
 is a peer among his peers — a sort of elder brother, kindly, 
 appreciative, and tolerant — as he discourses of Addi- 
 son, Steele, Swift, Pope, Sterne, Fielding, Goldsmith. 
 I know of no greater contrast in criticism, a contrast, 
 be it said, not to the advantage of the French critic, 
 than Thackeray's treatment of Pope and that of M. 
 Taine. What allowance the Englishman makes for the 
 physical ills that beset the "gallant little cripple; " with 
 what a gentle hand he touches the painful places in that 
 poor twisted body ! M. Taine, irritated apparently that 
 Pope will not fit into his conception of English literature, 
 exhibits the same deformities almost savagely. 
 
 The Lectures on the Humourists were delivered in 
 Manchester, Oxford, Cambridge, Edinburgh, and pro- 
 bably elsewhere, during the course of 185 1. And in 
 1852 Thackeray published another book. On the 2nd 
 of June in that year Fitzgerald writes : " Thackeray 
 finished his novel last Saturday, and is going, I believe, 
 to the Continent ; " adding, a few days afterwards : " He 
 will get ^1000 for his novel." The novel in question 
 was *' Esmond." 
 
 Of this book it is difficult to speak in language that 
 shall not seem to savour of exaggeration and hyperbole. 
 But if that is the greatest historical novel in which the 
 men and women most recognisably think the thouglits, 
 speak the speech, do the acts of a past generation ; in 
 which those men and women are made to play their 
 parts most naturally, and with least forcing, among the 
 known historical events of the time when they are 
 assumed to have lived ; in which the style of the writing 
 is most perfect, not only intrinsically, but also in its
 
 170 LIFE op- 
 
 keeping with the events narrated and the language in use 
 at the time ; in which the past is evoked by means that 
 seem most simple, and give no impression at all of the 
 enormous labour involved ; — if, in short, the novel that 
 best fulfils these conditions is the greatest historical novel, 
 then is there nothing in the English language, or, it may 
 be added, the French, to place, in this particular line, 
 beside " Esmond." And I make this declaration, not 
 only conscientiously believing the same to be true, but 
 also bearing well in mind that there once lived such a 
 person as Sir Walter Scott, who wrote some historical 
 novels not without merit. 
 
 How did it come to pass that Thackeray reached such 
 a height of perfection in this particular work ? Why did 
 he succeed so adm.irably in drawing a picture of life as 
 it existed in the classic days of Anne ? The reason I 
 take to be because he was himself a great classic. The 
 comparison between Thackeray and Dickens has been 
 made almost to weariness ; and yet, in the very frequency 
 with which the two names have been brought together, 
 there is evidence of more than a mere liking for a literary 
 parallel. The men are each respectively the foremost repre- 
 sentatives of a great cause. Dickens, as an artist, and he 
 was a great artist, loved the exhibition of power. He gave 
 habitually full and unrestrained expression to his thought, 
 imagination, fancy. There was no reticence, no reserve 
 in his manner. He sought habitually for strong effects 
 in pathos and in humour. His descriptions are vivid 
 and striking. He works either in full light or deep 
 shadow, and with a brush always heavily charged with 
 colour. And he had his reward. While the few admire
 
 THACKERA V. 171 
 
 him for his genius, the many, who would not have been 
 reached by art of a more deHcate kind, love his work as 
 they do that of no one else. He has with him the great 
 non-literary public. Thackeray, on the other hand, was, 
 as has just been said, a classic ; and if it be asked in what 
 the classical spirit consists, I don't know that I can do 
 better than reply, as Thackeray himself was in the habit 
 of doing, by an illustration. It shall be taken from the 
 works of a great writer who admired Thackeray, and 
 whom Thackeray admired. 
 
 Newman in 1843, though still full of doubt and per- 
 plexity, was fast nearing the Church of Rome. The 
 Via media was crumbling beneath his feet. He had 
 given up preaching at St. Mary's, in Oxford itself, had 
 retired to half-conventual seclusion at Littlemore, within 
 sight of the city he so loved ; and there, driven onwards 
 by relentless logic, had come to the conclusion that he 
 could conscientiously teach the doctrines of Anglicanism 
 no more. On the 25th of September he ascended the 
 pulpit of the little church to preach his last sermon. 
 It bears the significant title of " The Parting of Friends." 
 He began simply, touched upon the various partings 
 described in the Bible, finally quoting our Lord's cry of 
 infinite pathos, "O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, that killest the 
 prophets and stonest them that are sent unto thee ! " So 
 far there was nothing unusual in the discourse. It con- 
 sisted for the most part of texts of Scripture. But at 
 this point there came for a moment a deepening of the 
 tone, and a passage, slightly ambiguous in form, though 
 strongly marked, which might apply to Jerusalem or to 
 the Church of England. Not, however, till the very
 
 172 LIFE OF 
 
 end did the pent-up feeling of the situation find full 
 expression : — 
 
 "And O, m)' brethren, O kind and affectionate hearts, O loving 
 friends, should you know^ any one whose lot it has been, by writing 
 or by word of mouth, in some degree to help you thus to act ; if he 
 has ever told you what you know about yourselves, or what you did 
 not know ; has read to you your wants and feelings, and comforted 
 you by the very reading : has made you feel that there was a higher 
 life than this daily one, and a brighter world than that you see ; or 
 encouraged you, or sobered you, or opened a way to the inquiring, 
 or soothed the perplexed ; if what he has ever said or done has ever 
 made you take interest in him, and feel well inclined towards him ; 
 remember such a one in time to come, though you hear him not, 
 and pray for him that in all things he may know God's will, and at 
 all times be made ready to fulfil it." 
 
 As he spoke, so we are told, many of his hearers wept, 
 remembering all that Newman had been to them, and 
 foreseeing that in future battles his flashing sword 
 would be on their side no more. 
 
 Now the point to which I particularly wish to draw 
 attention is the restraint shown in such a sermon. 
 Try to realize the position. The man had been the 
 leader in a great movement. The doubts which were 
 leading him to break with a loved past touched the 
 very deepest interests of his being. To most of us 
 the spiritual and intellectual part of life is little, as 
 compared with the material part. To him it was the 
 one thing of supreme import. And here was he un- 
 loosed from his old moorings, from the shore that 
 was the home of his heart, the home of all those he 
 loved, and drifting he knew not whither. The wrench 
 must have been terrible. Think for a moment how an
 
 THACKERAY. 173 
 
 emotional writer or speaker would have expressed 
 himself on such an occasion — with what passion of 
 regret, what eloquence of self-justification, what tearful- 
 ness of farewells. NeM-man condenses his feeling into 
 one paragraph, or, at most, two, and there gives it ex- 
 pression in language tense indeed and vibrating with 
 emotion, like the string of a violin beneath the finger of 
 a master, but with an emotion chastened and restrained. 
 
 In this chastening and restraint dwells, as I take it, 
 the classical spirit. They were the special "note" of 
 the great writers of Queen Anne's day — of the serene 
 Addison, of Steele, of Bolingbroke, of Gay, of Congreve, 
 — even of Swift, whose native energy and savagery must 
 have found it hard to keep within the bounds which the 
 time perscribed. They distinguished such later writers 
 as Sterne and Goldsmith. All these men wrote 
 habitually for "The Town," for a limited and educated 
 public, and foreswore coarse effects— I mean here 
 intellectually coarse— as unsuited to those whom they 
 addressed. What they cultivated was measure rather 
 than force, felicity and neatness rather than eloquence, 
 good sense rather than imagination, sensibility rather 
 than passion. They worked, to put it shortly, within a 
 restricted sphere, excluding from their view many of tlie 
 elements, even the nobler elements, of humanity ; but 
 the work they turned out was, from its very limitation 
 perhaps, all the more perfect. 
 
 And Thackeray worked in the same spirit. The 
 public he addressed was the educated public. The men 
 and women he described were, for the most part, the 
 men and women of the upper classes, either in the past
 
 174 LIFE OF 
 
 or the present. He kept generally in the middle way 
 between heroism and criminality. He made no harrow- 
 ing appeals to the feelings. From inflated language — 
 such language, for instance, as Dickens used when 
 describing the death of Little Nell — he invariably kept 
 free ; it was quite foreign to his nature. His diction was 
 always unstrained, simple, and exquisitely pure and 
 felicitous. And it is curious to note how many of the 
 characteristics of the earlier writers of the eighteenth 
 century he possessed. Like them, he cared little, so it 
 is said, for the beauties of external nature, that passion 
 of our own day. Like them, too, he dealt much with the 
 smaller social questions, leaving the larger problems 
 almost untouched. Like most of them, he troubled him- 
 self not at all with abstract speculation. It is significant, 
 too, how little he cared, if one may judge from his 
 writings, for the great Romantic poets of the beginning 
 of this century, Shelley, Keats, Byron, Wordsworth, and 
 Coleridge. When he wanted to spend a happy morning 
 with his daughter he read Goldsmith's " Deserted 
 Village," not the works of these later men. He was, in 
 short, a classic, the great English classic of our century, 
 the brother of the great classics that were of old, and, 
 as such, when he came to write a novel dealing with the 
 days of Anne, he produced a masterpiece. 
 
 The story of " Esmond " I shall not attempt to retell. 
 Indeed, it is difficult to tell any of Thackeray's stories. 
 They have but little plot, being in that respect like real 
 life, where incident follows incident, and the grand 
 definite points are few and far between. But, in default 
 of one great over-mastering plot, there are a multitude of
 
 TH ACKER A V. 175 
 
 little plots — of scenes so arranged as to illustrate cha- 
 racter and its development — and of superb separate 
 chapters. The story of Henry Esmond's childhood and 
 youth at Castlev/ood is beautifully told. One seems to 
 see it all : the old hall ; the languid third viscount — yet 
 not so languid but he can, on the occasion of a riot, trip 
 up the " great big saddler's apprentice " for throwing a 
 potato at young Henry — and the third viscount's be- 
 dizened wife; then the troopers, and Steele, the Christian 
 hero, a somewhat besmirched saint, it must be owned ; 
 and afterwards the new viscount, easy-going, good- 
 natured, fond of his glass and his ease, a handsome, if 
 somewhat prematurely coarse figure ; and by his side, 
 loved while her first beauty lasts, the gracious young 
 Lady Castlewood ; there is little Trix, too, the born 
 coquette, the enslaver of man from the cradle upwards. 
 I declare if one were suddenly, by some stroke of magic, 
 carried back two hundred years, and placed among all 
 these people, one would scarcely feel strange, so real, so 
 familiar do they appear. Who has not seen in thought 
 that home-coming of Henry after his first campaign, and 
 heard Lady Castlewood's voice as she cries : — 
 
 " Do you know what day it is? . . . It is the 29th of December 
 — it is your birthday ! But last year we did not drink it — no, no. 
 My lord was cold, and my Harry was like to die : and my brain 
 was in a fever ; and we had no wine. But now, now you are come 
 again, bringing your sheaves with you, my dear.' She burst into a 
 wild flood of weeping as she spoke : she laughed and sobbed on the 
 young man's heart, crying out wildly, ' bringing your sheaves with 
 you — your sheaves with you ! ' " 
 
 Few pages in fiction, again, are more quietly beautiful
 
 176 LIFE OF 
 
 than that describing Esmond's visit to his mother's 
 grave in the convent cemetery at Brussels. The charac- 
 ter of the hero, too, is among the finest, as it is cer- 
 tainly the most heroic, that Thackeray ever drew. 
 
 Yet this superb book seems to have received scant 
 recognition at the time. " It fell still-born from the 
 press," if we are to believe Mr, Edmund Yates. Miss 
 Mitford said it was " painful, and unpleasant, and 
 false," and " tedious and long." Even staunch Charlotte 
 Bronte thought it contained "too much history, and too 
 little story." George Eliot, writing in November, 1852, 
 said to her correspondent, it " is the most uncomfortable 
 book you can imagine." — And there are some of us to 
 whom " Romola " appears so laboured ! 
 
 "Esmond" being completed, Thackeray bethought 
 himself of acquiring " dollars," "not for himself, but for 
 his little girls at home," by delivering the Lectures on 
 the Humourists in the United States. He seems already 
 to have contemplated this step a year before, for on 
 August 25, 1851, Carlyle wrote to Emerson: "Item. 
 Thackeray is coming over to lecture to you : A mad 
 world, my masters " — though why mad on this particular 
 account, it is difficult to say. And now, on August 10, 
 1852, Fitzgerald writes, "Dear old Thackeray is really 
 going to America"; and on the 27th of October, 
 Thackeray writes to Fitzgerald ; — 
 
 " My dear old friend, I mustn't go away without shaking your 
 hand, and saying farewell and God bless you. ... I should like 
 my daughters to remember you are the best and oldest friend their 
 father ever had, and that you would act as such : as my literary 
 executor and so forth. My books would yield a something as copy-
 
 THACKERA V. 177 
 
 rights ; and should anything occur, I have commissioned friends in 
 good place to get a pension for my poor little wife. . . . Does not 
 this sound gloomily ? Well, who knows what fate is in store ? and 
 I feel not at all downcast, but very grave and solemn at the brink 
 of a great voyage. . . . The great comfort I have in thinking about my 
 dear old boy is that recollection of our youth when we loved each 
 other, as I do now, when I write farewell. ... I sail on Saturday 
 morning, by the Canada, for Boston" — 
 
 the Saturday being, I take it, the 30th of October. 
 
 So he sailed, with Arthur Hugh Clough and Mr. Lowell 
 for fellow-passengers,' and reached Boston on a frosty 
 November evening. He was glad to be on dry land once 
 more, though " the passage is nothing now it is over," he 
 wrote to Mrs. Brookfield ; and took up his quarters at 
 Tremont House, which had been taken for him, and 
 where a pleasant party met the same evening to discuss 
 the hugest of oysters and other local dainties. " All the 
 necessary arrangements for his lecturing had been made 
 without troubling him with any of the details," says 
 Fields, who had apparently been the first to suggest his 
 going to America at all, and he set himself to enjoy his 
 novel experiences thoroughly. Nothing can be in 
 greater contrast than his opinions on America and 
 American society, and those which Dickens had formed 
 some ten years earlier. Probably there was some change 
 in the people themselves — Dickens, as we know, found a 
 great change when he visited the place in 1867-68, — but 
 unmistakably there was a great difference in the glasses 
 through which the people were regarded. "I have 
 made scores of new acquaintances, and lighted on my 
 
 * See Mr. Waddington's memoir of Clough. 
 12
 
 178 LIFE OF 
 
 legs as usual," he writes to Mrs. Brookfield from New 
 York on the 23rd of December. 
 
 " I didn't expect to like the people as I do, but am agreeably 
 disappointed, and find many most pleasant companions, natural and 
 good ; natural and well read, and well bred too ; and I suppose am 
 none the worse pleased because everybody has read all my books 
 and praises my lectures. . . . Nobody is quiet here, no more am 
 I. The rush and restlessness pleases me, and I like, for a little, the 
 dash of the stream. I am not received as a god, which I like too." 
 
 Again he writes from Baltimore on the 7th of 
 February : — 
 
 " Now I have seen three great cities, Boston, New York, and 
 Philadelphia. I think I like them all mighty well. They seem to 
 me not so civilised as our London, but more so than Manchester 
 and Liverpool. At Boston is very good literate company indeed ; 
 it is like Edinburgh for that — a vast amount of Tor^'ism and 
 donnishness everywhere. That of New York the simplest and least 
 pretentious ; it suffices that a man should keep a fine house, give 
 parties, and have a daughter, to get all the world to him. And 
 what struck me, that whereas on my first arrival, 1 was annoyed at 
 the uncommon splendatiousness. ..." 
 
 Here the letter breaks off in all kindliness. And again, 
 when Mr. William B. Reed, of Philadelphia, asked him 
 to say candidly what were his impressions of America, he 
 answered : — 
 
 "You know what a virtue-proud people we English are. We 
 think we have got it all to ourselves. Now that v/hich most 
 impresses me here is that I find homes as pure as ours, firesides like 
 ours, domestic virtues as gentle ; the English language, though the 
 accent be a little different, with its home-like melody ; and the 
 Common Prayer Book in your families. I am more struck by 
 pleasant resemblances than by anything else."
 
 TH ACKER A Y. 179 
 
 "And so," adds Mr. Reed, "I sincerely believe he 
 was." * 
 
 Of course there were little occasional shadows in the 
 general brightness. Thus he writes to Mrs. Brookfield 
 from Philadelphia on the 21st of January: — 
 
 " Does this melancholy come from the circumstance that I have 
 been out to dinner and supper every night this week ? 1 I am 
 tired of shaking hands with people, and acting the lion business 
 night after night. Everybody is introduced and shakes hands. 
 I know thousands of colonels, professors, editors, and what-not, and 
 walk the streets guiltily, knowing that I don't know 'em, and 
 trembling lest the man opposite to me is one of my friends of the 
 day before. 
 
 But even this little grumble ends cheerfully : " I believe 
 I am popular, except at Boston among the newspaper 
 men, who fired into me, but a great favourite with the 
 monde there and elsewhere. Here in Philadelphia it 
 is all praise and kindness." Everything seems to have 
 gone well during this visit to our Transatlantic cousins. 
 Thackeray was at his best and happiest. Every glimpse 
 we get of him is pleasant. Now he is prattling to Mr. 
 Reed's children, telling them odd fairy stories, walking 
 with one of the little things holding his hand in the 
 street — "the tall, gray-haired, spectacled man with an 
 effort accommodating himself to the toddling child by 
 his side";^ — now helping to give them their dinner ; now 
 
 ' "Haud Immemor— Thackeray in America," Blackwood, June, 
 1872. 
 
 * Mr. Reed's language is a little ambiguous. This may have 
 happened during the second American tour.
 
 180 LIFE OF 
 
 he is striving, very good-naturedly — for he was not 
 a brilliant general talker —to entertain a large company, 
 and not let them think they have met the great 
 Thackeray in vain ; and now, in the exuberance of his 
 good spirits at the success of his lectures, his " jollity " 
 knows no bounds, and has to be repressed : " I well re- 
 member," says Fields — 
 
 " his uproarious shouting and dancing when he was told that the 
 tickets to the first course of lectures were all sold ; and when we 
 rode together from his hotel to the lecture-hall he insisted on 
 thrusting both his long legs out of the carriage window, in deference, 
 as he said, to his magnanimous ticket-holders." 
 
 "By Jove, how kind you all were to me," he wrote to 
 Mr. Reed afterwards from this side of the Atlantic. 
 
 Thackeray during his tour in the United States visited 
 Boston, New York, Philadelphia, Baltimore, Washington, 
 Richmond, and, I think, Charlestown — probably other 
 places. What he made by his lectures has not tran- 
 spired. He himself, in one of his letters, speaks of the 
 possible gains as ^^2,500, and this may be near the 
 mark. Then he turned his face homewards, still fairly 
 early in 1853— turned his face towards the attractions he 
 had enumerated when Mr. Reed urged him to try for the 
 vacant Consulate at Washington — towards "the familiar 
 London flagstones, and the library at the Athenaeum, 
 and the ride in the park, and the pleasant society after- 
 wards." 
 
 Three weeks of London seem, however, to have been 
 enough for him on this occasion, and then a month in 
 Paris — as I gather— and then, by about the middle of
 
 THACKERAY. 181 
 
 July, he is at Baden with his daughters, and " has set 
 intrepidly to work again," and is writing " The New- 
 comes." ' This, like "Vanity Fair," " Pendennis," and 
 "Esmond," is one of his very great novels; the others, 
 great as they are in parts, falling somewhat into the back- 
 ground. The first number was published in October, 
 1853, and the last in August, 1855. 
 
 But, here again, how analyze a plot, when there is no 
 plot? "Story, God bless you, I have none to tell, sir," 
 said the " Needy Knife-grinder " ; and though one is not 
 quite in that position with regard to "The Newcomes," 
 for there is a story, yet it is a story so meandering, so 
 little constructed in viesv of a definite climax, that it 
 defies all attempts at an epitome. If there be a leading 
 thread at all, it is that of Clive Newcome's love for his 
 beautiful cousin Ethel ; — and they do come together at 
 last, after he has been married to a woman whom he does 
 not love, and Ethel has gone through the experiences 
 of a fashionable beauty — so that their "living happy 
 ever afterwards " is of a chastened kind. " O world- 
 lings," the preacher seems to say, "O votaries of society, 
 how empty are the objects for which you agonize. True 
 love, gentleness, kindliness, are these not better than 
 social distinction ? What is rank that you should care 
 for it thus ? " Such is the sermon ; and among the 
 congregation to whom it is preached — some of whom 
 need it very much, and some very little — what notable 
 and striking figures ! Who knows not Clive's mother- 
 in-law, the terrible " Campaigner " ? and Florae, the 
 vivacious, the irresistible — a true gentleman with all his 
 
 ' He told Mr. Reed he was to get $20,000 for it— say £i„OQO.
 
 182 LIFE OP 
 
 absurdities — greatest of Frenchmen in English fiction ? 
 and that odious httle Sir Barnes, and Clive, and the 
 saintly Madame de Florae with her beautiful old face, 
 and Colonel Newcome himself, \\\t pretix c/ievalierf Is 
 there a much more pathetic figure in fiction than this 
 last ? I do not merely mean in his ruin — the man of 
 stainless honour amidst all the wreckage and moral pol- 
 lution of a great failure — or even in his death ; — I mean 
 in much earlier days, when he feels that the son he loves 
 so passionately is living apart from him, not through any 
 fault in the young man, but simply because he is a young 
 man, and no two generations think quite alike. There 
 must be many fathers who have felt the pathos of the 
 story, how the Colonel 
 
 " went away privily, and worked at the National Gallery with a 
 catalogue, and passed hours in the Museum before the ancient 
 statues, desperately praying to comprehend them, and puzzled 
 before them. . . . Whereas when Ch've came to look at these same 
 things, his eyes would lighten up with pleasure, and his cheeks 
 flush with enthusiasm. He seemed to drink in colour as he would 
 a feast of wine. Before the statues he would wave his finger, 
 following the line of grace, and burst into ejaculations of dehght and 
 admiration. ' Why can't I love the things which he loves ? ' thought 
 Newcome. . . . Together they were, yet he was alone still. His 
 thoughts were not the boy's, and his affections rewarded with but a 
 part of the young man's heart. ... As the young man grew, it 
 seemed to the father as if each day separated them more and more." 
 
 And the description of the Colonel's end — sure there 
 is no death-scene in fiction excelling it in beautiful sim- 
 plicity : — 
 
 "At the usual evening hour the chapel bell began to toll, and 
 Thomas Newcome's hands outside the bed feebly beat time. And
 
 THACKERA V. 183 
 
 just as the last bell struck a peculiar sweet smile shone over his face, 
 and he lifted up his head a little, and quickly said ' Adsum ! ' and 
 fell back. It was the word we used at school when names were 
 called; and, so, he whose heart was as that of a little child, had 
 answered to his name and stood in the presence of the Master ! " 
 
 " The Newcomes " ended, Thackeray turned his 
 thoughts westward once more, and determined to make 
 another visit to the United States. He would lecture 
 again, and get a new supply of dollars; and this time 
 his subject would be the " Four Georges," and the 
 lectures would not be first delivered in this country, but 
 presented in their newest bloom to the American public. 
 On the 6th of September, 1855, he wrote to Mr. Hodder ' 
 from (36) Onslow Square, whither he had moved in 
 1853 from Young Street, Kensington, asking that gentle- 
 man to come and act as his amanuensis and secretary. 
 Forthwith they set to work. Mr. Hodder would arrive 
 quite early in the morning, and generally find Thackeray 
 up and ready. Then the great man, restless, uneasy, 
 often changing his attitude, taking an occasional whiff at 
 a cigar, would dictate slowly, distinctly, weighing well his 
 words, and never suffering a smile to ripple over his face 
 even at the best and most humorous of his points. He 
 was to start on the 13th of October, and, on the nth, his 
 friends, sixty in number, gave him a dinner at the 
 London Tavern, Dickens occupying the chair. " Neither 
 of the two principal speeches was very felicitous," says 
 Sir F. Pollock, who was present on the occasion. But 
 another chronicler records that " Dickens, the best after- 
 dinner speaker now alive, was never happier," and that 
 
 ' " Memories of My Time," by George Hodder.
 
 184 LIFE OF 
 
 " Thackeray, who is far from what is called a good 
 speaker, outdid himself." So one is a little puzzled, 
 especially as the speeches were not reported. Then, on 
 the morning of the 13th, there was a tearful parting with 
 his daughters, Thackeray burying his face in his hands 
 as the carriage rolled away to the station, and it was 
 Westward Ho ! once more. 
 
 Of this visit to America there is no continuous record ; 
 but the glimpses are all delightful. On the i6th of 
 November Bayard Taylor writes from New York : " I 
 have met Thackeray and like him very much. He likes 
 me too." And, in December, the same authority says 
 that he had given a breakfast to Thackeray and other 
 friends at Delmonico's ; " We had a glorious time ; the 
 breakfast lasted five hours." On the 7th of the same 
 month Longfellow notes that he had gone to hear the 
 lecture on George I., had " found a crowded audience, 
 and had to take a back seat " ; and on the 8th he 
 notes further that Thackeray had been out to supper 
 at his house, as also Ole Bull, the great violinist, and 
 that there had been music. On St. Valentine's Day 
 Thackeray himself writes from Savannah, Georgia, to 
 Miss Perry in England, asking her, among other things, 
 to visit his "good cook and housekeeper Gray," "all 
 alone in poor 36 yonder," and tell her he is " very well, 
 and making plenty of money, and that Charles [his 
 valet] is well, and is the greatest comfort." The fond 
 father adds: "What charming letters Annie writes me, 
 with exquisite pretty turns now and then. St. Valentine 
 brought me a delightful letter from her too, and from the 
 dear old mother, and whether it's the comfort of this
 
 THACKERA Y. 185 
 
 house, or the pleasure of having an hour's chat with you, 
 or the sweet clean bed I had last night, and undisturbed 
 rest and good breakfast— altogether I think I have no 
 right to grumble at my lot, and am very decently happy — 
 don't you ? " And on the 7th of April Bayard Taylor 
 writes again from New York : " Thackeray came here on 
 Saturday. . . . He looks jolly and rosy, although he had 
 a few chills on the Mississippi. He is staying with 
 Robinson, 64, Houston Street. It is refreshing to see 
 his good face and big body among us once more." 
 
 The lectures on the Georges were even more suc- 
 cessful than the lectures on the Humourists three years 
 before. Whether the subject was particularly well 
 chosen has been questioned. Thackeray at the time, 
 and afterwards, received a good deal of blame on the 
 ground that there was something disloyal and anti- 
 patriotic in exposing the weaknesses, meannesses, 
 peccadilloes of English kings before an American 
 audience. But, after all, the Georges are historical 
 personages, and one may fairly speak one's mind about 
 them in all companies. They are not of our day. If it 
 pleases the Americans to think evil of them no one will 
 be greatly hurt. Admirably brilliant as these lectures 
 are, however, I don't know that the impression they leave 
 is quite just. " Farmer George " may not have been a 
 man of very brilliant parts, but he was scarcely the dullard 
 that the Whig and Radical tradition would have us think. 
 And, dullard or the reverse, he alone of the monarchs of 
 Europe brought his country triumphantly through the 
 great crisis of the end of the last century and the 
 beginning of this. While as to George IV. — Thackeray's
 
 186 LIFE OF 
 
 pel aversion of many years' standing — even of him it 
 is always right to remember that his claim to be the first 
 gentleman in Europe was acknowledged by such an un- 
 deniable gentleman as Sir Walter Scott. 
 
 Still the lectures were a success — and how beautiful 
 they are ! What an admirable pathos and eloquence in 
 the passages relating to George III.'s madness — doubtless 
 a topic on which Thackeray felt keenly — and how bril- 
 liant throughout ! But when, towards the end of his 
 tour, an enterprising young bookseller of Philadelphia 
 induced him to give once more the series of lectures on 
 the Humourists — then there was failure. It was too late 
 in the season, says Mr. Reed, and the bargain proved 
 disastrous to the impresario. Thackeray took the 
 matter good-humouredly enough, so far as he himself 
 was concerned. " I don't mind the empty benches," 
 he would say, "but I cannot bear to see that sad, pale- 
 faced young man as I come out, who is losing money 
 on my account." Mark, however, the issue. "The 
 bargain had been fairly made, and honourably complied 
 with ; and the money was paid and remitted through my 
 agency (Mr. Reed is writing) ... to him at New York. 
 I received no acknowledgment of the remittance, and 
 recollect well that I felt not a little annoyed at this ; 
 the more so when, on picking up a newspaper, I learned 
 that Thackeray had sailed for home. The day after he 
 had gone, when there could be no refusal, I received a 
 certificate of deposit on his New York bankers for an 
 amount quite sufficient to meet any loss incurred, as he 
 thought, on his behalf." 
 
 One more extract, from the reminiscences of Mr.
 
 THACKEkA V. 18? 
 
 Lester Wallack/ the well-known actor, shall bring the 
 story of this American tour to an end : — 
 
 " I thought him with his great height, his spectacles, whicli gave 
 him a very pedantic appearance, and his chin carried in the air, 
 the most pompous, supercihous person I had ever met ; but 
 I lived to alter that opinion, and in a very short time. . . . 
 Thackeray then lived with a very great and dear friend of mine 
 and my father's, and they had rooms together in Houston Street. 
 I had a house next door but one to them, and this is how I became 
 so intimate with Thackeray. . . . Thackeray, I suppose, took a 
 fancy to me; at any rate it was understood every night, when I came 
 home from acting, that if I saw a light in a certain window, I was 
 to go in. . . . When I did find them in we never parted until 
 half-past two or three in the morning. Then was the time to see 
 Thackeray at his best, because then he was like a boy. He did not 
 attempt to be the genius of the party. . . Such an unsophisticated 
 gentle creature as he was. ... On one occasion there was to be 
 a dinner-party of four, Thackeray said it might probably be the 
 last time he should meet us convivially during this visit, so we 
 agreed to dine together with him. . . . After waiting a long time 
 for Thackeray, at last there came a ring at the bell, and the waiter 
 brought up a large parcel, and a note from him to say that a letter 
 he had received compelled him to pack up as quickly as possible, 
 and start for England by the first steamer ; and he added, ' by 
 the time you receive this, dear William, I shall be almost out 
 of the harbour. Let me wish you a pleasant evening with the 
 Wallacks, and let me ask you to accept this little gift, as a 
 remembrance of the many, many pleasant days and nights we have 
 passed together.' The gift was a beautiful silver vase. I never 
 saw Thackeray again ; but our short and intimate association is 
 one of the most delightful reminiscences of my life." 
 
 Bayard Taylor, writing on the 20th of April, says : 
 " Thackeray went off in the Baltic on Saturday, running 
 off from his friends for fear of having to say good-bye. 
 
 ' " Memories of Fifty Years."
 
 I 
 
 188 LIFE OF 
 
 I saw him off. He seemed sorry to leave." And so the 
 second American lecturing tour was a tiling of the past. 
 After Thackeray's return he determined to deliver the 
 lectures on the Georges in England. They had paid, 
 and paid well, in America ; why should they not do 
 the same on this side of the Atlantic? Through the 
 agency of the useful Mr. Hodder, an arrangement 
 was made with Mr. Beale, of the firm of Cramer and 
 Beale, by which Thackeray undertook to deliver the 
 lectures a certain number of times in London, and in 
 various provincial • towns— Exeter, Plymouth, Clifton, 
 Birmingham, Oxford, Leamington, Norwich, being the 
 principal — and Mr. Beale, on the other hand, undertook 
 to pay fifty guineas — " decidedly guineas," not pounds, 
 the great man had stipulated — for each lecture, or a cer- 
 tain reduced amount when more than two lectures were 
 delivered in the same town. With these terms Thackeray 
 was well pleased. "Fifty guineas a night ! '' he exclaimed, 
 "Why I shouldn't have received one-half that sum for 
 an article in Fraser a few years ago." His reception by 
 the undergraduate audience at Oxford gratified him 
 much. 
 
 " The manner in which they not only ' took,' but ahnost antici- 
 pated every flash of wit or humour as it came from the lips of the 
 reader, gave him infinite satisfaction ; and when the task was ended 
 he said to [Mr. Hodder] in the ante-room, 'There's an audience 
 for you ! Gad, I would lecture to those young fellows for nothing! 
 Indeed so pleased was he with the enthusiasm they expressed, that 
 he admitted many of them to a personal interview with him in his 
 private room, and thanked them earnestly for the hearty encourage- 
 ment they had given him." ' 
 
 ' Hodder's " Memories of my Time."
 
 TH ACKER A Y. 189 
 
 And in Scotland, whither he went later, in the autumn 
 of the year — and where he was a great popular favourite 
 — he was also much gratified with his reception. "I 
 have had three per cent, of the whole population here," 
 he wrote from Edinburgh in November. " If I could 
 but get three per cent, of London ! "
 
 CHAPTER XI. 
 (By Frank T. Marzials.) 
 
 IN July, 1857, there came an attempt at a new 
 departure in Thackeray's Hfe. Writing from Phila- 
 delphia, in melancholy mood, some years earlier, he 
 had spoken of the things that still might interest him, 
 literature, as he declared for the nonce, having ceased 
 to possess any charm. " There's money-making to try 
 at, to be sure," he had said, " and ambition — I mean in 
 public life ; perhaps that might interest a man." And 
 now, in 1857, he made a serious effort to enter Parlia- 
 ment. 
 
 The City of Oxford was the constituency he wooed 
 and attempted to win. That constituency had just 
 lost its representative, Mr. Neate, professor of Pohtical 
 Economy, and a well-known university figure, who had 
 been unseated for what Thackeray called " a twopenny- 
 worth of bribery which he never committed ; " and 
 Thackeray was put forward to replace him. Of course 
 he stood in the Liberal interest. He belonged to a 
 Liberal generation, to the generation whose aspirations 
 found an echo in "Locksley Hall"; and he never
 
 LIFE OF TH ACKER A Y. 191 
 
 lived long enough to know the disenchantment of 
 "Sixty years after." So he declared himself to be an 
 advocate of the ballot; and of an extension of the 
 suffrage, though not of universal suffrage ; and he 
 desired to see places of power and influence more freely 
 given to men of ability instead of men of rank; and 
 he would not object to triennial parliaments if the people 
 really wished for them, though personally he had little 
 belief in the latter panacea for the ills of mankind. 
 Altogether his speeches, if displaying no very profound 
 political philosophy — for which indeed there was no 
 occasion — are very distinctly creditable. On the hust- 
 ings he had modestly said : " I only hope, if you elect 
 me to Parliament, I shall be able to obviate the little 
 difficulty which has been placarded against me — that 
 I could not speak. I own I cannot speak very well, 
 but I shall learn. I cannot spin out glib sentences by 
 the yard, as some people can; but if I have got any- 
 thing on my mind, if I feel strongly on any question, 
 I have, I believe, got brains enough to express it." But 
 throughout this campaign he had clearly done much to 
 conquer his constitutional timidity. 
 
 He was beaten when it came to the poll. On the 
 2ist of July the numbers stood: Cardwell, 1085; 
 Thackeray, 1018. But if ever candidate could say that 
 though beaten he was not disgraced, I think it was 
 Thackeray after this defeat. The battle had been fought 
 in all courtesy, and by a gentleman. I wish I had space 
 to quote every word of the speech he made after the 
 declaration of the poll. It is a model of good taste and 
 right feeling : —
 
 192 LIFE OF 
 
 "You have fought the battle gallantly," he told his supporters, 
 " against great influences, against an immense strength which have 
 been brought against you, and in favour of that honoured and 
 respected man Mr. Cardwell {So7ne hisses). Stop ! don't hiss. 
 When Lord Monck came down here and addressed the electors, 
 he was good enough to say a kind word in favour of me. Now 
 that being the case, don't let me be outdone in courtesy and 
 generosity. . . . Perhaps I thought my name was better known 
 than it is. You, the electors of Oxford, know whether I have acted 
 honestly towards you ; and you, on the other side, will say whether 
 I ever solicited a vote when I knew that vote was promised 
 to my opponent; or whether I have not always said, 'Sir, keep 
 your word ; here is my hand on it ; let us part good friends.' With 
 my opponents I part so. . . . (Then came a cry of " Bribery ! ") 
 Don't cry out bribery : if you know it, prove it ; but as I am 
 innocent of bribery myself, I do not choose to fancy that other men 
 are not equally loyal and honest. ... I will retire, and take my 
 place with my pen and ink at my desk, and leave to Mr. Cardwell 
 a business which I am sure he understands better than I do." 
 
 Brave words, good words, and true words. Thackeray 
 was far better at his desk. There is no reason to 
 suppose that he had the gifts to make a particularly good 
 politician or statesman — any more than he would have 
 made a particularly good official or police magistrate, 
 which had been his ambition some years earlier. He 
 was a superb writer, with an absolutely imperial command 
 over the English language, and any energy diverted from 
 his art would have been the world's loss. While as to 
 Mr., afterwards Lord, Cardwell, he was an administrator 
 of the first rank among English administrators. He 
 left his mark at the Colonial Office ; he left it in strong, 
 ineffaceable lines at the War Office. Distinctly he under- 
 stood that business better than Thackeray. 
 
 So Thackeray went back to his desk, and began a new
 
 THACKERAY. 193 
 
 serial story, "The Virginians," which appeared in monthly 
 parts from November, 1857, to October, 1859. This 
 book is, as it were, a kind of link between " Esmond " 
 and the books dealing with our own time, " Pendennis," 
 " The Newcomes," and " Philip" — for the two Virginians, 
 Henry and George Warrington, are the grandsons of 
 Colonel Esmond, and the ancestors of the George War- 
 rington who figures in the later novels. Such a connec- 
 tion was very characteristic of Thackeray. Like Balzac, 
 like Anthony TroUope, like M. Zola — though not with M. 
 Zola's pseudo-scientific purpose of showing the influences 
 of heredity — he was fond of making the same personages 
 figure in more than one novel ; and where this could not 
 be, because the novels related to different periods of his- 
 tory, he liked to establish a kind of ancestral connection. 
 Thus he told Motley in May, 1858, while "The Vir- 
 ginians " was in progress, that " he intended to write a 
 novel of the time of Henry V., which would be his capo 
 d' opera, in which the ancestors of all his present characters, 
 Warringtons, Pendennises, and the rest should be intro- 
 duced. It would be a most magnificent performance, he 
 said, and nobody would read it." This purpose, as we 
 know, even if ever very seriously entertained, was never 
 fulfilled. The capo cTopera remained m dreamland 
 " Esmond " occupies its place. But the very conception 
 is large and imposing. It shows a sense of the continuity 
 of human life. While, as to the reappearance of the 
 novelist's characters in book after book, it undeniably 
 gives to his world an air of reality. Even the least 
 credulous can scarce doubt of the existence of persons 
 met so often, and in such different companies. 
 
 13
 
 194 LIFE OP 
 
 "The Virginians," Thackeray told Motley, " wcis 
 devilish stupid, but at the same time most admirable"; 
 and the criticism, paradoxical as it may seem, possesses 
 an element of truth, "Devilish stupid" the book, of 
 course, is not. But it is thoroughly ill "composed," 
 to borrow the art critic's term. The first half and the 
 second half scarcely hang together; the interest is 
 divided, somewhat clumsily, between the two brothers — 
 and I, for one, confess to be very sorry when George 
 comes to life again, and is installed as hero vice Henry 
 deposed. But, with all drawbacks, the hand of the 
 great master is there, in the matchless style, the admir- 
 able scenes, the excellent delineations of character, the 
 exact reproduction of the life of the last century. All 
 this is on the " most admirable " side. 
 
 Motley saw Thackeray several times while " The Vir- 
 ginians" was in progress, and was very hospitably enter- 
 tained by him, and on the 28th of May, 1858, gives this 
 description of his appearance : — 
 
 " I believe you have never seen Thackeray [Motley is writing 
 to his wife] ; he has the appearance of a colossal infant, smooth, 
 white, shiny, ringletty hair, flaxen, alas ! with advancing years, a 
 roundish face, with a little dab of a nose, upon which it is a per- 
 petual wonder how he keeps his spectacles, a sweet but rather piping 
 voice, with something of the childish treble about it, and a very tall 
 slightly stooping figure — such are the characteristics of the great 
 snob of England. His manner is like that of everybody else in 
 England — nothing original, all planed down into perfect uniformity 
 with that of his fellow-creatures. There was not much more dis- 
 tinction in his talk than in his white choker, or black coat and 
 waistcoat."* 
 
 ' Motley's Correspondence.
 
 THACKERAY. 195 
 
 And now, in the June of this same year 1858, one 
 comes to an incident which may cause something hke a 
 pang to those who love and admire both Thackeray and 
 Dickens. Mr. Edmund Yates, then editing a periodical 
 called Town Talk, bethought himself, in an evil 
 moment, and when under the immediate necessity of 
 producing " copy," to write an article on " Mr, W. M. 
 Thackeray." The article opened with a description of 
 Thackeray's appearance, a description which, though not 
 flattering, might probably have been borne with equa- 
 nimity. But the writer then went on to say : — 
 
 " No one meeting him could fail to recognize in him a gentleman ; 
 his bearing is cold and uninviting, his style of conversation either 
 openly cynical or affectedly good-natured and benevolent ; his 
 bonhomie is forced, his wit biting, his pride easily touched. . . . 
 His success, commencing with ' Vanity Fair,' culminated with his 
 * Lectures on the Humourists ' . . . which were attended by all 
 the court and fashion of London. The prices were extravagant, 
 the lecturer's adulation of birth and position was extravagant, the 
 success was extravagant. No one succeeds better than Mr. 
 Thackeray in cutting his coat according to his cloth. Here he 
 flattered the aristocracy ; but when he crossed the Atlantic George 
 Washington became the idol of his worship, the 'Four Georges' 
 the objects of his bitterest attacks. These last-named lectures have 
 been dead failures in England, though as literary compositions they 
 are most excellent. Our own opinion is that his success is on the 
 wane. . . . There is a want of heart in all he writes, which is not 
 balanced by the most brilliant sarcasm and the most perfect know- 
 ledge of the human heart. " ' 
 
 Of this article it is needless to speak in stronger 
 
 ' The full text of the article, which is very short, is given in Mr. 
 Yates's " Recollections and Experiences." There seems to have 
 been an earlier article dealing with Thackeray's relations to his 
 publishers.
 
 196 LIFE OF 
 
 language than that used by Mr. Vates himself, tven at 
 the time he made no attempt to defend it ; and, writing 
 years afterwards, he says that "no one can see more 
 clearly than " he does its " silliness and bad taste." But, 
 granting to the full that the article was a peccant article, 
 I fear it must be owned, even by Thackeray's admirers, 
 that the punishments inflicted on the writer was dispro 
 portionate, and, which is worse, not of an altogether 
 right kind. Several courses were open to Thackerary 
 when Mr. Yates's animadversions were brought to his 
 notice. He might — and this, I take it, was the right 
 course — have shrugged his large shoulders, and let the 
 matter go by, remembering that he also, in younger days, 
 had said sharp and personal things of his contemporaries, 
 and had done so in periodicals more important than 
 Town Talk. He might have appealed to Mr. Yates's 
 better feeling, and asked whether the terms used were 
 quite those in which a recruit ought to speak of a 
 white-haired veteran. He might, if his combative feel- 
 ings were irrepressible, have inflicted such literary casti- 
 gation on the offender as he had, in the *' Essay on 
 Thunder and Small Beer," inflicted on The Times critic 
 who had foolishly fallen foul of the " Kickleburys on 
 the Rhine." 
 
 The last, if bent on battle, was, I venture to think, 
 his right course. Unfortunately he did not take it. 
 He first, on the 14th of June, 1858, wrote a fierce letter 
 to Mr. Yates, a letter so couched as certainly not to 
 facilitate apology or retraction. Mr. Yates appealed 
 for advice to Dickens, and the impression produced at 
 the time seems certainly to have been that Dickens con-
 
 THACKERAY. 197 
 
 ducted the controversy from this point in a spirit hostile 
 to Thackeray. Be that as it may, Thackeray next took 
 the unusual course of appealing to the committee of the 
 Garrick Club, on the plea that he had only met Mr. 
 Yates at the Club, and that it was for the Club to protect 
 him against Mr. Yates's insults. This, with all admiration 
 for Thackeray, was scarcely, I think, de l>o?ine guerre. 
 The case was hardly one on which the Club ought to 
 have been called upon to adjudicate; nor, in truth, did 
 Thackeray himself come into court with perfectly clean 
 hands, for he had made some of the members figure in 
 his books, and not to their advantage. However, his 
 influence at the club was paramount. Dickens was a 
 member too, but did not go there very often, while 
 Thackeray was extremely fond of "the G.," "the little 
 G.," "the dearest place in the world," as he affectionately 
 called it, and a constant habitue. In July, at a general 
 meeting, resolutions were passed, notwithstanding all 
 that Dickens and Wilkie Collins could urge, which 
 involved the ejection of Mr. Yates from the club 
 unless he made " ample apology." This he refused to 
 do, and he was turned out — a tremendous punishment, 
 it must be owned, to a young fellow of twenty-seven just 
 beginning life. 
 
 Of course the sting of Mr. Yates's article was its impu- 
 tation of bad faith. As Thackeray had said in his first 
 letter to Mr. Yates, on the 14th of June : "As I under- 
 stand your phrases, you impute insincerity to me when 
 I speak good-naturedly in private, assign dishonourable 
 motives to me for sentiments which I have delivered in 
 public," — and though Mr. Yates repudiated the meaning
 
 1 
 
 198 LIFE OF 
 
 thus attached to his words, yet certainly that looks like 
 their meaning. Still, even so, it is ditlficult to understand 
 why Thackeray was so ruffled by an article in an obscure 
 paper like Town Talk. The explanation given at the 
 time, and very current since, is that the whole affair 
 was an outburst of long-smouldering jealousy between 
 Thackeray and Dickens. Such a surmise must, from its 
 nature, be difficult of proof or disproof.' Mr. Yates 
 says " there was no intimacy, nor anything really like 
 friendship between the two men." And this is possibly 
 true, though there are many records of friendly meetings, 
 as at Boulogne in 1854, and at the private theatricals 
 at Tavistock House on the i8th of June, 1855. Dickens 
 was no critic, except where art of a similar kind to his own 
 was concerned, and most likely thought rather meanly of 
 his great rival's works. Thackeray, whose literary culture 
 was far wider, expressed, both in his writings, and also in 
 private correspondence never meant for publication, a 
 very just appreciation of Dickens's magnificent gifts. 
 Peace be to their rivalries now, if so be that there were 
 rivalries. It is pleasant to think that a week before 
 Thackeray's death the estrangement of the last five 
 years came to an end. The two men met on the steps 
 of the Athenceum Club, turned and looked at each other, 
 and Dickens did not refuse the proffered hand of a 
 renewed friendship. Had Thackeray lived I doubt not 
 that with Mr. Yates too there would have been recon- 
 ciliation. 
 
 "The Virginians" came to an end in October, 1859; 
 
 ' " Neither was wholly right, nor was either altogether in the 
 wrong," is the testimony of Forster, Dickens's biographer.
 
 THACKERAY. 199 
 
 and Thackeray was at once in the thick of the prepara- 
 tions for The Cornhill Magazine. Shilhng magazines 
 were then a comparatively new departure. Macmtllans 
 Magazine, under the editorship of Professor Masson, 
 was just being started, the first number appearing in 
 November, 1859, and now the Cornhill, under Thackeray, 
 the great Thackeray, was to be launched by the house of 
 Smith and Elder, and to take the world by storm. How 
 well we oldsters, who were then youngsters, remember 
 the eager anticipations with which the new venture was 
 expected ! What a magazine of magazines it was to be ! 
 Nor were we disappointed. Thackeray, the procrastin- 
 ating apprentice, did not, indeed, to begin with, come 
 out in his full force as a novelist. It had been in- 
 tended that he should start the periodical with one of 
 his great novels. But the time had advanced, and he 
 had not been ready — or only ready with a comparatively 
 unimportant story, "Lovel the Widower," based upon 
 an old play of his. On the 28th of October he had written 
 to TroUope, expressing great admiration for the latter's 
 "Three Clerks," and asking for his co-operation. TroUope 
 had been offered ;^i,ooo for a novel if the first portion 
 could be got ready by the 12 th of December, and 
 TroUope, like the good steady mill-horse that he was, 
 had set to work at once and ground out his novel in 
 time — and a very good novel " Framley Parsonage " 
 proved to be. But if Thackeray gave to the first number 
 of The Cornhill Magazine, for January, i860, nothing 
 greater in the way of fiction than Chapter I. of " Lovel 
 the Widower," he gave to it the first of his delightful 
 " Roundabout Papers " — papers that none but he could
 
 200 LIFE OF 
 
 have written; — and what betweenTroUope and Thackeray 
 the world was well satisfied. 
 
 In the middle of the preceding month (December, 
 1859) Thackeray seems to have been assured of the 
 commercial success of the magazine, and to have gone 
 off to Paris, quite "like his old self," as Fields records. 
 "Those days in Paris were simply tremendous," says 
 Fields : — 
 
 " We dined at all possible and impossible places together. We 
 walked round and round the glittering courts of the Palais Royal 
 • . . and all my efforts were necessary to restrain him from rushing 
 in and ordering a pocketful of diamonds and ' other trifles,' as he 
 called them ; ' for,' said he, ' how can I spend the princely in- 
 come which Smith allows me for editing the Cornhill unless I 
 begin instantly somewhere ? ' If he saw a group of three or four 
 persons talking together in an excited way ... he would whisper 
 to me with intense gesticulation : ' There, there, you see the news 
 has reached Paris, and perhaps the number has gone up since my 
 last accounts from London.' His spirits during these few days were 
 colossal, and he told me he found it impossible to sleep for counting 
 his subscribers." * 
 
 Thackeray, if we are to believe Trollope, was not a 
 good editor; and that he was not a very methodical 
 editor, any more than he was a very methodical writer, 
 may well be believed. But such admirable work is often 
 turned out by the unmethodical ! And I confess that 
 Trollope, in his remarks on Thackeray, always reminds 
 me a little of that schoolmaster of whom Charles Lamb 
 says : " Upon my complaining that these little sketches of 
 mine were anything but methodical, and that I was unable 
 
 ' Fields' "Yesterdays with Authors," and "Biographical Notes, 
 &c."
 
 THACKERAY. 201 
 
 to make them otherwise, (he) kindly undertook to in- 
 struct me in the method by which young gentlemen in 
 his seminary were taught to compose English themes." 
 Though Thackeray may not have been very regular in 
 the discharge of his editorial duties, and though they 
 certainly were irksome to him,' yet he succeeded, during 
 the months of his editorship, in producing a very ex- 
 cellent periodical. If the "Thorns in the Cushion " did 
 torment him sometimes, as he so gracefully describes in 
 the " Roundabout Paper " bearing that title, — if the poor 
 governess would send him her unsuitable contribution 
 with the pathetic appeal to his kindness — and the 
 *' envelope with its penny stamp— Heaven help us!" — 
 if the postman's knock became an actual torment through 
 the frequency of such appeals — why, after all, he was 
 the sufferer, not the public who bought the magazine. 
 The unsuitable contributions were rejected, however, 
 sadly. 
 
 "Lovel the Widower" appeared in the Cornhill ixoxti 
 January to June, i860 ; and is scarcely, I venture to think, 
 for Thackeray, a very good story. It is not merely that 
 the characters are unsympathetic ; but they are — which 
 is much worse — uninteresting. Lovel himself is little 
 more than a shadow. The heroine, who is engaged to 
 the local medical practitioner, half engaged to the 
 narrator of the tale, Mr. Batchelor, loved by the butler, 
 and, with no breathing space at all, re-engaged to Lovel 
 — is a riddle. Nor can one even praise her skill, for 
 there was surely want of generalship in allowing all these 
 loves to come to a head simultaneously. She should 
 ' See Mr. Payn's ^' Some Literary Recollections."
 
 202 LIFE OF 
 
 have done like Napoleon and beaten her enemies, her 
 natural enemies, piecemeal. The reader feels that she 
 had not really earned Lovel's hand — and wealth. 
 
 The story is an amplification of a play, "The Wolves and 
 the Lamb," which Thackeray had written in 1854; it is 
 premised, and offered to Alfred Wigan, and Buckstone, 
 for the Olympic or Haymarket Theatres. The two 
 managers, notwithstanding the author's great name, had 
 rejected the play ; and as one reads it one can but see 
 that they did right. For though the piece is simpler 
 than the story, and the character of the heroine made 
 more comprehensible, yet, even thus, the directness of 
 effect essential to stage representation is not attained. 
 And then there is no action, no movement. Thackeray 
 in fact, with all his intense love for the stage,^ had 
 apparently no dramatic gift. Twice, and twice only, 
 was the " Wolves and the Lamb " produced, and that 
 
 'There is a French melodrama, " The Abbaye de Pemarch," by 
 "M.M. de Tournenine and Thackeray," which was produced on 
 the 1st of February, 1840, at the theatre of the Porte St. Antoine, 
 Paris, and is ascribed to Thackeray in an American translation of 
 the play, in the British Museum Catalogue, and in Mr. Shepherd's 
 Bibliography of iSSo — but dropped out of his later Bibliography. 
 The play is founded, as regards the main incident, on Southey's 
 ballad, " Mary the Maid of the Inn," and bears no trace, that I can 
 see, of Thackeray's workmanship. It is, I imagine, the work of 
 another member of the Thackeray family, whose name goes 
 darkling in the dramatic literature of the Thirties and Forties. The 
 play seems to have run, in an intermittent sort of way, for about 
 three weeks, so far as I can judge by the advertisements and press 
 notices, and to have excited no particular amount of attention. 
 
 As this goes to the press, it is announced that a dramatized 
 version of Thackeray's "The Rose and the Ring" is to be pro- 
 duced at the Prince of Wales' Theatre.
 
 THACKERAY. 203 
 
 was by an amateur company, and in his new house in 
 Palace Green. Here is the play-bill before me, headed, 
 "W. Empty House Theatricals." But Mr. Merivale, 
 who was present, and not only took parts in the play and 
 the farce afterwards, but held office as "acting manager," 
 shall describe the occasion : — 
 
 " Thackeray declined a ' speaking part ' on the ground that he 
 couldn't possibly learn such poor words, and only appeared as the 
 clerical papa, just before the fall of the curtain, to hold out his hands 
 and say, « Bless you, my children,' in pantomime, to actors and 
 audience. And a pretty, gracious, memorable sight, and a sound of 
 much applause, and no little tearfulness it was, when Thackeray so 
 came forward to welcome his friends and guests, for the first time, 
 to the new house he had just built himself on Palace Green. I said 
 it was a house-warming, and the place was still unfurnished except 
 for the occasion. Hence the ' W. Empty House,' which has prob- 
 ably puzzled my readers even more than it puzzled the company. 
 Of all things Thackeray loved a pun — and the worse it was the 
 better he loved it. He drew up his play-bill himself, and two things 
 he insisted on • . . and secondly that ' W. Empty House ' must 
 head the bill. Humbly I tried to persuade the great man that the 
 joke was unworthy of him ; but he insisted that it was very much 
 wittier than anything in the play, and he would have it. W. M. T. 
 were his initials, that is all. Dear old kindly child ! " ' 
 
 " Lovel the Widower " was followed by '* The Adven- 
 tures of Philip on his way through the World," of which 
 the first instalment was published in The Comhill 
 Magazine, for January, 1861, and the last in the number 
 for August, 1862. I shall not dwell on the book. With 
 admirable scenes and passages, as there are in all that 
 Thackeray ever wrote, with the beautiful character of the 
 '• I^ittle Sister" coming back to us out of the far-ofif 
   Temple Bar, June, 1888.
 
 204 LIFE OF 
 
 "Shabby-Genteel Story "^— with all this, the book is not 
 one of Thackeray's successes. As in " Lovel," so here 
 there seems a want of grasp. The discursiveness, the 
 tendency to sermonize, to lose the thread of the narrative 
 — these faults, of which the germs existed in his earlier 
 works, are now intensified. There is a kind of feeling of 
 lassitude in the writer. To say that he was " worked 
 out" would be untrue. In the fragment of "Dennis 
 Duval," left unfinished at his death, there is the old 
 freshness and power. Rye, the picturesque red-roofed 
 island in the Romney Marsh levels, and neighbouring 
 Winchelsea — these, in his narrative, are peopled again 
 with their old motley population of smugglers and 
 Huguenot refugees, Roman Catholic squires and gentle- 
 men of the King's Navy. The hand that described the 
 death of the Princess Olivia in "Barry Lyndon," or 
 Lady Castlewood's declaration of Esmond's legitimacy 
 in "Esmond," or Lord Castlewood's account of Henry 
 Warrington's interview with Lady Maria in "The Vir- 
 ginians," had not lost its cunning when it came to write 
 of poor Madame de Saverne's sorrows, and madness, and 
 death. 
 
 One incident connected with "Philip" should be 
 noted. Thackeray had mainly illustrated his own works. 
 He was a most facile designer, probably too facile. 
 Planche, whose recollections of him went back to the 
 time when he was a " slim young man, rather taciturn," 
 in Paris, says : " Drawing appeared to be his favourite 
 
 ' He had intended, as far back as 1857, to complete the "Shabby- 
 Genteel Story," interrupted, as he then said, " at a sad period of the 
 writer's own life " (1840).
 
 THACKERAY. 205 
 
 amusement, and he often sat by my side while 1 was 
 reading or writing, covering any scrap of paper lying 
 about with the most spirited sketches and amusing cari- 
 catures," Book upon book in his library was illu- 
 minated with his pictured marginalia. "The hours," 
 Mrs. Ritchie tells us, 
 
 " which he spent upon his drawing-blocks and sketch-books 
 brought no fatigue or weariness ; they were of endless interest and 
 amusement to him, and rested him when he was tired. It was 
 only," she adds, " when he came to etch upon steel or to draw for 
 the engraver upon wood, that he complained of effort and want of 
 ease ; and we used to wish that his drawings could be given as they 
 were first made, without the various transmigrations of wood and 
 steel, and engraver's toil and printer's ink."' 
 
 This clearly indicates where the fault lay. The in- 
 tention, the impression he wished to render, were 
 admirable. He knew what he meant thoroughly ; and 
 so long as his work remained an indication it was most 
 effective. But for all elaboration he wanted the 
 technical skill. The amateur's hand failed to carry to 
 completion the artist's thought. Thus, in the more 
 complex designs, the defective drawing is, if not glaring, 
 at least apparent. Even so, however, as illustrations, as 
 presentments in form and line of what he, the author, 
 was describing in print, they are nearly alsvays excellent. 
 They do what a good illustration should do : they 
 translate the thought into another art, show it, as one 
 may say, from a different standpoint. And in the 
 slighter sketches, the initial designed letters to the 
 chapters, wherever a quaint fancy, a dainty suggestiveness, 
 
 ' Preface to " Orphan of Pimlico."
 
 206 LIFE OF 
 
 an arch or frolicsome humour, would do duty for sound 
 draftsmanship, there Thackeray was delightful. One 
 looks through these designs with an ever-renewed 
 pleasure. In "The Newcomes," however, he seems to 
 have mistrusted his own skill, and the illustrations were 
 intrusted to Richard Doyle, whose art partook very 
 much of the nature of Thackeray's own. Perhaps he 
 drew better, but not so very much better, though 
 Thackeray generously said, " He does beautifully and 
 easily what I wanted to do and can't " ; and serious 
 book illustration was scarcely his forte. He was far 
 happier in Queen Titania's Court, delineating fairy and 
 gnome, all the denizens of Elf-land. Thackeray seems at 
 first to have intended to illustrate " Philip " himself, in 
 accordance with his more general practice ; but, whether 
 in weariness or diffidence, he experienced the need of a 
 coadjutor to eke out and finish his designs. A young 
 fellow of twenty, who had just begun to make draw- 
 ings for Once a Week, was introduced to him for the 
 purpose. Thackeray was critic enough to know good 
 work when he saw it. The young fellow was obvi- 
 ously fit for better things than correcting and 
 refurbishing. He should do the illustrations alone 
 — and in the woodcut of "Nurse and Doctor" pub- 
 lished with Chapter XI. in The Cornhill Magazine for 
 May, 1 86 1, one seems for the first time to recognize the 
 new artist's unfettered hand. Nor had Thackeray cause 
 to regret the change. That lad of twenty proved to be 
 one of the best of contemporary book illustrators — I 
 know nothing better than his pictures for Mrs. Ritchie's 
 "Village on the Cliff" — and proved further, notwith-
 
 THACKERAY. 26t 
 
 standing his early death, to be one of the great forces in 
 English art. His name, which one likes to connect with 
 that of Thackeray, was Frederick Walker. 
 
 Not in "Lovel the Widower," not in "Philip," not 
 even in *' Dennis Duval " is to be found the flower of 
 Thackeray's later work. That blossom, and a beautiful 
 blossom it is, came up, I think, in the " Roundabout 
 Papers." The French critic is fond of accusing the 
 general English novelist of moralizing overmuch, of taking 
 sides for or against his characters, and preaching either 
 at them or through their mouths. M. Taine takes up 
 this parable at length in his otherwise very able essay on 
 Thackeray, and demonstrates, entirely to his own satis- 
 faction, how infinitely less artistic is Thackeray's attitude 
 than that of Balzac, using for comparison the utterly 
 dissimilar characters of Madame de Marneffe and Becky 
 Sharp. Nay, Thackeray himself, in one of these very 
 "Roundabout Papers," makes a "clean breast" of it, 
 and "liberates his soul " thus : — 
 
 " Perhaps of all the novel-spinners now extant, the present 
 speaker is the most addicted to preaching. Does he not stop 
 perpetually in his story and begin to preach to you ? "When he 
 ought to be engaged with business, is he not for ever taking the 
 Muse by the sleeve, and plaguing her with some of his cynical 
 sermons ? I cry peccavi loudly and heartily. I tell you I would 
 like to be able to write a story which should show no egotism 
 whatever, in which there should be no reflections, no cynicism, no 
 vulgarity (and so forth), but an incident in every other page, a 
 villain, a battle, a mystery in every chapter." 
 
 Then, after describing the methods of Dumas, the 
 elder, of the Great Alexander, he says : —
 
 20B LIFE OF 
 
 "My Pegasus won't fly, so as to allow me to survey the field 
 below me. He has no wings ; he is blind of one eye, certainly ; 
 he is restive, stubborn, slow ; crops a hedge when he ought to be 
 galloping, or gallops when he ought to be quiet. He never will show 
 off when I want him. Sometimes he goes at a pace which surprises 
 me. Sometimes, when I most wish him to make the running, the 
 brute turns restive, and I am obliged to let him take his own 
 time." 
 
 A caricature even of the great novelist's later art, of 
 course ; yet a caricature, like all real caricature, that was 
 not without a substratum of truth. But in the " Round- 
 about Papers " Pegasus might go as he listed. There 
 was no reason whatever why he should pursue a straight 
 or even course. He might wander at will. His caprioles 
 were an added charm ; his fits of sloth or restlessness, 
 a matter of no moment. Here, to drop Thackeray's 
 image, Thackeray was the essayist, and the "Round- 
 about" essayist to boot. Plere he might legitimately 
 preach, or moralize, tell stories, or meander into episodes, 
 be the literary critic or the critic of life, talk of travel, 
 or books, or men, or pictures, or history, flit hither and 
 thither just as suited his wayward mood. And how 
 delightfully he does it all ! These essays have the 
 engaging egotism of Montaigne, a felicity of language 
 equal to that of Goldsmith, often something of 
 Charles Lamb's fancifulness, and withal a charm that 
 is all Thackeray's own. They are unique in English 
 literature. There is nothing quite like them. 
 
 There is a kindly mellow wisdom too, a genial 
 tolerance and forbearance in the " Roundabout Papers " 
 — a something which suggests that, as he wrote them, 
 the shadows were lengthening in the comparatively short
 
 THACKERAY. 209 
 
 day of Thackeray's life. " His last fugitive pieces in 
 the Cornhill have been almost sermons," said Newman, 
 writing three days after Thackeray's death. A kind 
 of evening feeling seems indeed to have been on him 
 for some time before the end. "I am an old man 
 already," he had said to Bayard Taylor, in 1857, 
 Writing to Longfellow on the i6th of November, 
 1859, and asking for his co-operation for The Cornhill 
 Magazine, he had remarked : — 
 
 " I intended, two or three months ago, to shut up my desk for 
 a year — not write a line — and go on my travels. But the gods 
 willed otherwise. I am pressed into the service of this magazine, 
 and engaged to write ever so much more for the next three years. 
 Then, if I last so long, I shall be free of books and publishers. 
 I hope to see friends to whose acquaintance I look back with — I 
 can't tell you how much — gratitude and kind feeling." 
 
 Trollope, who made Thackeray's acquaintance just after 
 this, gives the impression, in all he writes about him, of 
 a man whose life was in the past rather than the future. 
 Yet at this time he was not fifty. But many things 
 had contributed to age him before his time : the 
 struggles and sorrows of his earlier manhood, an 
 habitual disregard, it is to be feared, of the laws of 
 health — late hours, want of exercise, — and lastly, terrible 
 spasms of pain, recurring often at no distant intervals. 
 Alas ! he was no longer the " Fat Contributor " of days 
 gone by.^ It was life's evening with him indeed, and 
 the nicfht about to fall. 
 
 
   Dickens told me tliat, looking on him as he lay in his coffin, 
 he wondered that the figure he had known in life as of such qoble 
 
 14
 
 210 LlhE OF 
 
 With what thoughts did he look forward into the 
 darkness ? With thoughts cheered and made bright by 
 a Christian fai.h and hope, undoubtedly. Writing of 
 Lord Kew in " The Newcomes," he had said, " Those 
 doubts which perplex many a thinking man, and, when 
 formed and uttered, give many a fond and faithful 
 woman pain so exquisite, had most fortunately never 
 crossed Kew's mind. His early impressions were such 
 as his mother had left them. ..." And something of 
 the same kind may be said of Thackeray himself. 
 There is no evidence in his works of any passionate 
 struggle between belief and disbelief. None of his 
 characters go through that fiery trial. He never seems 
 to have anticipated in any way the religious problems 
 that perplex this generation, and are debated in maga- 
 zines, reviews, newspapers, novels. God's providence, 
 Christ's mission to mankind, man's future life — all these 
 he takes habitually for granted. Arthur Pendennis is the 
 one of his creations in which he unquestionably put most 
 of himself, and he does not fear to show us Arthur, more 
 than once, in moments of great feeUng or great sorrow, 
 kneeling down in prayer : — 
 
 " As they were talking the clock struck nine, and Helen re- 
 minded him how, when he was a little boy, she used to go up to 
 his bedroom at that hour, and hear him say ' Our Father.' And 
 once more, oh, once more the young man fell down at his mother's 
 sacred knees, and sobbed out the prayer which the Divine Tender- 
 ness uttered for us, and which has been echoed for twenty ages since 
 
 presence could seem so shrunken and wasted " (Fields' " Yester- 
 days with Authors "). His hands, it was remarked, were quite thin, 
 like those of an old man of eighty.
 
 THACKERA V. 211 
 
 by millions of sinful and humbled men. And as he spoke the last 
 words of the supplication, the mother's head fell down on her boy's, 
 and her arms closed round him, and together they repeated the 
 words ' for ever and ever,' and ' Amen.' " 
 
 Would the reader like to be made to feel how much 
 the world has advanced — or, if you prefer it, gone back 
 — in the last forty years ? I take up a story by Mr. 
 Besant, " Katharme Regina." The hero here, too, is a 
 journalist, like Arthur Pendennis, and is placed in a 
 position of the most terrible grief and perplexity — the 
 girl he loves being lost, swallowed up in the great desert 
 of London. He cries out in bitterness of soul, and an 
 old lady speaks to him thus : — • 
 
 " ' Mr. Addison,' — she laid her hand on his — ' I am an old 
 woman now, and I have seen a great deal — my sister and I together — 
 of trouble and privation. We, too, have been reduced to walk the 
 streets at night for want of a bed, and to go hungry for want of 
 food. Yet we were never utterly forsaken. Your Katie is not quite 
 friendless. The God who rescued you from the Arabs will save her 
 from the devils — who destroy soul as well as body— of the streets ! 
 Have faith, young man. Lift up your heart, oh, lift up your heart 
 unto the Lord!' This language," adds Mr. Besant, "is not so 
 common as it used to be, and is seldom used for the comfort and 
 solace of a London journalist, who may chronicle the emotions of 
 religion, but is not often expected to feel them." 
 
 Mark the contrast: and it is all the more striking 
 because Mr. Besant writes of the old faith in no spirit 
 of hostility, but, on the contrary, with such a keen 
 perception of its ennobling effect on human character. 
 Forty years ago it was held natural for Arthur 
 Pendennis to kneel down in prayer. Now it is thought
 
 212 LIFE OF 
 
 odd and quaint that any form of religious consolation 
 should be proposed to Tom Addison. 
 
 So Thackeray, to whom the modern doubt had not 
 come, hold to the old faith, and thought of death not 
 gloomily but with a cheerful trust and hope. Writing 
 to Mr. Reed, who had just lost his brother, he said : — 
 
 " That ghastly struggle over, who would pity any man that 
 departs? It is the survivors one commiserates. . . • But that loss, 
 what a gain to him ! A just man summoned by God, — for what 
 purpose can he go but to meet the Divine love and goodness? I 
 never think about deploring such ; and as you and I send for our 
 children, meaning them only love and kindness, how much more 
 Pater Noster ? So we say, and weep the beloved ones whom we 
 lose all the same with the natural selfish sorrow ; as you, I dare say, 
 will have a heavy heart when your daughter marries and leaves 
 you. • . . We parted with a great deal of kindness, please God, 
 and friendly talk of a future meeting. May it happen one day." 
 
 Again he wrote to Miss Perry from America : — 
 
 "I don't pity anybody who leaves the world, not even a fair 
 young girl in her prime ; I pity those remaining. On her journey, 
 if it pleases God to send her [he was writing of a sick girl], 
 depend on it there's no cause for grief— that's but an earthly 
 condition ; out of our stormy life, and brought nearer the Divine 
 light and warmth, there must be a serene climate. Can't you fancy 
 sailing into the calm? Would you care about going on the voyage, 
 only for the dear souls left on the other shore ? " 
 
 He had given up the editorship of The Cornhill 
 Magazine in March, 1862— at least his valedictory 
 address to " contributors and correspondents " is dated 
 the 1 8th of that month ; and at about the same date, 
 as I gather, had moved from Onslow Square to his new 
 home at Palace Green. This was, and is, a noble 
 dwelling, built, most aippropriately, in the style of
 
 THACKERAY. 213 
 
 Queen Anne's day, and of red brick ; and his friends 
 debated much whether he was justified in housing 
 himself so sumptuously — the issue proving, however, 
 that he was right, for the house was sold at a con- 
 siderable profit after his death. Several kindly acts are 
 noted as belonging to these last few months of his life. 
 On the ist of December, 1862, at the request of Arch- 
 deacon Sinclair, he so far put aside his constitutional 
 timidity, to say nothing of an attack of illness, as to 
 address, " with much emphasis, a few weighty and well- 
 considered sentences " to a public meeting in the Vestry 
 Hall at Kensington, on behalf of the sufferers by the 
 cotton famine, he himself subscribing ;^5o.' In the 
 following May there was an exhibition of Cruikshank's 
 works — an exhibition which proved to be no great 
 success — and "kind Thackeray," we are told, "came 
 with his grave face, and looked through the little 
 gallery, and went off to write one of his charming 
 essays, which appeared in The Times" of May 
 i5th,=^ thus doing what he could for an old great 
 artist fallen on somewhat evil limes. On the i6th of 
 December he was dining, very cheerfully and pleasantly, 
 at the Garrick Club, " pretending," records one who was 
 present, " to incite one very old friend to give a party of 
 an excessively gay description, in order, as he said, that 
 we might fancy ourselves all young again " — and 
 subscribing for the benefit of another disabled artist. On 
 the next day, the 17th, he dined with Dr. Merri- 
 
 • See Archdeacon Sinclair's "Sketches of old Times and Distant 
 Places." 
 == Blanchard Jerrold's "Life of George Cruikshank."
 
 214 LIFE OF 
 
 man of Kensington Square. " As he entered," says 
 Dr. Merriman, " I saw he was not well, and with his 
 usual kindness he said : ' I would only have turned 
 out to come to you as an old friend.' " But he soon 
 revived, and as the evening went on was full of his 
 old pleasantry. He " stayed late," continues Dr. Merri- 
 man, " and I strolled up Young Street with him ; we 
 halted by No. 13" — where it will be remembered he 
 had formerly lived — and " he alluded to old times 
 and happy days there ; he told me ' Vanity Fair ' was 
 his greatest work, and ' The Canebottomed Chair ' his 
 favourite ballad ; and we parted at the top of ' Our 
 Street' never to meet again alive in this world." ' 
 
 So, with fitful alternations of good and bad health, his 
 life wore on to its close. "I saw him. . . .," says Dickens, 
 " shortly before Christmas at the Athen^um Club, when 
 he told me that he had been in bed three days, that 
 after those attacks he was troubled with cold shiverings 
 which quite took the power of work out of him, and 
 that he had it in his mind to try a new remedy, which 
 he laughingly described. He was very cheerful and 
 looked very bright. In the night of that day week he 
 died." Carlyle, writing to Lord Houghton on the 29th 
 of December, says : — 
 
 " Poor Thackeray ! I saw him not ten days ago. I was riding 
 in the dusk, heavy of heart, along by the Serpentine and Hyde 
 Park, when some human brother from a chariot, with a young lady 
 in it, threw me a shower of salutations. I looked up — it was 
 Thackeray with his daughter : the last time I was to see him in this 
 world. He had many fine qualities; no guile or malice against any 
 
 ' St, Maiy Abbots Kensington Parish Magazine, Sept. 1889.
 
 THACKERA V. 215 
 
 mortal ; a big mass of a soul, but not strong in proportion ; a beau- 
 tiful vein of genius lay struggling about him. Poor Thackeray ! 
 Adieu ! adieu ! " ' 
 
 And Anthony TroUope, writing to Mr. Synge just 
 after Thackeray's death, says, " Dear old fellow — I saw 
 him for the last time about ten days before his death, 
 and sat with him for half an hour talking about 
 himself. I never knew him pleasanter or more at ease 
 as to his bodily ailments. How I seem to have loved 
 that dear head of his now that he has gone." Gone, 
 yes, gone, and the end cannot be better told than in 
 Anthony Trollope's loving words to the same corre- 
 spondent ^ : — 
 
 " I had better tell the story all through. It is bad to have to 
 write it, but you will expect to be told. He had suffered very much 
 on the Wednesday (23rd), but had got out in the afternoon. He 
 was home early, and was so ill when going to bed that his servant 
 suggested that he had better stay. He was suffering from spasms 
 and retching, having been for some months more free from this 
 complaint than for a long time previously. He would not have the 
 servant, and was supposed to go to bed. He was heard moving in 
 the night. ... It is believed that he must have gone off between 
 two and three, and I fear his last hours were painful. His arms 
 and face were very rigid — as I was told by Leech who saw him in 
 the morning afterwards." 
 
 " On the 24th December," says Dr. Merriman, " I 
 was summoned about 8 a.m. to Palace Green to find 
 him lying dead. . . . Life had been extinct some hours : 
 
 ' From Mr. Wemyss Rcid's " Life, Letters, and Friendships of 
 Richard Monckton Milnes." 
 
 ~ Trollope's affection for Thackeray was beautiful, and throws a 
 very pleasant light on the biography in the English Men of Letters' 
 Series.
 
 216 LIFE OP 
 
 effusion had taken place into his powerful and great 
 brain, . . . and he passed away in the night to the better 
 country where there is no night." 
 
 Thus died Thackeray on Christmas Eve, 1863. Of 
 the immense concourse that attended his funeral on the 
 3olh of December — a concourse including so many of 
 the foremost men in literature and art — it is scarcely 
 necessary to speak here. He lies in Kensal Green 
 Cemetery beneath a plain stone bearing this simple but 
 sufficient record : " William Makepeace Thackeray, born 
 July 18, 181 1 ; died December 24, 1863." Only twelve 
 months afterwards his mother was laid to rest in the 
 same grave. With but one grave between lies his old 
 schoolfellow and lifelong friend, John Leech.^ 
 
 No biography of Thackeray, on anything like an 
 adequate scale, has hitherto been attempted. This, 
 which, considering his eminence as a writer, would other- 
 wise be so strange, is accounted for by a chance remark 
 of his — a remark, I venture to think, not perfectly under- 
 stood. That a full Life will be published sooner or later 
 may be taken for granted ; and it were to be wished that 
 the task should be undertaken by his daughter, Mrs. 
 Ritchie, who has inherited so much of his literary gift. 
 Meanwhile stray letters come to light here and there, 
 old friends publish their reminiscences, bibliographers 
 
 ' There is a bust of Thackeray by his friend and sometime neigh- 
 bour, Marochetti, in Westminster Abbey. He left no will. The 
 full inscription on the grave is "William Makepeace Thackeray, 
 born July iS, 181 1 ; died December 24, 1S63. Anne Carmichael 
 Smyth, died December iS, 1S64, aged 72; his mother by her first 
 marriage."
 
 THACKERAY. 21? 
 
 pursue their useful toil, new facts, of more or less 
 relevance, are unearthed. In the foregoing pages, so far 
 as I am responsible for them, it has been my object to 
 collect these scattered materials and string them to- 
 gether as a fairly continuous narrative. I have allowed 
 Thackeray to speak for himself wherever practicable, 
 and always given place to his contemporaries if they 
 had anything material to record. That the man's 
 character was, in many ways, an enigma to those con- 
 temporaries seems clear ; nor is it very easy to read 
 it now. "I have known Thackeray eighteen years," 
 Douglas Jerrold used to say, " and don't know him 
 yet." Charlotte Eronte, during their brief intercourse, 
 was as much struck by his strangeness as by his great- 
 ness. "Thackeray's feelings," she wrote, "are not such 
 as can be gauged by ordinary calculation : variable 
 weather is what I should ever expect from that quarter." 
 And Carlyle, addressing Emerson on the 9th of Sep- 
 tember, 1853, spoke in these somewhat ambiguous 
 terms : " Thackeray has very rarely come athwart me 
 since his return ; he is a big fellow, soul and body ; 
 of many gifts and qualities (particularly in the Hogarth 
 line, with a dash of Sterne superadded), of enormous 
 appetite withal, and very uncertain and chaotic in all 
 points except his oiit^r breeding, which is fixed enough 
 and perfect according to the modern English style. I 
 rather dread explosions in his history. A big, fierce, 
 weeping, hungry man ; not a strong one." 
 
 So he puzzled those who knew him ; and as one looks 
 at him through their eyes, looks at him even in the light 
 of the knowledge now available, one is not surprised that
 
 218 LIFE OF 
 
 they were puzzled. There were so many facets to his 
 character — he presented such different sides of himself 
 to different people. Let us hear their varying testimony. 
 Mr. Yates, as we have seen, in the peccant article of 
 1858 opined that "his bearing" was "cold and unin- 
 viting, his style of conversation either openly cynical or 
 affectedly good-natured and benevolent ; his bonhoinie 
 forced, his wit biting, his pride easily touched ; but his 
 appearance invariably that of a cool, suave, well-bred 
 gentleman, who, whatever may be rankling within, suffers 
 no surface display of his emotion." Mr. John Esten 
 Cooke, on the other hand, says : " As to the general 
 tone of his conversation, what impressed me most forcibly 
 was his entire unreserve, and the genuine bonhomie of his 
 air — a bonhomie which struck me as being anything but 
 what his critic, Mr. Yates, called it — 'forced.' The man 
 seemed wholly simple and natural. . . . He smiled 
 easily, and evidently enjoyed the humorous side of 
 things, but in private, as in delivering his lectures on 
 Swift and some others, there was an undertone of sad- 
 ness in his voice." Or again, to take another contrast, 
 Sergeant Ballantine, an exceptionally hostile witness, 
 observes : " I never thought him an agreeable com- 
 panion. He was very egotistical, greedy of flattery, and 
 sensitive of criticism to a ridiculous extent. He may 
 have possessed great powers of conversation, but did not 
 exhibit them upon the occasions when I had an oppor- 
 tunity of judging." But here there is an overwhelming 
 mass of contrary evidence. Dr. John Brown, Bayard 
 Taylor, Mr. James Payn, John Esten Cooke, Mrs. Fanny 
 Kemble, Dr. Ivlerriman, Reed — a whole cloud of wit-
 
 THACKERAY. 219 
 
 nesses — speak with enthusiasm of the charm of his 
 manner, and the pleasure to be derived from his society. 
 They never weary of saying how genial he was, how 
 ready to please and to be pleased, how largely friendly 
 and hospitable. Nay, as regards his manner itself, what 
 different impressions it produced on different people ! To 
 some he appeared only as the conventionalized impassive 
 gentleman. " I have never heard him laugh heartily, or 
 talk vehemently," says an anonymous writer in Lippin- 
 cotfs Magazine for January, 187 1. Wallack, on the other 
 hand, describes him as laughing till the tears ran down 
 his cheeks ; and the impression produced by Fields' 
 reminiscences is certainly that of a man who, belonging 
 to a generation with more animal spirits than our own, 
 knew how to be hilarious. 
 
 The truth I take to be somewhat as follows. Thacke- 
 ray had an insight almost morbidly keen into the little- 
 nesses, the meannesses, the weaknesses, the foibles of 
 mankind. All the seamy side of life stood out in his 
 vision distinct and terribly clear. But with this know- 
 ledge — a knowledge like that of the Royal Preacher for 
 bitterness and sorrow — he had a most tender heart : " an 
 almost equally exaggerated sympathy," says TroUope, 
 "with the joys and troubles of individuals around him." 
 Thus he was a different man according as the head 
 spoke or the heart spoke ; and sometimes, to the 
 bewilderment of the listener, they spoke almost simul- 
 taneously. But any one who had once touched the 
 heart, never again, I imagine, spoke of him as a " cynic," 
 or doubted the deep sensibility that underlay his usually 
 smooth and polished manner. Then it is quite clear
 
 220 LIFE OF 
 
 that, with a fund of melancholy in his character, he 
 was very sensitive, very easily impressible — and, as 
 should always be remembered, during the last few years 
 of life he was in failing health, and liable to attacks of 
 acute and terrible pain. Thus one day he would be 
 happy, pleased with those around him, heartily taking 
 his share in life's sociabilities and convivialities, the 
 cheerful and chatty guest, the joyous host, the delightful 
 companion — and the next, it might be, the mood would 
 have changed, the cloud of disenchantment, or melan- 
 choly, or pain, come down in darkness ; — and those who 
 had seen him the day before would wonder at the change, 
 and sometimes resent it.' 
 
 But such fits were rare, and surely most amply ex- 
 cusable. Of the man's loveableness, of the almost 
 passionate affection he inspired in the breasts of many 
 persons— some not specially emotional — there is abun- 
 dant evidence. This, however, is ground which has 
 been gone over by Mr. Merivale, in the concluding 
 chapter of this volume, and I need not go over it again. 
 Nor need I dwell, save for a moment, on Thackeray's 
 family relationships. His tenderness towards his 
 mother — the "fine, handsome, young-looking old lady,"' 
 "very gracious" withal, of Charlotte Bronte's descrip- 
 tion — was very beautiful. One likes to think of her 
 going to hear him speak, unknown to himself: — 
 
 ' " So Thackeray too his gone. I was not surprised, knowing 
 how full of disease he was, and thereby accounting for much of the 
 inequality and occasional perversity in his conduct. . . . The kind, 
 tall, amusing, gray-haired man . . . very friendly. ..." (Lord 
 Houghton to his wife two days after Thackeray's death.)
 
 THACKERAY. 221 
 
 "After the fatal night of the Literary Fund disaster, [so he writes 
 in one of his charming letters] when I came home to bed (breaking 
 out into exclamations in the cab, and letting off madly parts of the 
 speech which wouldn't explode at the proper time) I found the house 
 lighted up, and the poor ol A mother waiting to hear the result of the 
 day. So I told her that I was utterly beaten, and had made a fool 
 of myself, upon which, with a sort of cry, she said, ' No you didn't, 
 old man,' — and it appears that she had been behind a pillar in the 
 gallery all the time and heard the speeches ; and as for mine she 
 thinks it was beautiful. So you see, if there's no pleasing everybody 
 yet some people are easily enough satisfied. The children came 
 down in the morning and told me about my beautiful speech which 
 Granny had heard. She got up early and told them the story about 
 it, you may be sure ; her story, which is not the true one. . . ." 
 
 Isn't it all life-like and pretty ? And as to his relations 
 with his daughters — and surely there is no human rela- 
 tionship more beautiful than that between father and 
 daughter — as to these relations, so far as one gets a 
 glimpse of them, they have the same graciousness and 
 tender beauty. He takes pleasure in his daughters' 
 society, draws and writes for them, shares in their 
 enjoyments, nurses them when they are ill, and, as 
 is but natural, reads with moistened eyes the papers in 
 which the elder of the two first gives evidence of her 
 literary gift. 
 
 One trait more should be noted before I proceed to 
 say a final word with regard to his style, and that trait 
 is his great liberality. Evidences of it come to one 
 privately, as they come also in the published records 
 of his life. We have seen how, when still struggling 
 himself against poverty, he had offered pecuniary assist- 
 ance to Lever, to help the latter to come to London. 
 We have seen him, still in comparatively impecunious
 
 222 LIFE OF 
 
 days, acting the part of Maecenas among the poor artists 
 in Rome. We have seen, too, how he indemnified the 
 young bookseller at Pluladelphia for the money lost 
 over the belated lectures. He had helped Hodder also, 
 as Hodder acknowledges gratefully. When his old 
 editor, Maginn, was in the Fleet prison — brought 
 thither only too surely by improvidence and drink — 
 he largely assisted the beaten man.' These are but a few 
 among the instances of his generosity. Free-handed, 
 liberal, his kind heart was readily touched by misfortune. 
 He was in truth a princely giver. 
 
 Thackeray's art has not, of late years at least, and so 
 far as I know, been very seriously impugned. Mr. 
 Henry James, indeed, with his graceful hesitancy, makes 
 some kind of reserve, saying : " It would take more 
 courage than I possess to intimate that the form of the 
 novel, as Dickens and Thackeray, for instance, saw it, 
 had any taint of incompleteness. It was, however, naif 
 (if I may help myself out with another French word)." 
 And Mr. Howells, not without some equally graceful self- 
 complacency, says : "The art of fiction has, in fact, become 
 a finer art in our day than it was with Dickens and 
 Thackeray. We could not suffer the confidential 
 attitude of the latter now, nor the mannerism of the 
 former, any more than we can endure the prolixity of 
 Richardson, or the coarseness of Fielding. Those great 
 men are of the past, they and their methods and 
 
 ' Hannay says Thackeray gave Maginn £y^o ; but how could 
 Thackeray have had command of such a sum in 1842, when Maginn 
 was in the Fleet Prison ? It is just possible, however, that the gift 
 was really made earlier — in the days of Thackeray's prosperity.
 
 TH ACKER A V. 223 
 
 interests ; even Trollope and Reade are not of the 
 present." Bur this, after all, is not very serious. It 
 only means, in elT ct that Thackcay did not understand 
 his art quite as Mr. Henry James and Mr. Howells 
 understand it; — and in the house of art tliere are so 
 many mansions ! No, Thackeray's art is not of the 
 past, except in so far as it deals, necessarily, with a 
 state of society that has changed, and is changing. It 
 is not of the past, because it brings before us a world 
 that lives — a world in which the men and women feel, 
 think, act, are real, exhibit the essential changeless 
 passions of humanity. Flaubert adopts towards Madame 
 Bovary the attitude of a purely unmoved spectator. 
 Thackeray is no unmoved spectator of the career of 
 Becky Sharp, Blanche Amory, or Beatrix Esmonde : 
 he takes the keenest interest in it. But what of that? 
 Surely the product, rather than the attitude of the 
 artist, is in this matter the final test. If Thackeray's 
 characters live, as they do — if they are characters worthy 
 to interest us, and so drawn that they do interest us — 
 if the adventures through which they pass, and the scenes 
 in which they figure, are so devised as to exhibit them 
 in all their development, and are moreover described 
 admirably — if thus much be realized, what can Thackeray's 
 own attitude matter, even if we make the very large 
 admission that it was mistaken ? But it was not mis- 
 taken — or rather, in the large world of art, it was an 
 attitude perfectly admissible. Granted that the show- 
 man sometimes lectured too much, especially in later 
 times, yet he had right of speech; and with what essential 
 modesty he addressed his audience, and how excellent
 
 224 LIFE OF 
 
 the truths he taught ! Manh'ness, modesty, unworldli- 
 ness, the claims of love as opposed to tlie claims of 
 self-interest, truth, honour, uprightness, woman's purity — 
 these, let French criticism say what it will, — and I am 
 not here addressing our American brothers— these are 
 not of the past, or, if they be of the past, then is man's 
 future dark indeed. 
 
 And of the more purely literary artist that was in 
 Thackeray, the "stylist," to use the modern word, what 
 praise can be too high ? " Nobody in our day wrote, 
 I should say, with such perfection of style," was Carlyle's 
 verdict, and Carlyle was no flatterer. His prose is simply 
 admirable. Without effort, without undue emphasis or 
 straining, and by the use of means seemingly simple, 
 and language almost colloquial, it reaches the very 
 highest beauty. It is eloquent where eloquence is 
 needed, but eloquent in a way that suggests nerve and 
 sinew rather than brawn and muscle. It follows uner- 
 ringly the writer's thought, sprightly where he is gay, 
 serious in his moods of sadness, persuasive when he 
 wishes to convince. It is clear as crystal always, 
 and yet sparkles with felicities of diction, that seem 
 to bubble up spontaneous and unsought. It has the 
 highest artistic finish without being finikin or arti- 
 ficial. It never cloys by sameness, or startles by an 
 affectation of novelty. It has a beautiful music of its 
 own, a music akin to that of the masters in the sister- 
 art, inasmuch as its cadences seem unforeseen, yet always 
 satisfy the ear. It belongs to the best family of English 
 classic prose, and follows in lineal descent from the 
 prose of Latimer, Addison, Steele, Swift, Sterne, Fielding,
 
 THACKERAY. 225 
 
 Goldsmith, and Lamb. But, like all of best and highest, 
 it is individual, it has a special character : it is Thackeray's 
 and none other's. And because this prose was so beauti- 
 ful, so delicately perfect, therefore Thackeray, or so it 
 seems to me, is rightly to be regarded as the first Eng- 
 lish prose classic of this century. 
 
 15
 
 CHAPTER XII. 
 
 { THA CKERA Y'S FRIENDSHIPS.) 
 
 (By Herman Merivale.) 
 
 Section i. 
 
 OF Thackeray's personal tenderness for his chosen 
 friends there are many things upon record. If he 
 loved not many, he loved well ; and from the day when, 
 with touching solicitude, he gave up a whole morning of 
 classical study at Cambridge because Badger didn't feel 
 well, the story of his friendships is the same. Venables 
 and Leech keep up the Charterhouse record. Charles 
 BuUer draws from him the beautiful and reverent lines 
 which are amongst the best known of his earnest posies : 
 
 " Who knows the inscrutable design ? 
 Blessed be he who took and gave : 
 Why should your mother, Charles, not mine, 
 Be weeping at her darling's grave ? " 
 
 Mr. Brookfield is " Reverence " and *' Vieux," and 
 "dear old William" and "Mr. Inspector Brookfield," 
 while he is himself "old brother Makepeace," or "Jos 
 Osborn," or the "Chevalier de Titmarsh," or the "Bishop 
 of Mealy Potatoes" ; or " Clarence Bulbul," when he has
 
 LIFE OF THACKERA Y. 227 
 
 to meet Jenny Lind at Benedict's. His fancy is always 
 at play on matters of this kind, and it is with a genuine 
 sense of disappointment that he describes how he once 
 was a guest at Sir George Napier's with the great 
 Macaulay, and a lady was expected whose desire in life 
 was to meet them both. He proposed that they should 
 change identities for the occasion, but the historian 
 solemnly declared that he did not approve of practical 
 jokes. Even so did it befall the rash visitor who at a 
 Scotch dinner said that he felt himself to be among the 
 sons of Burns, to be promptly assured by the whole 
 company that that was impossible, because he left none. 
 It is never prudent to joke with a Scotchman; with 
 an Englishman it is not always wise to try it. These 
 Brookfield letters teem with such pleasant strokes of 
 self-description. " I tell you and William most things," 
 he writes. But except for some hasty personal expres- 
 sions, which any one might drop in confidence without 
 meaning them, and many tiny gossips for a lady-gossip's 
 private ear, the lovers of the man are glad to feel that 
 there is no passage in them which can do anything 
 but raise him yet in their opinion, for his liquid style 
 and poetic descriptions, his bubbling humour, his 
 sturdy friendship, his reverence, his manhood, and his 
 truth. He liked to hear and to tell of kind things, he 
 says ; and in that spirit, so honourable to both, he writes 
 how another friend, " Big Higgins," the Jacob Omnium 
 of The Times, who was rich in the world's goods, offered 
 to lend him the money to lie fallow for a year if he 
 wished, as he had himself much more than he wanted. 
 Among his, Thackeray's, aversions at one time was the
 
 228 LIFE OF 
 
 well-hated Croker; and a common friend of the two, 
 in defending him, told Thackeray how Croker had one 
 day, in his presence, begged his wife to find out some 
 of the homeless youngsters who must be quartered in 
 the boy-schools round, and have them over from Saturday 
 to Monday. "They'll destroy your flower-beds and 
 upset my inkstands," he said, "but we can help them 
 more than they can hurt us." Always a child-lover, 
 Thackeray choked a little at the story, and insisted on 
 at once being taken to Mrs. Croker, who happened to 
 be living in Kensington Palace, by which he and his 
 friend were walking at the time, and making his peace 
 then and there for ever having thought or written that 
 her husband wanted heart. 
 
 " That good, serene old man," he writes when he learns 
 the death of Horace Smith, of " Rejected Addresses," 
 
 "who went out of the world in charity with all in it, and having 
 shown through his life, as far as I knew it, quite a delightful love 
 of God's works and creatures — a true, loyal. Christian man. So 
 was Morier, of a different order, but possessing that precious 
 natural quality of love, which is awarded to some lucky minds such 
 as these, Charles Lamb's, and one or two more in our trade ; to 
 many amongst the parsons, I think ; to a friend of yours by the 
 name of Makepeace perhaps, but not unalloyed to this one. O 
 God 1 purify it, and make my heart clean." 
 
 How beautiful that worship of the quality of Love, 
 pure and unstrained as that of her twin-sister Mercy. 
 Blame not too much the noble army of backbiters, the 
 unkindly critic, or the ungenerous churl. It is not their 
 fault — it may be. They have not the quality of Love, 
 that is all. How characteristic the self-depreciation which
 
 TH ACKER A Y. 229 
 
 grudges that honour to himself. I never in myhfe knew 
 man who had it more. 
 
 Horace Smith's daughters were among Thackeray's 
 favourite intimates. It is pleasant to think that their 
 Brighton salon still survives, after the fashion of the 
 Berrys of old, to be the common Sunday resort of most 
 things that are of good report in Letters and Manners 
 and Diplomacy, and are drawn from time to time 
 into the Brighton circle. "The most rooted institution 
 in Brighton after the chain-pier," they called themselves 
 to me once, in the predecessors of their present little 
 rooms, where one sister sits in her chair to chat and 
 listen about all the things and books that be, while the 
 younger dispenses the tea and cake of sacred five to all 
 and any guests who come to ask for them. Such a 
 Brightonian as Thackeray was led naturally to frequent 
 their rooms. It was to them that he confided how he was 
 bound to produce the opening chapters of " Pendennis " 
 within a few days, and had no plot, and no idea where- 
 with to start one. Shade of Trollope how shocking! 
 So then and there they told him a true anecdote of 
 Brighton life. " That will do," said he, and went home 
 and began the novel which afterwards, in defiance of 
 all the laws of self-respecting composition, developed 
 into a work which has its merits still. In return for the 
 favour he christened his heroine Laura, after a younger 
 sister, Mrs. Round, now long since dead. It may be 
 imagined with what interest the story was followed in 
 the Brighton rooms. When first he visited the ladies 
 after it was finished, the original Laura received him 
 indignantly. " I'll never speak to you again, Mr.
 
 230 LIFE OF 
 
 Thackeray. You know I always meant to marry 
 Warrington." In the same spirit spake Lady Rock- 
 minster when she accepted the young couple : " It is 
 all very well, but I should have preferred Bluebeard " 
 (her name for Warrington) — which proves, to my mind, 
 that ladies do not always know what is good for them. 
 Worth recording, too, is a story of Thackeray going to 
 see the Miss Smiths when he was to give his George- 
 the-Fourth lecture in the town, and expressing his relief 
 that it was not to be in the Pavilion, as at first proposed. 
 " I didn't like," he said, " the idea of abusing a man in 
 his own house." Miss Smiths did I write ? I trembled 
 and said, "Why did I not say the 'Misses Smith'?" 
 Then did I find that Thackeray writes of "the Miss 
 Berrys," and was consoled. 
 
 Of Frank and Davy and Stunny, and the favourite 
 chums, we have heard in another chapter. Thackeray 
 was much, too, with Morgan John O'Connell of Liberator 
 race, and much with my father, to which I owe my own 
 young knowledge of the novelist. It would not become 
 me here to write much of my father ; for his quiet and 
 unassuming life of duty done left but little public trace 
 of his singular intellectual power, or of the silent influence 
 he exercised over the public men and public life of his 
 day. As Secretary, first for the Colonies, and then for 
 India, he had the true governing work to do in der 
 Stille ; and I remember the pleasure it gave me to be 
 told, by an old Colonial Governor, how in hard times 
 beyond sea, when he had to take upon himself to do 
 dangerous things which might well be disclaimed ofid- 
 cially, he felt safe, if he only did his best and righiest,
 
 TH ACKER A V. 231 
 
 with one strong support. "When your father was at 
 that office," he said, " I felt hke a man with my back 
 against a stone wall." And my father held, I know, a 
 large place in Thackeray's heart. It was not a friend- 
 ship to be talked of much, for the two men had too much 
 of the quiet side in common. The same philosophy — 
 the same deep sense of religion — the same reserve which 
 uniits for general popularity and makes enemies where 
 it is misunderstood— the same breadth of mental vision 
 and incapacity for meaner things — above all, the same 
 pole-star, the Vanitas— and the same blessing of the 
 quality of Love, made the still bond between them very 
 strong. Like many others, Thackeray was much in the 
 habit of referring knotty questions to my father, and 
 often have I listened with boyish keenness to the table- 
 talk between them, by turns grave and gay, fanciful 
 and deep. This is no place for more of tliis. To a 
 son's abiding reverence, that much may be forgiven. 
 
 One characteristic trait of Thackeray I remember here, 
 which exactly illustrates his habit, so prominent in the 
 Brookfield letters, of living with his characters whilst his 
 novels were coming out, as if they were his substances 
 and not his shadows. Probably all the true romancers 
 feel this more or less, but with Thackeray it was very 
 strong, probably from his fashion of living from number 
 to number. Being " entirely occupied with his two new 
 friends, Mrs. Pendennis and her son, Mr. Arthur Pen- 
 dennis, he got up very early again, and was with them 
 for more than two hours before breakfast. He is a very 
 good-natured young fellow, and I begin to like him 
 considerably." Then he goes on to wonder if Pen is
 
 282 LIFE OF 
 
 like himself as he fancies, and a little later we find 
 him wondering what is going to become of Pen and poor 
 little Fanny Bolton. "Writing and sending it to you," 
 he says, " somehow it seems as if it were true. I shall 
 know more about them to-morrow. I am asked to a 
 marriage to-morrow, a young Foker of twenty-two." So 
 once, coming to dine at our house, he said, carelessly, 
 " Nice neighbourhood this. A young friend of mine is 
 just coming to live near here whom I hope you like 
 already, a Miss Ethel Newcome." It took my mother 
 so by surprise that I remember her disclaiming all know- 
 ledge of the lady, and Thackeray's humorous moralizing 
 on the vanity of Fame. 
 
 Another of Thackeray's allies was Cole, of South 
 Kensington memory, and the inspirer of Mr. Punch's 
 renowned parody — 
 
 " I built my Cole a lordly treasure-house." 
 
 He and his family were much at the great man's house, 
 and I remember me of an amusing instance of his 
 ubiquitous energies which occurred after Thackeray's 
 death, at the marriage of his younger daughter to Mr. 
 Leslie Stephen. It was a very quiet wedding in the 
 early, almost twilight morning, in a restful grey church 
 in the Kensington district so much associated with the 
 novelist, and lovingly celebrated by the graceful fancy of 
 his eldest and surviving child, Mrs. Ritchie. Very few 
 of us were present, and it was almost dark. Mr. Cole 
 had volunteered to give the bride away^ but he was in 
 Paris, and my father, who had been much with the
 
 THACKERAY. 233 
 
 daughters since their father died, was ready to take his 
 place. But when the words " Who giveth " were spoken, a 
 figure, till then unobserved, emerged from the shadow of a 
 pillar, and solemnly said, " I do." It was the hero of the 
 Brompton Boilers, perfectly dressed for the occasion ; 
 and how he had crossed the Channel was never known. 
 
 An easy Kensington transition brings us to the "dear 
 neighbours," as he was in the habit of calling them in 
 many friendly notes. Sir Theodore Martin and his wife, 
 formerly the classic Helen Faucit. He intended, it is 
 said, to dedicate his swan-song, " Denis Duval," to that 
 first of Princess Rosalinds, past, present, and to come, 
 and herself, in her studies of Shakespeare's women, a 
 keen and sympathetic Shakespearian critic. I know of 
 nothing in its way more true and delicate than her 
 speculation upon the after-fates of Portia and Shylock, 
 with its picture of the Belmont heiress playing the Lady 
 Merciful after her own famous receipt, and never losing 
 sight of the unhappy Jew till she had softened and 
 reclaimed him. I think tliat this Rosalind under- 
 stood Shakespearian women more delicately than their 
 accredited critic, our friend Mrs. Jameson. And I 
 think it possible that she understood Thackeray better 
 also. I doubt if she ever said to him, "Oh, Mr. 
 Thackeray, this will never do ! " 
 
 The Martins were friends with whom the novelist was 
 in thorough sympathy; and to Sir Theodore's kindness 
 I owe some interesting facts which he allows me to 
 publish. Of the little friendly notes which he keeps in 
 store — they lived so near and met so often that there 
 was room for little else — he sends me this characteristic
 
 234 LIFE OF 
 
 specimen. Sir Theodore had lent him Kaulbach's 
 " Reineke Fuchs " to read 
 
 '^December 24 (1861). 
 " Many thanks for ' Fuchs.' I write in the twilight ; all neighbours 
 a merry Christmas. Off in half an hour to Boulogne. For all 
 travellers by water — for all sick persons — please see the Litany. 
 Adieu, mes bons voisins, 
 
 " W. M. T." (in the usual monogram). 
 
 The estrangement between Dickens and himself, rising 
 out of the Garrick battle, ended in the hall of the 
 Athenaeum, where Sir Theodore Martin was the witness 
 of his going after Dickens when he had passed him one 
 day, and saying at the foot of the stairs some words to 
 the effect that he could not bear to be on any but the 
 old terms. He insisted on shaking hands ; and Dickens 
 did. "The next time I saw Dickens" (it was not long 
 after), Sir Theodore writes to me, " he was looking down 
 into the grave of his great rival, in Kensal Green. How 
 he must have rejoiced, I thought, that they had so shaken 
 hands." Sir Theodore, whose bond with him was nothing 
 if not literary, thought Thackeray curiously free from lite- 
 rary jealousy ; and certainly nothing bears this out more 
 entirely than his casual remarks on Dickens in the Brook- 
 field letters, such as " Get * David Copperfield ' ; by Jingo, 
 it's beautiful; it beats the yellow chap of this month" 
 (" Pendennis ") "hollow." Or this, which illustrates at 
 the same time his careful spirit of criticism and proper 
 estimate of his own work : — 
 
 " Have you read Dickens? Oh ! it is charming. Brave Dickens! 
 {t has some of his very prettiest touches — those inimitable Dickeqs'
 
 THACKERAY. 236 
 
 touches which make such a great man of him ; and the reading of 
 the book has done another author a great deal of good. In the first 
 place, it pleases the other author to see that Dickens, who has long 
 left off alluding to the O.A.'s works, has been copying the Q.A., and 
 greatly simplifying his style, and overcoming the use of fine words. 
 By this the public will be the gainer, and ' David Copperfield ' will 
 be improved by taking a lesson from ' Vanity Fair.' " 
 
 These phrases are familiar through the Brookfield 
 letters ; but one can scarcely call attention too often to 
 these unconscious pictures of himself and his opinions 
 which a man sketches in the confidence of familiar 
 intimacy, with none of the colour which the best of us 
 must sometimes use when painting for exhibition. This 
 form of literary reverence was with Thackeray always the 
 same, A popular novelist, in the presence of a loved 
 friend of Thackeray, one day justified something he had 
 said, or done, or written, by remarking, " Sir Walter Scott 
 said, or did, or wrote, so-and-so." "I do not think," 
 answered Thackeray, " that it becomes either you or 
 me to speak of Sir Walter Scott as if we were his equals. 
 Such men as you or I should take off our hats at the 
 very mention of his name." In the spiritual presence of 
 either I think that we should take off ours. 
 
 Another curious incident in Thackeray's intercourse 
 with Sir Theodore Martin, which has not been published 
 before, I tell on his authority, and with Mrs. Ritchie's 
 permission. It is interesting because it does, for once, 
 bring home one of his character-bits to the original. The 
 two were walking one afternoon through the playrooms 
 at Spa — I tell the story in Sir Theodore's words, for I am 
 not like to find better — and stopped at the Rouge et
 
 1 
 
 236 LIFE OF 
 
 Noir table to look on. Thackeray touched his elbow, 
 and asked him to look at a tall man, in a seedy brown 
 frock-coat, at the other end of the table. The man's 
 appearance was that of a broken-down gentleman, who 
 had still the remains of a certain distinction of manner. 
 They walked away, and Thackeray said, "That was the 
 original of my Deuceace ; I have not seen him since 
 the day he drove me down in his cabriolet to my broker's 
 in the City, where I sold out my patrimony and handed 
 it over to him." Thackeray then added that this man 
 and another had, in the early days, knowing that he had 
 money when he came of age, induced him to play ecarte 
 with them, letting him win at first and leading him on 
 until they had eased him, not literally of his patrimony, 
 but of a round fifteen hundred pounds. His losses were 
 otherwise caused by the Constitutional, and an India 
 Bank, and other unlucky ventures of his own or his 
 guardians. No doubt, in that graphic history of the 
 Bundelcund Bank, he had his own Rummun Loll, as he 
 had his own Deuceace. But there was no bitterness in 
 his heart or voice, says Sir Theodore, only pity, as he 
 remarked of his old acquaintance at Spa : " Poor devil ! 
 my money doesn't seem to have thriven with him 1 " 
 The same courteous informant writes to me : — 
 
 "You are quite safe in saying that Deuceace was drawn from 
 life. I am quite sure of what I told you. Well do I remember, as 
 we walked out into the soft, sweet air of a summer evening, how a 
 sort of sadness seemed to settle upon Thackeray, as if the recollection 
 of what he told me had been too much for him ; and he said, 
 although it was quite early, ' I think I'll go home to my hotel,' 
 which he did. He told me other things in his life of a very striking
 
 THACKERAY. 237 
 
 kind, but I know they were meant for myself alone. Poor fellow, 
 he had some terribly bitter experiences." 
 
 Bitter experiences indeed for literary capital ! And 
 there are people who still rail at him for not having 
 been always "genial," and call him various pretty names 
 for it. Good heavens ! why the man must have seen 
 life through a very mist of tears. To have the crown of 
 human happiness, a happy marriage, turned to an enduring 
 crown of thorns, — to lose home and fortune, prospects and 
 profession, everything at almost a blow — to be obliged to 
 give up his favourite pencil for the pen whose tyranny 
 irked him even to the last ("I drew wood-blocks all day," 
 he writes so late as 1850, when the established hero of 
 "Vanity Fair,")— to fight without fear and without 
 reproach through slow obscurity and cold neglect — to 
 struggle for years with a chronic and a wearing illness, 
 yet to emigrate on distant lecturing tours to win his 
 children as much as he had lost — and not to be always 
 gay ? " Oh, Mr. Thackeray, this will never do ! " But no, 
 he could not be that ; nor could he be everybody's friend. 
 But he could Hve through all this, to die at fifty-two, 
 with a spirit as tender as a good woman's, and a heart as 
 simple as a pure child's, full to the last of happy fun. 
 Saddened, but not cast down, chastened always, as it 
 was said the Lord's beloved are, he returned that mystic 
 love to the last, in measure even as he received it. 
 Honoured and held dear by friends the choicest and the 
 worthiest, he kept them in a sense so wonderful that 
 after five-and-twenty years of Death he is more alive with 
 them than half the dwellers upon earth. " Heu ! quanto 
 minus est cum reliquis versari, quam tui meminisse,"
 
 238 LIFE OF 
 
 quotes from Shenslone another close friend, whose memo- 
 ries shall furnish forth another section of this chapter. 
 And beside all this, in that short space of years, Thackeray 
 built himself a monument more lasting than the sounding 
 brass, if — as is the verdict of a great critic, John Brown 
 (of " Rab and his Friends " celebrity), in an essay of no 
 indiscriminate praise — " for insight into human nature he 
 ranks second to Shakespeare alone." The essay is in 
 the North British, and I have referred to it before. It 
 is a lofty judgment, but not easy to dispute. And this 
 was a noble and a wonderful record to leave, for the 
 author and the man. Yet who shall say it Nay ? 
 
 Section 2. 
 
 Yet another letter lies before me, which tells of 
 Thackeray's alliance with another favoured child of 
 Letters quite after his own. heart. A merry Christmas 
 chime of Thackeray's own, bright with the idea that must 
 have struck so many of us who earnestly hold that rock- 
 set faith, that of all seasons to fit the birth of Christ the 
 best for us West-enders of the world is the true beginning 
 of the promise of the year, which follows closely on the 
 longest night. It is out of Sir Theodore Martin's 
 archives, too, that the letter conies to me. 
 
 •' Kensington W., December 23, 1848. 
 "My dear Lever, — 
 
 " ' At Christmas I no more desire a rose 
 
 Tlian wish a snow in May's new-fangled shows, 
 But like of each thing that the season grows.' 
 Such are exactly my views, as it seems to me they were those of our 
 own sweet William Shakespeare. Very well ! Now I am very
 
 TH ACKER A V. 239 
 
 energetic with regard to the right inerrie time — Christmas. Yule 
 time is so unlike mf idea of the — the — the — let us say Dead Year : 
 when the ivy overshines the wall : when her purple poison-berries 
 shed : when under the holly's coronal the year has died. Ugh ! 
 Dead year, I like you not. But Christmas ! Ah, that's quite 
 another thing. Dear O'Grady, me bhoy, thin, ye must come here 
 according to our agreement, sure. Be aisy, me darlint, and don't 
 sthop away. You shall dance with all the girls in turns, and always 
 have a nice one next you. You shall have the overlook of the 
 children's feast — you shall : but come, and see what you shall do. 
 I shall expect you at 11.30. Come — come — come — come! 
 
 " My dear Lever, 
 
 •' Ever yours, 
 
 " W. M. Thackeray." 
 
 It seems to me, the more I look at this man's work 
 and story, and at the records and the memories of his 
 friends, that a beautiful and chastened kindness is the 
 background of the whole. " The Story of a Beautiful 
 Life " it might surely have been called, and published as 
 an ennobling study for any reverent mind, had it borne 
 no other mark than that. This little letter bears the 
 stamp of it. None of the hilarity to order, none of the 
 pantomimic glories which have surrounded the sacred 
 season of late years, till Christmas annuals and Christmas 
 books vie only as to which shall come out first. Christ- 
 mas will begin in September, soon ; and, if it comes but 
 once a year, it stays a plaguy period when it does come. 
 The season of Prayer and Hope turns to the season of 
 advertisement, and loses half its beauty in losing all its 
 rest. That letter of Thackeray's has the true old Christ- 
 mas ring : the ring of manly tenderness, and homely 
 children's cheer. 
 
 " From my earliest youth almost," writes of him
 
 240 LIFE OF 
 
 another of his younger but closest friends, " I was an 
 enthusiastic and, I like to think, a discriminating admirer 
 of Thackeray. But it was not until 1849 or 1850" (just 
 the " Vanity Fair " period) " that I first met him. It was 
 at the old Fielding Club, in which, by accident, we 
 found ourselves one evening alone. The great man fell 
 into conversation with me, and I found his company 
 delightful. Not knowing Thackeray by sight I had no 
 idea who was talking to me. We left the club together 
 at the small hours, he walking home to his house in 
 Kensington, and I turning down St. James's Street on 
 my way to my chambers. When we parted, my com- 
 panion shook me by the hand very warmly, and said, 
 ' Young 'un, I like you ; you must come to see me. My 
 name is Michael Angelo Titmarsh.' I continued to 
 meet the great man occasionally, though our acquain- 
 tance never ripened into intimacy until 1852 in Washing- 
 ton, where I was for a couple of years attach^ to the 
 English Legation. In that year Thackeray was lecturing 
 in the United States, and I saw a great deal of him. I 
 married in that country, and wrote to Thackeray, who 
 was in New York, to ask him to be present at my 
 wedding. From a long letter in reply I make the 
 following extract : — 
 
 " ' I married at your age with ^^400 paid by a newspaper, which 
 failed six months afterwards, and always love to hear of a young 
 fellow testing his fortune bravely in that way. If I can see my way 
 to help you, I will. Though my marriage was a wreck, as you know, 
 I would do it once again, for behold, Love is the crown and com- 
 pletion of all earthly good. A man who is afraid of his fortune 
 never deserved one. The very best and pleasantest house I ever 
 knew in my life had but ^300 a year to keep it.' " 
 
 1
 
 T HACK ERA V. 241 
 
 The receiver of this letter, who may well preserve 
 it among his treasures, is my old friend, Mr. FoUett 
 Synge, of the Diplomatic Service, afterwards our minister 
 at Honolulu, and himself a well-known and able 
 literary man, a son of Punch and of The Saturday ; 
 and the personal story which his affectionate friend- 
 ship has placed at my disposal, shall be told in 
 his own words, as I have told Sir Theodore Martin's, 
 with the necessary adaptations of persons and of 
 form. Authors, I hold, are their own best editors. I 
 do not by the name of authors refer to the mighty 
 tribe of soldier, sailor, tinker, tailor, &c., who write 
 so much for our instruction nowadays, and want editing 
 dreadfully. 
 
 To Synge's young American wife Thackeray wrote at 
 this same marriage-time, a letter so kind and courteous, 
 almost fatherly, that it is kept with the other as a twin- 
 treasure. In 1853 the Synges came to England, and 
 Thackeray, who with his daughters was paying a visit 
 to his mother in Paris, saw their names in a list of 
 passengers. He immediately crossed the Channel to 
 see his young friend at the Foreign Office, then went to 
 the wife in their lodgings and said : — 
 
 " My dear, we English are a very fine people ; but some of us are 
 not so friendly and sympathetic as they are in your country. I can- 
 not let you live here alone in lodgings, with no one to look after you, 
 while your husband is at his work. You must come, if you kindly 
 will, and take possession of my old barrack in Young Street. I 
 must go back to Paris to-night, but my daughters and I will come 
 to you as soon as we can. And remember that the house is yours 
 and that we are your guests." 
 
 16
 
 242 LIFE OF 
 
 He would take no denial, and carried the young wife 
 off with him. They remained in Young Street, enjoying 
 their stay, and delighting in his affectionate intimacy, 
 until the end of the year, when he would hardly let 
 them go to take a flat of their own in Westminster. 
 For many years he was a constant visitor at their house, 
 and they passed a great portion of their time in his. 
 He never came without a visit to the infantry-quarters 
 of the family, who well remember now how the " lofty 
 moralist " had to bend his head before he could come 
 through the nursery-door. 
 
 Bits of his characteristic little notes of the hour fill 
 many corners in the collections of surviving friends. 
 Over and above the " Rose and the Ring," which dis- 
 appeared from my stores, I must have had many letters 
 from him in my boyish days, in the style in which 
 he always loved to write to his boy-correspondents ; 
 and it was a great disappointment to me when, some 
 years ago, I began to make my own collection of letters 
 worth preserving for the various writers' sake, that I 
 could not unbury a single specimen of "Thackeray's 
 delicate little hand," which made of handwriting a fine 
 art, as so many men of letters have done, to prevent 
 their words outrunning their thoughts and their dis- 
 cretions. Thackeray used to say of himself that he 
 could always make a living by writing out the Iliad on a 
 sixpence, and some of the existing specimens of his 
 letters are marvels of minuteness. One especially, 
 written to Mrs. Elliott from Kensington about a visit to 
 Clifton, which appears in the Brookfield collection, is a 
 triumph in its way. The words coil round and round
 
 THACKERAY. 243 
 
 like the folds of a serpent, in size scarcely visible to the 
 naked eye. But the formation of every letter is perfect, 
 and the labour must have been great. Only Memory 
 keeps for myself the precious little copper-plates in 
 fanciful arabesque, to ask me to a Garrick dinner or a 
 supper at Evans's, or to some little home-gathering with 
 the girls and other of his younger favourites, amongst 
 whom — and a special and a gracious link it is — I seem 
 the most constantly to recall Mrs. Charles Collins, the 
 "Katie Dickens," who is Charles Dickens's daughter, 
 and now, as Mrs. Perugini, a well - graced painter on her 
 own account. No ; I have lost my own treasures 
 through some young carelessness of myself or others, 
 and must remember them through the good offices of 
 more careful trustees. If to his big boys he liked to 
 write in copper-plate, for his small boys he kept " print- 
 hand":— 
 
 " My dear William Makepeace Thackeray Synge, — I 
 just saw this nice fish in a shop, and thought it would be a nice 
 gift for my godson. Dear boy, when you have some friends to dine 
 give them this, and when they have quite done and the shell is 
 clean, I think you may make boats of the tail and boots of the 
 claws. I wish the man had not cut the claw off. He did it with 
 his great knife, and at the same time hit me on the nose. I did not 
 cry much, and I am your true friend and godpapa. 
 
 " P.S. — /cannot eat any of it. I am glad." 
 
 At the same time he wrote to the boy's mother to 
 deplore the destruction of joke and claw by the shop- 
 man's vandalism, but to hope that his lobster might 
 "look very well on a great dish, with a letter to Make- 
 peace in one of the claws."
 
 244 LIFE OF 
 
 Let a few more extracts from this correspondence 
 follow as they list, prose, or verse, or jest, as the fancy 
 seized the writer, but all suggestive of the sunny ripple 
 of kindliness and fun, ever at hand, to sparkle over the 
 surface of those thoughts profound : — 
 
 " Edinburgh (No date). 
 " I hope you and madam will kyindly dine with us on Sunday 
 
 at 6.30, and do ask to come with you. His cheerful prattle 
 
 amuses my dear old mother. My campaign has been glorious but 
 not hoverendabuv remunerative. ... If I get rich I shall lapse into 
 hidjous indolence, and meanwhile am, 
 
 "With the highest consideration, 
 " Sir." 
 
 " Boston, /a«. 6, 1853. 
 " I am a bad correspondent ; ask Miss Wainwright to intercede 
 for me. Je vous felicite JMonsieur : moi aussi j'ai aime— j'ai eu 
 vingt-cinq ans. My reception at Boston has been hugeous. 
 Mrs. Lothrop is charming; and as to little Miss Molly she is a 
 perfect pearl of beauty. I wish you joy of your own affair. What's 
 ambition compared with that ! " 
 
 " My DEAR S.— 
 
 The girls are out, but this I know, 
 To you they always like to go. 
 Make the day Sunday, if you please, 
 That is for Amy and Miss T's, 
 As for myself, I'm suffering : so 
 I don't know whether I can go. 
 
 Yours ever, W. M. T." 
 
 «< Sir,— I am desired by Lord Palmerston to say that— perhaps 
 you have heard of Miss Symons ? She dines at a twopenny pie- 
 man's ; but when she goes out, to a ball or a rout, her stomacher's 
 covered with di'mon's. 
 
 " I have the honour to be. Sir, 
 
 " Your obedient servant, 
 
 " W. M. TOMKINS."
 
 THACKERAY. 245 
 
 " My DEAR DouBLEYOU, DouBLEYOU " (his friend's initials), — 
 " I have just met a Trojan of the name of Trollope in the street (your 
 ingenious note of last night liept me awake all night, be hanged to 
 you), and the upshot is that we will do what you want between us. 
 My dear old Synge, come and talk to me or. Friday before twelve. 
 
 " is as happy as Lord Overstone with his (tell me if I put the 
 
 figures right) ,^10,000,000. . . . When will you be back ? I went 
 t'other night to Cremorne, and found even that melancholy, and the 
 sherry-cobbler, oh, rinfainie ! I have bought twelve new forks 
 and six new teaspoons. We have got a puppy. He fell down the 
 area and broke his leg ; and now. Sir, I must go back to my plate 
 and to my work." 
 
 For letters under the visible seal of confidence this is 
 not the place. Nor could their publication have any 
 part in his friend Synge's wishes or his own. One's only 
 desire must be to repeat nothing that could hurt the 
 living or surviving friends of the dead. 
 
 "Not that Thackeray," as his old friend says to me, "would 
 have deliberately written or spoken a word to hurt anybody's feel- 
 ings. My uncle Toby had not a more tender heart, but he never 
 pretended to speak always by the card, or to be more free from 
 prejudices than Charles Lamb, who called himself a man ' with 
 humours, fancies, craving heart, sympathy, requiring books, pictures, 
 theatres, chit-chat, scandals, jokes, antiquities, whims, and what not.' 
 It must be remembered that I was often, and for long periods at a 
 time, an inmate of Thackeray's family : that he spoke to me out of 
 the fulness of his heart, and very often regretted that he had been 
 led by misapprehension to write or speak things which on after- 
 thought he considered unjust." 
 
 A specimen of the poetry in which, at any moment 
 the most unexpected, Thackeray liked to indulge may
 
 246 LIFE OF 
 
 be added here on the authority of the same witness.^ 
 A dinner-conversation falling appropriately on gastrono- 
 mies, when opinions were being gravely given on the 
 momentous matter, a fair neighbour appealed earnestly 
 to him as to what such an authority as he thought to be 
 the best part of a fowl. Gravely he looked at her, and 
 said : — 
 
 " Oh ! what's the best part of a fowl ? 
 My own Anastasia cried : 
 Then, giving a terrible howl, 
 She turned on her stomach, and died I " 
 
 On another occasion his love of Lear-like rhyme led 
 him, when he wanted as usual to help some poor soul 
 in trouble, to translate some German verses to fit the 
 drawings in the original book, and to get his daughters and 
 his friend Synge to contribute some rhymes of their own, 
 which combined to produce a popular nonsense-book, 
 known to the initiate as Bumblebee Bogo's Budget. 
 
 And so, when he fell into Charterhouse talk one day 
 before dinner at Richmond, he regretted for his friend's 
 boy, who had just received a nomination for the school, 
 that the days of breeches were over, and that the gown- 
 boys had been consigned to trousers instead. After 
 dinner, when the cheese was under discussion, Thackeray 
 gave his vote for Brie. But there was none to be had. 
 "Bobby," said Thackeray, turning to Synge, "will be 
 like that waiter." — " Why ?" — "Because he will have no 
 
 ' Charles Mackay says : " When I first made his acquaintance, 
 Mr. Thackeray was known among his friends as the best improvi- 
 satore of his time ; " and Mackay adds that he was particularly 
 happy in rhyming couplets on the company present. — F. T. M.
 
 THACKERAY. 247 
 
 Brie-cheese." It was on the same day that a broken- 
 down Irish gentleman, not unlike the great Costigan, fell 
 into talk without being introduced. His brogue was 
 thick and noble, and after a time he said: "Ye might 
 not believe it, Sorr, but I'm an Irishman." — *' Good 
 heavens ! You don't say so ! " answered Thackeray. " I 
 took you for an Italian." This playful love of Ireland 
 and the Irish was for ever with Thackeray, and many of 
 his Irish ballads are little less racy of the soil than 
 Lever's own. But it was not understood, as he always 
 felt he never was. His good-tempered banter was set 
 down as mockery, and one day, in Anthony Trollope's 
 stables, a curious old groom who heard Thackeray's name 
 said to him : " I hear you have written a book upon 
 Ireland, and are always making fun of the Irish. You 
 don't like us." — "God help me!" said Thackeray, turning 
 his head away as his eyes filled with tears ; " all that I 
 have loved best in the world is Irish." Much did he 
 love to talk of Irish oddities, and during his American 
 lectures was delighted to tell how, dining at St. Louis, 
 he overheard one Irish waiter say to another : " Do you 
 know who that is ? " — " No," was the answer. — " That," 
 said the first, " is the celebrated Thacker." — " What's he 
 
 done ? "— " D d if I know." 
 
 For the story of his last parting with his friend Mr. 
 Synge, I prefer again to quote the latter's account to me 
 textually : — 
 
 "Just before I sailed for the Sandwich Islands," he writes, " and 
 when I was staying in Thackeray's house in Palace Green, my host 
 and I one day met in the library. He said : ' I want to tell you 
 that I shall never see you again. I feel that I am doomed. I know
 
 248 LIFE OF THACKERAY. 
 
 that this will grieve you ; but look in that book, and you will find 
 something that I am sure will please and coniTort you.' I took 
 from its shelf the book he pointed out ; out of it fell a piece of paper 
 on which Thackeray had written a prayer, all of which I do not 
 pretend to remember. I only know that he prayed that he might 
 never write a word inconsistent with the love of God or the love of 
 man : that he might never propagate his own prejudices or pander 
 to those of others : that he might always speak the truth with 
 his pen, and that he might never be actuated by a love of greed. 
 I particularly remember that the prayer wound up with the words : 
 ' For the sake of Jesus Christ our Lord.' " 
 
 THE END.
 
 INDEX. 
 
 A'Beckett, Gilbert, 162 
 Ainsworth's Magazine, 109 
 Alford, Dean, 60 
 Allen, Archdeacon, 60 
 Athenseiim Club, The, 27, 161- 
 
 162, 198, 214, 234 
 Aytoun, 136, 137, 138 
 
 B. 
 
 Badger, Mr., 69, 226 
 
 Ballantine, Sergeant, quoted, 218 
 
 " Barry Lyndon," 131-132 
 
 Bayne, Mrs., 150 
 
 Beale, Mr., 188 
 
 Becher, Anne (Thackeray's 
 mother), see Thac'.<eray, Anne 
 
 Becher, Mrs., Thackeray's great- 
 grandmother, 41, 42 
 
 Bedingfield, Mr., Thackeray's 
 cousin, III, 127, 147 
 
 Besant, Mr. Walter, quoted, 146 
 {note), 211 
 
 Bevan, Mr. S., quoted, 124-125 
 
 Blackwood's Magazine, 116, 128 
 
 Blessington, Lady, 151-152 
 
 Bronte, Charlotte, 140, 141-143, 
 156-159 ; quoted, 26, 156-159, 
 165-166, 176, 217, 220 
 
 Brookfield, Mr. and Mrs., 73, 
 226-227 ; Thackeray's letters to, 
 6 ; quoted, 95-96, iii, 152-153, 
 177-179, 234-235, 242 
 
 Brooks, Shirley, quoted, 126 
 
 Brown, Dr. John, quoted, 105, 
 218, 238 
 
 Buller, Charles, 91-92, 226 
 
 C. 
 
 Calcutta, 38-40 
 
 Cambridge, 60-75 
 
 " Cane-bottomed Chair, The," 
 
 214 
 Cardwell, Lord, 191-192 
 Carlvle, Mrs., quoted, 140, 155 
 Carlyle, Thomas, 129-130 ; quoted, 
 
 176, 214-215, 217, 224 
 " Catherine," no, 131 
 Charterhouse School, 23, 42-52 
 Chiswick, 41-42 
 " Chronicle of the Drum, The," 
 
 78, 113 
 Clough, Arthur Hugh, 177
 
 250 
 
 INDEX. 
 
 Cole, C.B., Mr., 109, 232-233 ; 
 quoted, no 
 
 Coleridge, Lord, quoted, 51, 52 
 
 Coleridge, Sara, quoted, 142 
 {7iote) 
 
 Colvile, Lady, 87 
 
 Comic Almanack, The, 109 
 
 Cotistitulional, The, Thackeray's 
 investment in, 93, 104 {note), 
 107, 236 
 
 Cooke, John Esten, 147 ; quoted, 
 218 
 
 Cornhill Magazine, The, Thacke- 
 ray's editorship of, 13, 199-209, 
 
 212 
 
 Cornish, Dr., 52, 58 ; quoted, 52- 
 
 54. 57 
 "Cox's Diary," no, 131 
 Croker, 161, 228 
 Cruikshank, George, 109, 131, 213 
 
 D. 
 
 "Dennis Duval," 204, 207, 233 
 
 Dickens, Charles, 14, 40, 100, 107, 
 i37> 147, 148, 163, 165, 166, 
 170-171, 177, 183, 195-198, 
 234-235 ; quoted, 121, 209 
 [note], 2.i\ 
 
 Doyle, Richard, 206 
 
 Dresden, 77 
 
 Dublin, 117 
 
 E. 
 Edinburgh, 189 
 Edinburgh Revievj, The, 128, 
 
 140-141 ; quoted, 26 
 Eliot, George, quoted, 176 
 Elliotson, Dr., 155 
 "Esmond," 16, 169-176, 193; 
 
 quoted, 175 
 
 "Fatal Boots, The," no, 131 
 
 Fields, the American publisher, 
 quoted, 138, 177, 180. 200, 
 219 
 
 Fitzgerald, Edward, 61, 73, 113 
 [note), 126, 176-177 ; quoted, 
 122-123, 1^4. 125, 145, 146, 
 148-149, 155-156, 169, 176 
 
 " Flore et Zepliyr," 96-98, 107 
 
 Forster, Dickens's biographer, 
 quoted, 198 {iiot^ 
 
 Fox, Caroline, quoted, 165-166 
 
 Fraser's Magazine, Thackeray's 
 connection with, 104-106, 109, 
 116 and note, 122, 125, 128, 
 132 ; quoted, 54 
 
 " From Cornhill to Grand Cairo," 
 123-124 
 
 Garrick Club, The, 22-23, i97i 
 
 213 
 Gaskell, Mrs., quoted, 156, 157 
 George Cruikshank's Omnibus, 
 
 109 
 Godesberg, 79 
 Goethe, 80, 81, 83, 84, 85 
 Great Coram Street, Thackeray 
 
 in, 109-113 
 " Great Hoggarty Diamond, 
 
 The," 21, no, 112, 116, 127, 131 
 Groome, Archdeacon, 60 
 
 H. 
 
 Hallam, Henry, i6i 
 Hannay, quoted, 222 
 Hayward, 128, 140-141, 161 
 Higgins (Jacob Omnium), 48, 227 
 Hodder, George, 149, 183, 188, 
 
 222 
 Houghton, Lord, 73, 165, 214 ; 
 
 quoted, 146, 220 [note) 
 Howells, Mr., quoted, 222
 
 INDEX. 
 
 251 
 
 I. 
 
 " Irish Sketch Book, The," 117, 
 122 
 
 J- 
 
 James, Mr. Henry, quoted, 222 
 Jameson, Mis., quoted, 23-25, 
 
 233 
 Jerrold, Doughis, 47, 126, 162 ; 
 his " Men of Character" illus- 
 trated by Thackeray, 107 ; 
 quoted, 217 
 
 K. 
 
 Kemble, Fanny, Mrs., quoted, 151, 
 
 164-165, 218 
 Kemble, Mr. Mitchell, 73 
 Kensal Green Cemetery, 216 
 " Kickleburys on the Rhine," 196 
 Knight, Charles, quoted, 147, 
 
 151 
 
 L. 
 
 Laurence, the painter, 148, 158 
 " Lectures on the Four Georges," 
 
 168, 183-189, 230 
 "Lectures on the Humourists," 
 
 163-169, 176-180, 186 
 Leech, John, 48, 126, 131, 215, 
 
 216, 226 
 Lever, Charles, 1 18-122, 221, 238- 
 
 239 
 Lippincott' s Magazine, quoted, 
 
 219 
 Longfellow, quoted, 184, 209 
 " Lovel the Widower," 94, 199, 
 
 201-203, 204, 207 ; quoted, 104 
 Lowell, Mr,, 177 
 
 M. 
 
 Macaulay, 161, 227 
 
 Mackay, Charles, quoted, 122 
 
 {note), 246 [710 te") 
 Macready, quoted, 106 
 
 Maginn, Dr., 105, 222 
 Mahon, Lord, 161 
 Marochetti, the sculptor, 2i6[note) 
 Martineau, Harriett, quoted, 146- 
 
 147 
 Martin, Sir Theodore and Lady, 
 
 233-238 
 " Men's Wives," 131 
 Merivale, Mr. Herman, senior, 
 
 230-231, 232 
 Merriman, Dr., 155, 213-215 ; 
 
 quoted, 218 
 Mihnan, Dean, 161 
 Mitford, Miss, quoted, 176 
 Morning Chrofiicle, The, 122 
 Motley, quoted, 27, 167, 193, 194 
 
 N. 
 
 Napier, Macvey, 128 
 
 National Review, The, quoted, 
 96-98 
 
 National Standard, The, Thacke- 
 ray's investment in and editor- 
 ship of, 93, 103-104 
 
 " Newcomes, The," 78, 181-183, 
 193, 206 ; quoted, 49, 78-79, 
 182-183, 210 
 
 Newman, Cardinal, 31, 171-173 ; 
 quoted, 209 
 
 New Monthly Magazitie, The, 
 109, 122, 129 
 
 North British Review, The, 
 quoted, 21-22, 24, 32, 238 
 
 O. 
 
 O'Connell, Morgan John, 230 
 Ottery St. Mary, 51-59, 152 
 Oxford, 188, 190-192 
 
 Palace Green, Thackeray's house 
 at, 203, 212-216
 
 252 
 
 INDEX. 
 
 Pall Mall Gazette, The, quoted, 
 
 29 
 Paris, 22, 77, 93, 95, 96, 113, 200 
 Payn, Mr. James, quoted, 218 
 " Pendenuis," 51, 54, 74-75. 
 
 101-102, 152-156, 193, 229 ; 
 
 quoted, 24-25, 55, 59, 89, 102, 
 
 210-21 1 
 Perry, Miss, 184, 212 
 " Philip, The Adventures of," 
 
 loi, 102-103, ^93' ^°3' 2°7 ' 
 
 quoted, 115-116, 164 
 Pictorial Times, The, 122 
 Plauche, quoted, 204-205 
 Pollock, Sir F., quoted, 113, 148, 
 
 157. 183 
 Punch, Thackeray's connection 
 
 with, 48, 53, 94-95. "7. 122, 
 126-127, 128, 132, 139-140, 
 162-163 
 
 Quarterly Revieiu, The, 143 
 {note) 
 
 R. 
 
 Reed, W. B., 212 ; quoted, 178- 
 
 179, 180, 181, 186, 218 
 Ritchie, IMrs., Thackeray's aunt, 
 
 41 
 Ritchie, Mrs., Thackeray's 
 
 daughter, 5, 6, iii, 113, 138, 
 
 160, i8r, 184, 216, 221, 232, 
 
 23s ; quoted, 113, 205 
 Rome, jj, 121, 124-125 
 " Rose and the Ring, The," 20, 
 
 47. 53. 121 
 "Roundabout Papers, The," 20, 
 
 199, 2or, 207-209 ; quoted, 34, 
 
 207, 208 
 Round, Mrs., 229-230 
 Russell, Dr., 43, 44, 49 
 
 Schiller, influence of, 81, 83, 85 
 "Second Funeral of Napoleon, 
 
 The," 113 ; quoted, 17-19 
 " Shabby-Gentcel Story, The," 
 
 110, 204 
 Shavve, Miss (Thackeray's wife), 
 
 see Thackeray, Isabella Gethin 
 
 Crcagh 
 Shepherd, Mr., quoted, 105, 106, 
 
 117 [note) 
 Sinclair, Archdeacon, quoted, 213 
 Smith, Albert, quoted, 149 
 Smith and Elder, Messrs., the 
 
 publishers, 6, 157, 199, 200 
 Smith, Horace, 228 
 Smith, The Misses, 229-230 
 Smyth, Major Carmichael, 
 
 Thackeray's stepfather, 39, 41, 
 
 42, 44, 62, 93, 95, 103, 104 
 
 (iioie^ 
 Smyth, Mrs., Thackeray's mother, 
 
 see Thackeray, Anne 
 "Snobs, The Book of," 127, 
 
 131-13S 
 
 Sothern, the comedian, 48 
 
 Spedding, James, 73 
 
 Stephen, Mr. Leslie, iii, 232 
 
 Stephen, Mrs. Leslie, Thackeray's 
 daughter, see Thackeray, Har- 
 riet Marion 
 
 Sterling, Jolm, 73, 116 
 
 Synge, Mr. and Mrs. Follett, 
 Thackeray's friendship and 
 correspondence with, 108, 215, 
 240-248 
 
 T. 
 
 Taine, Mons., quoted, 207 
 Taylor, Bayard, quoted, 184 185, 
 
 187-188, 209, 218 
 Temple, Thackeray in chambers 
 
 in the, 86-91
 
 INDEX. 
 
 253 
 
 Tennyson, Lord, 71, 73 
 Thackeray, Amelia R., Thacke- 
 ray's grandmother, 38, 39 
 Thackeray, Anne, Thackeray's 
 
 mother, 39, 41-44, 63, 95, 113, 
 
 184, 216, 220-221 
 Thackeray, Anne Isabella, 
 
 Thackeray's daughter, see 
 
 Ritchie, Mrs. 
 Thackeray, Elias, Thackeray's 
 
 great-great-grand-uncle, 35, 36 
 Thackeray, Elias, a relation of 
 
 Thackeray, 38 
 Thackeray, Harriet Marion, 
 
 Thackeray's daughter, in, 113, 
 
 138, 181, 184,221, 232- 233 
 Thackeray, Isabella Gethin 
 
 Creagh, Thackeray's wife, 21- 
 
 22, 107-114 
 Thackeray, Richmond, Thacke- 
 ray's father, 39 
 Thackeray, Thomas, Thackeray's 
 
 great-grandfather, 36, 37 
 Thackeray, Thomas, a relation of 
 
 Thackeray, 35 
 Thackeray, Walter, an ancestor 
 
 of Thackeray, 35 
 Thackeray, William, Thackeray's 
 
 uncle, 39 
 Thackeray, William Makepeace, 
 
 Thackeray's grandfather, 37, 
 
 38. 39. 41 
 
 Thackeray, William Makepeace, 
 a relation of Thackeray, 37, 38 
 
 Thackeray, William Makepeace, 
 the author, absence of bio- 
 graphical materials, 12 ; his sen- 
 sitive disposition, 12-14 ; his 
 poetry and prose, 14-21 ; his 
 disappointment with life, 21-30 ; 
 his religious faith, 30-32 ; an- 
 cestors, 33-38 ; birth at Cal- 
 
 cutta, 38 ; parents, 38-39 ; 
 comes to England on his 
 father's death, 40 ; at Chiswick, 
 41-42 ; at Charterhouse School, 
 42-50 ; his holidays and life 
 at Ottery St. Mary, 51-59 ; at 
 Cambridge, his life and friends 
 there, 60-75 1 his political 
 economy, 76-77 ; his private 
 fortune, 77 ; he travels through 
 Europe, 77-80 ; visits Goethe 
 at Weimar, 80 ; influence of 
 Weimar and Schiller, 81-85 ; 
 he studies law, 86-91 ; takes 
 part in the Reform election of 
 1832, 91-92 ; loses his fortune, 
 93-95; first attempts author- 
 ship by publishing " Flore et 
 Zephyr," 96-98 ; his life as 
 recorded in his works, 99- 103 ; 
 his editorship of The A'atio)ial 
 Standard, 103-104 ; his early 
 connection with Fraser's Maga- 
 zine, 104-106 ; his leanings 
 towards an artistic career, 
 106-107 ; his marriage and 
 married life in Great Coram 
 Street, 107-112 ; his wife's ill- 
 ness, 112-114 ; his Boliemi- 
 anism, 115-116 ; "The Great 
 Hoggarty Diamond," 116 ; 
 visits Ireland and becomes 
 intimate with Charles Lever, 
 1 17- 122 ; "The Irish Sketch- 
 book," 122 ; his literary ac- 
 tivity, 122-123 t ^ visit to the 
 East, recorded in " From Corn- 
 hill to Grand Cairo," 123-125 ; 
 his connection with Punch, 
 126-127 ; the tardiness of public 
 recognition of his worth, 127- 
 131 ; "Barry Lyndon," 131-132;
 
 254 
 
 INDEX. 
 
 "The Book of Snobs," 132- 
 135 ; his anxiety for the suc- 
 cess of " Vanity Fair," 136-138 ; 
 moves to Young Street, Ken- 
 sington, 138 ; writes " Punch's 
 Prize NoveHsts," 139; the 
 gradual success of "Vanity 
 Fair," 140-143 ; its characters 
 and style, 144-145 ; the effect 
 of success upon his social 
 position and character, 145- 
 152; " Pendennis," 152-155 ; 
 Thackeray ill, 155-156 ; his 
 intercourse with Charlotte 
 Bronte, 156-159 ; his rejection 
 and subsequent election by the 
 Athenaeum Club, 161-162 ; ends 
 his connection with Ptnich, 
 162-163 ; decides on lectur- 
 ing, 163 ; his constitutional 
 nervousness, 163-165 ; the 
 " Lectures on the Humour- 
 ists," 165-169; "Esmond," 
 169-176 ; delivers his " Lectures 
 on the Humourists" in the 
 United States, 176-1S0 ; "The 
 Newcomes," 181-183 ; moves 
 to Onslow Square, 183 ; de- 
 livers the " Lectures on the 
 Four Georges'' in the United 
 States, 183-188 ; and in Eng- 
 land and Scotland, 188-189 ; 
 unsuccessfully contests Oxford 
 in the Liberal interest, 190-192 ; 
 " The Virginians," 193-194 ; 
 his appearance, 194 ; dispute 
 with Mr. Edmund Yates and 
 Dickens, 195-198 ; acts as first 
 editor of The Cornhill Maga- 
 zine, 199-201; " Lovel the 
 Widower," 201-203; "The 
 Adventures of Philip," 203-207 ; 
 
 "The Roundabout Papers," 
 207-209 ; prematurely old, 209 ; 
 his religious faith, 210-212 ; his 
 view of death, 212 ; moves to 
 Palace Green, 212 ; his last 
 days and death, 213-216 ; ab- 
 sence of biographical materials, 
 216-217; his enigmatical charac- 
 ter — the probable explanation, 
 217-220 ; his loveableness, 220 ; 
 his relations with his family, 
 220-221 ; his liberality, 221-222 ; 
 his art, 222-224 ; '^'s style, 
 224-225 ; recollections of some 
 of his friendships, 226-237, 
 238-248 ; his bitter experiences, 
 and his great record as an 
 author and a man, 237-238 
 
 Thackra, Robert, an ancestor of 
 Thackeray, 33 
 
 Thackwra, William de, an an- 
 cestor of Thackeray, 33 
 
 Thacquarye, Edward, an ances- 
 tor of Thackeray, 33 
 
 Thakwra, Joan, an ancestor of 
 Thackeray, 34, 35 
 
 Thakwra, John de, an ancestor 
 of Thackeray, 33 
 
 Thompson, Dr., 61-62, 73; 
 quoted, 60-61, 65 
 
 Times, The, 109, 112, 129, 165, 
 
 196, 213 
 Tuivn Talk, 195-198 
 
 Trollope, Anthony, 46, 199-200, 
 209 ; quoted, 27-29, 71, 107, 
 122, 132, 200, 209, 215, 219 
 
 U. 
 
 United States, Thackeray in 
 the, 176-180, 183-188
 
 INDEX. 
 
 255 
 
 V, 
 
 "Vanity Fair," ii6, 127, 129, 
 
 136-146, 148, 152, 214 
 Venables, G., 23, 47, 226 ; quoted, 
 
 46 
 "Virginians, The," 193-194, 198 
 
 W. 
 
 Walker, A.R.A. , Frederick, 206- 
 
 207 
 Wallack, Lester, quoted, 187 219 
 Weimar, -j-j, 80-85 
 
 Western Luminary, The, Thack- 
 eray first appears in print in, 57 
 
 Westminster Reviezu, The, 109 
 
 Whewell, Dr., 62 
 
 "Wolves and the Lamb, The," 
 202-203 
 
 Yates, Mr. Edmund, 195-198 ; 
 
 quoted, 176, 218 
 Young, Mr., 60 
 Young Street, Kensington, 
 
 Thackeray at, 138, 214
 
 BIBLIOGRAPHY. 
 
 BY 
 
 JOHN P. ANDERSON 
 (British Museum). 
 
 1. Works. 
 n. Selections. 
 IIL Miscellaneous. 
 IV. Sketches, 
 
 V. Appendix — 
 
 Biography, Criticism, etc. 
 
 Magazine Articles. 
 VI. Chronological List of 
 Works. 
 
 I. WORKS. 
 
 The Works of W. M. Thackeray. 
 
 24 vols. London, 1869-86, 8vo, 
 The, Works of W. M. Thackeray. 
 
 [Edition de luxe.] 26 vols. 
 
 London, 1878-86, 4to. 
 
 Miscellanies : prose and verse. 4 
 vols. London, 1855-57, 8vo. 
 
 Another edition. {Tauchnitz 
 
 Collection of British Authors, 
 vols. 171, 197, 345, 353, 354, 
 369, 379, 408.) 8 vols. Leip- 
 zig, 1849-57, ]6ino. 
 
 Selection from his Contributions 
 to PuTich. 2 vols. New York, 
 1853, 8vo. 
 
 The Book of Snobs ; and Sketches 
 and Travels in London. With 
 
 illustrations by the author. 
 London, 1S69, 8vo. 
 
 Burlesques. Novels by eminent 
 hands. Jeames's Diary. Ad- 
 ventures of Major Gahagan. A 
 Legend of the Rhine. Rebecca 
 and Rowena. The History of 
 the next French Revolution. 
 Cox's Diary. With illustra- 
 tions by the author and by R. 
 Doyle. London, 1869, 8vo. 
 
 Catherine: a story. LittleTravels. 
 The Fitz-Boodle Papers, etc. 
 With illustrations by the autlior, 
 and a portrait. London, 1869, 
 8vo. 
 
 Catherine ; the Great Hoggarty 
 Diamond; and Some Passages 
 in the Life of Major Gahagan. 
 London, 18'-'6, 8vo. 
 
 Christmas Books, Mrs. Perkins's
 
 BIBLIOGRAPHY. 
 
 Ball. Our Street. Dr. Birch. 
 With illustrations by the author. 
 New edition. London, 1857 
 [1856], Svo. 
 
 Denis Duval ; Level the Widower ; 
 and other stories. With illus- 
 trations by F. Walker and the 
 author. Loudon, 1869, Svo. 
 
 Jeames's Diary. A Legend of 
 the Rliiue. Rebecca and 
 Rowena. New York, 1853, 
 12mo. 
 
 The Paris Sketch Book of Mr. M. 
 A. Titmarsh ; and the Memoirs 
 of Mr. Charles J. Yellowplush. 
 With illustrations by the 
 author. London, 1S6S, Svo. 
 
 A Shabby-Genteel Story. Con- 
 fessions of George Fitz- Boodle, 
 and the Fitz-Boodle Papers. 
 London, 1887, Svo. 
 
 A Collection of Letters of W. M. 
 Thackeray, 1847-1855. With 
 portraits and reproductions of 
 letters and drawings. [With 
 an introduction by Mrs. J. O. 
 Brooktield.] London, 1887, Svo. 
 Appeared originally in Seribner's 
 Magazine the same year. 
 
 The Adventures of Philip on his 
 Way through the World : shew- 
 ing who robbed him, who helped 
 him, and who passed him by. 
 By W. M. Thackeray. 3 vols. 
 London, 1862, Svo. 
 
 Appeared orig:inally in the Corn- 
 hill Magazine for 18til-C2. 
 
 Ballads and Tales. London, 1869, 
 Svo 
 
 The Book of Snobs. By W. M. 
 Thackeray. London, 1848, Svo. 
 OiiKinally appeared in Punch, 
 vol. x.-xii , 184(i-7. 
 
 Another edition. New York, 
 
 1852, 18mo 
 
 Includes the seven suppressed 
 articles. 
 
 The Chronicle of the Drum. [With 
 illustrations.] London, 1686, 
 Svo. 
 
 Comic Tales and Sketches. Edited 
 and illustrated by Mr. Michael 
 Angelo Titmarsh. 2 vols. Jjon- 
 don, 1841, Svo. 
 
 The Confessions of Fitz-Boodle; 
 and Some Passages in the life of 
 Major Gahagan. New York, 
 1853, 12mo. 
 
 Denis Duval. By W. M. Thack- 
 eray. London, 1867, Svo. 
 
 Appeared originally in the Coni- 
 hill Magazine, March to June 1864. 
 
 Doctor Birch and his Young 
 Friends. By Mr. M. A. Tit- 
 marsh. London, 1849, 16mo. 
 
 Early and Late Papers hitherto 
 uncollected. [With an intro- 
 ductory note inscribed J. T. F. 
 — i.e., J. T. Fields; and a por- 
 trait of the Author.] Boston, 
 1867, Svo. 
 
 The English Humourists of the 
 Eighteenth Century. A series 
 of lectures delivered in England, 
 Scotland, and the United States 
 of America. By W. M. Thack- 
 eray. London, 1853, Svo. 
 
 Second edition, revised. Lon- 
 don, 1853, Svo. 
 
 An Essay on the Genius of George 
 Cruikshank, with numerous 
 illustrations of his works. From 
 the TFestminster Review, No. 66. 
 [London] 1840, Svo. 
 
 An Essay on the Genius of 
 
 George Cruikshank. Reprinted 
 verbatim from the Westminster 
 Review. Edited, with a prela- 
 tory note on Thackeray as an 
 artist and art critic, by W, E. 
 Church. With illustrations, 
 etc. London, 1884. Svo. 
 
 Etchings by the late William 
 Makepeace Thackeray, while at
 
 BIBLIOGRAPHY. 
 
 HI 
 
 Cambridge, illustrative of Uni- 
 versity Life, etc. Now first 
 published from the original 
 plates. London, 1878. 
 
 Flore et Zephyr. Ballet mytho- 
 logique par Theophile Wag- 
 staff. [Eight plates lithographed 
 by E. Morton, from satirical 
 sketches by Thackeray.] Lon- 
 don, 1836, fol. 
 
 The Four Georges. London, 1861, 
 8vo. 
 
 Appeared ori^nally in the Com- 
 hill Magazine, vol. ii., 1860, pp. 1-20, 
 175-191, 257-277, 385-406. 
 
 The Four Georges : Sketches 
 
 of Manners, Morals, Court and 
 Town Life, by W. M. Thack- 
 eray, with illustrations. Lon- 
 don, 1861, 8vo. 
 
 The title-page of the British 
 Museum copy reads, " The Four 
 Georges " only. 
 
 The History of Henry Esmond, 
 Esq., a Colonel in the service of 
 Her Majesty Queen Anne. 
 Written by himself. 3 vols. 
 London, 1852, 8vo. 
 
 Tlie History of Pendennis. His 
 fortunes and misfortunes, his 
 friends and his greatest 
 enemy. By William ]\Iakepeace 
 Thackeray. With illustrations 
 on steel and wood, by the 
 author. 2 vols. London, 
 1849-50, Svo. 
 
 The History of Samuel Titmarsh 
 and the great Hoggarty Dia- 
 mond. By W. M. Thackeray. 
 London, 1849, Svo. 
 
 Appeared originally in Fraser'g 
 Maijazine, vol. xxiv., 1841. 
 
 The Irish Sketch Book. By Mr. 
 M. A. Titmarsh. With engrav- 
 ings on wood drawn by the 
 author. 2 vols. Loudon, 
 1843, 12mo. 
 
 The Kickleburys on the Rhine. 
 By Mr. M. A. Titmarsh. Lon- 
 don, 1850, 4to. 
 
 Lovel the Widower. By W. M. 
 Thackeray. With illustrations. 
 London, 1861, Svo. 
 
 Appeared originally In the Corn- 
 hill Magazine, Jan. to June 1860. 
 
 The Luck of Barry Lyndon, Esq. 
 
 London, 1887, Svo. 
 
 Appeared originally in Eraser's 
 Magazine, 1844. 
 
 Men's Wives. New York, 1853, 
 12mo. 
 
 Appeared originally in Fr»ser's 
 
 Magnzine, 1843. 
 
 Mr. Brown's Letters to a young 
 man about town ; with the 
 Proser and other papers. New 
 York, 1853, 12mo. 
 
 Mrs. Perkins's Ball. By M. A, 
 Titmarsh. London [1847], 4to. 
 
 The Newcomes ; memoirs of a 
 most respectable family, edited 
 by Arthur Pendennis, Esq. 
 With illustrations on steel and 
 wood by Richard Doyle. Lon- 
 don, 1854-5, Svo. 
 
 Notes of a Journey from Cornliill 
 to Grand Cairo, by way of 
 Lisbon, Athens, Constantinople, 
 and Jerusalem. By Mr. M. A. 
 Titmarsh. London, 1846, 12mo. 
 
 The Orphan of Pimlico and other 
 sketches, fragments and draw- 
 ings by W. M. Thackeray. 
 With some notes by A. L 
 Thackeray. Loudon, 1876, 4to. 
 
 Our Street. By Mr. M. A. 
 Titmarsh. London, 1848, 4to. 
 
 The Paris Sketch Book. By Mr. 
 Titmarsh. With numerous 
 designs by the author on 
 copper and wood. 2 vols. 
 Loudon, 1840, 12mo. 
 
 Punch's Prize Novelists, The Fat
 
 tv 
 
 BIBLIOGRAPHY. 
 
 Contributor, and Travels in 
 London. New York, 1853, 
 8vo. 
 
 Rebecca and Rowena. A Romance 
 upon Romance. With illustra- 
 tions by Ricliard Doyle. Lon- 
 don, 1850, Svo. 
 
 The Rose and tlie Rincr ; or, the 
 History of Prince Giglio and 
 Prince Bulbo. A Fireside 
 Pantomime for great and small 
 children. By Mr. M. A. 
 Titmarsh. London, 1855, Svo, 
 
 Third edition. London, 
 
 1855, 8vo. 
 
 Roundabout Papers. Reprinted 
 from " the Cornhill Magazine." 
 With Illustrations by W. M. 
 Thackeray. London, 1863 
 [1862], 8vo. 
 
 Originally appeared in the Corn- 
 hill Magazine, Jan. lS60-Nov. Itj63. 
 
 Anotlier edition. To which 
 
 is added the Second Funeral of 
 Napoleon. With illustrations 
 by the author. London, 1869, 
 Svo. 
 
 The Second Funeral of Napoleon, 
 in three letters to Miss Smith 
 of London, and the Chronicle 
 of the Drum. By M. A. 
 Titmarsh. London, 1841, 16mo. 
 Reprinted from the Cornhill 
 Maqazine, vol. xiii., 1866, pp. 48-80. 
 " The Chronicle of the Drum " was 
 reprnted in Thackeray's Collected 
 Ballads, 1855. 
 
 A Shabby - Genteel Story, and 
 other tales. New York, 1853, 
 12mo. 
 
 Sketches after English Landscape 
 Painters. By L. Marvy, with 
 short notices by W. M. 
 Thackeray. London [1850], 
 fol. 
 
 The Student's Quarter, or Paris 
 Five and Thirty Years Since. 
 By the late William Makepeace ' 
 
 Thackeray. Not included in 
 his collected writings. With 
 original coloured illustrations. 
 London, n.d., Svo. 
 
 Sultan Stork and other stories and 
 sketches. Now first collected. 
 To which is added The Biblio- " 
 graphy of Thackeray [by R. H. 
 Shepherd] revised and consider- 
 ably enlarged. London, 1887, 
 Svo. 
 
 Vanity Fair, a novel without a 
 hero. By William Makepeace 
 Thackeray. With illustrations 
 on steel and wood by the author. 
 London, 1848, Svo. 
 
 The Virginians ; a tale of the last 
 century. By W. M. Thackeray. 
 With illustrations on steel and 
 wood by the author. 2 vols. 
 London, 1858-9, Svo. 
 
 Thackeray's Yellowplush Papers, 
 complete and unabridged edi- 
 tion. The Yellowplush corres- 
 pondence and other tales. Lon- 
 don [1882], Svo, 
 
 The Yellowplush correspondence 
 originally appeared in Fraser's 
 Magazine, 1837-38. 
 
 The Yellowplush Papers, and 
 
 other sketches. London, 1882, 
 Svo. 
 
 ^The Yellowplush Correspon- 
 dence and other tales. London 
 [1883], Svo. 
 
 Another edition. {CasseU's 
 
 lied Library.) London [1^85], 
 Svo, 
 
 Another edition. (Dick's 
 
 English Library of Standard 
 Works.) London [1885], 4to, 
 
 n. SELECTIONS. 
 
 Chips from Thackeray, selected 
 by Thomas Mason, Glasgow 
 [1884], 32mo,
 
 BIBLIOGRAPHY. 
 
 Extracts from the writings of 
 W. M. Thackeraj', chiefly 
 philosophical and reflective. 
 London, 1881, Svo. 
 
 Stray Moments with Thackeray: 
 his humour, satire, and charac- 
 ters. Being selections from 
 his writings, prefaced with 
 biographical notes. By \V. H. 
 Rideing. New York, 1880, 
 Svo. 
 
 Thackerayana ; notes and anec- 
 dotes illustrated by nearly six 
 hundred sketches by William 
 Makepeace Thackeray, depicting 
 humorous incidents in his school 
 life, and favourite scenes and 
 characters in the books of his 
 everyday reading. London, 
 1875 [1874], Svo. 
 
 in. MISCELLANEOUS. 
 
 The Snob : a literary and scien- 
 tific journal. Not " Conducted 
 by Members of the University." 
 Cambridge, 1S29, 12mo. 
 
 " Timbuctoo," which is signed 
 "T," was written by Thackeray, as 
 was also " To Genevieve," verses. 
 
 Elizabeth Brownrij^ge : a tale in 
 two books. {Frascrs Magazine, 
 vol. vi., 1832, pp. 67-88, 
 131-148.) 
 
 The National Standard and Jour- 
 nal of Literature, Science, 
 Music, Theatricals, and the Fine 
 Arts. London, 1833, 4to. 
 
 Contains several contributions in 
 prose and verse by Thackeray. 
 
 The Constitutional [and Public 
 Ledger]. 
 
 Thackeray, as Paris correspon- 
 dent, contributed a number o 
 letters to this newspaper during 
 1836 and 1S37. 
 
 Carlyle's French Revolution. 
 {Times, August 3, 1837.) 
 
 The Professor. A Tale. By 
 Goliah Gahagan. {Bentley's 
 Miscfllany, vol. ii., 1837, pp. 
 277-288.) 
 
 The Yellowplush Correspondence. 
 Fashionable Fax and Polite 
 Annygoats. By Charles Yellow- 
 plush, Esq. {Fraser s Magazine, 
 Nov. 1837.) 
 
 Reprinted in Thackeray's C!ol- 
 lected Works, vol. xxv., 1885. 
 
 The Yellowplush Correspondence. 
 Nos. ii-vi. (^Eraser's Magazine, 
 1838.) 
 
 Reprinted in "Comic Tales and 
 Sketches," 1841. 
 
 Strictures on Pictures. A letter 
 from Michael Angelo Titmarsh, 
 Esq. (Fraser's Magazine, vol. 
 xvii., pp. 758-764.) 
 
 Reprinted in Thackeray's Col- 
 lected Works, vol. xxv., 1885. 
 
 Men of Character, by Douglas 
 William Jerrold. 3 vols. Lon- 
 don, 1838, 12mo. 
 
 The illustrations were by 
 Thackeray. 
 
 Review on the " Duchess of Marl- 
 borough's Private Correspon- 
 dence." {Times, January 6, 
 183S.) 
 
 Eros and Antercs, or. Love, by 
 Lady Charlotte Bury. {Times, 
 January 11th, 1838.) 
 
 A Diary relative to George IV. 
 and Queen Caroline. {IHmes, 
 January 11th, 1838.) 
 
 Review on the " Memoirs of Holt, 
 the Irish Rebel." {Times, 
 January 31st, 1838.) 
 
 Review of the " Poetical Works 
 of Dr. Southey, collected by 
 himself." {Times, April 17ih, 
 1838.) 
 
 The Story of Mary Ancel. {New 
 Monthly Magazine, 1838, vol. 
 liv., pp. 185-197.) 
 
 Reiu-inted in "The Paris Sketch 
 Book," vol. i.
 
 VI 
 
 BIBLIOGRAPHY. 
 
 Some Passages in the Life of Major 
 Galia<,'an. (xVc^y Monthhj Maga- 
 zine, 1838-1853, vol. Hi., liv., 
 Iv.) 
 
 Reprinted in " Comic Tales and 
 Sketches," vol. ii. 
 
 Stubbs's Caloiular ; or, the Fatal 
 Boots. With twelve illustra- 
 tions by George Cruikshank. 
 {Comic Almanack for 1839.) 
 
 Reprinted in "Comic Tales and 
 Sketches," vol. ii. 
 
 Four Letters. ( The Corsair, edited 
 by lY. r. Willis and T. 0. 
 Porter, 1839.) 
 
 The first three contributions were 
 reprinted under the titles, " An In- 
 vasion of France," " Madame Sand 
 and the New Apocalypse;" and 
 " The Fdtes of July," in The Paris 
 Sketch Book, vol. i., pp. 1-22, 59-75; 
 vol. ii., pp. 102-151. The fourth 
 contribution was not reprinted, but 
 is included in " The Student's 
 Quarter." 
 
 Catherine : a story. By Ikey 
 Solomons, Esq., junior. {Frasefs 
 Magazine, 1839-40.) 
 
 Reprinted in the Collected Edi- 
 tions of '1 hackeray's Works. 
 
 A Second Lecture on the Fine 
 Arts, by Michael Angelo Tit- 
 marsh, Esq. {Fraser s Magazine, 
 vol. xix., 1839, pp. 743-750.) 
 
 Reprinted in Thackeiuy's Collec- 
 ted Works, vol. XXV., 18S5. 
 
 The French Plutarch, No. 1. 
 1. Cartouche. 2. Poinsinet. 
 (Fraser'' s Magazine, vol. xx., 
 1839, pp. 447-459.) 
 
 Reprinted in " The Paris Sketch 
 Book," 1840. 
 
 On the French School of Painting; 
 — in a Letter from Mr. Michael 
 Angelo Titraarsh to Mr. 
 MacGilp of London. {Fraser's 
 Magazine, vol. xx., 1839, pp. 
 679-688.) 
 
 Reprinted in the "Paris Sketch 
 Book," vol. i. 
 
 Barber Cox, and the Cutting of 
 his Comb. With twelve illus- 
 
 trations by George Cruikshank. 
 {Cumic Almanack for 1840.) 
 
 Re)n-inted in Miscellanies as 
 " Cox's Diary." 
 Epistles to the Literati. Ch-s 
 Y-11-wpl-sh, Esq., to Sir 
 Edward Lytton Bulwer, Bart. 
 John Thomas Smith, Esq., 
 to C — s Y — h, Esq. {Fraser s 
 Magazine, vol. xxi., 1840, pp. 
 71-80.) 
 
 Reprinted in " Comic Tales and 
 Sketches," vol. i. 
 
 The Bedford-Row Conspiracy. In 
 
 two parts. (New Monthly 
 
 Magazine, vol. Iviii., 1840.) 
 
 Reprinted in " Comic Tales and 
 Sketches," vol. ii. 
 
 A Pictorial Rhapsody, by Michael 
 Angelo Titmarsh. With an 
 Introductory Letter to Mr. 
 Yorke. {Fraser's Magazine, 
 vol. xxi., 1840, pp. 720-732.) 
 
 A Pictorial Rhapsody concluded, 
 and followed by a remarkable 
 statement of facts, by Mrs. 
 Bai bara. {Fraser's Magazine, 
 vol. xxii., 1840, pp. 112-126.) 
 
 Reprinted in Thackeray's Col- 
 lected Works, vol. XXV. , 1885. 
 
 Going to see a Man Hanged. 
 Signed W. M. T. (Fraser's 
 Magazine, vol. xxii., 1840, pp. 
 150-158.) 
 
 Reprinted among "Sketches and 
 Travels in London," in the Collected 
 Editions of Thackeray's Works. 
 
 A Shabby Genteel Story. In 
 Nine Chapters. (Fraser's Maga- 
 zine, 1840.) 
 
 Reprinted in " Miscellanies," 
 1857, vol. iv. 
 
 Sketches by Spec. No. 1. Bri- 
 tannia Protecting the Drama. 
 London [1840]. 
 
 Mr. Shepherd states that there 
 is only one known copy, which is in 
 the possession of Mr. C. P. Jolin- 
 son, who had it reproduced in fac- 
 simile by the Autotype Company in 
 1885.
 
 BIBLIOGRAPHY. 
 
 Vll 
 
 Captain Rook and Mr. Pigeon. 
 By William Thackeray. With 
 two illustrations by Kenny 
 Meadows. ( Heads of the People. 
 Drawn by Kenny Meadows, 1840, 
 pp. 305-320.) 
 
 The Fashionable Authoress. By 
 William Thackeray. With an 
 illustration by Kenny Meadows. 
 {Heads of the People. Drawn 
 by Kenny Meadoivs, 1841, pp. 
 73-84.) 
 
 The Artist. By Michael Angelo 
 Titmarsh. With an illustration 
 by Kenny Meadows. {Reads of 
 the People, 1841, pp. 161-176.) 
 
 The three preceding: contributions 
 to "Heads of the People" were 
 reprinted in Miscellanies, 1856, 
 vol. ii. 
 
 Memorials of Gormandising. In 
 a letter to Oliver Yorke, Esq. 
 By M. A. Titmarsh. (Eraser's 
 Magazine, vol. xxiii., 1841, pp. 
 710-725.) 
 
 On Men and Pictures. Apropos 
 of a Walk in the Louvre. 
 (Fraser's Magazine, vol. xxiv., 
 1841, pp. 98-111.) 
 
 Men and Coats. {Fraser's Maga- 
 zine, vol. xxiv., 1841, pp. 
 208-217.) 
 
 The three preceding papers are 
 reprinted in Thackeray's Collected 
 Works, vol. XXV., 1885. 
 
 The History of Samuel Titmarsh 
 and the Great Hoggarty 
 Diamond. Edited and illus- 
 trated by Sam's Cousin, Michael 
 Angelo. {Fraser's Magazine, 
 vol. xxiv., 1841.) 
 
 Little Spitz. A Lenten Anecdote, 
 from the German of Professor 
 Spass. By Michael Angelo 
 Titmarsh. With woodcut illus- 
 tration by George Cruikshank. 
 (George Cruikshank' s Omnibus, 
 No. 6, 1841, pp. 167-172.) 
 
 The King of Brentford's Testa- 
 ment. By Michael Angelo 
 Titmarsh. (George Cruik- 
 shank's Omnibus, No. viii., 
 
 1841, pp. 244-246.) 
 
 Reprinted in Thackeray's Col- 
 lected " Ballads," 1855. 
 
 Dickens in France, with two illus- 
 trations by the author. (Fraser's 
 Magazine, vol. xxv., 1842, pp. 
 342-352.) 
 
 Sultan Stork : being the One 
 Thousand and Second Night. 
 By Major G. O'G. Gahagan, 
 H.E.LC.S. Part the First — 
 The Magic Powder. Part the 
 Second. — The Enchanted Prin- 
 cess. With two illustrations 
 on wood by George Cruikshank. 
 (Ainsworth's Magazine, vol. i., 
 
 1842, pp. 33-38; ::33-237.) 
 
 An Exhibition Gossip. By Michael 
 Angelo Titmarsh. (Ainsivorth' s 
 Magazine, vol. i., 1842, pp. 
 319-322.) 
 
 Miss Tickletoby's Lectures on 
 English History. With twenty- 
 three illustrations by the author. 
 {Punch, vol. iii., 1842, pp. 8, 9, 
 12, 13, 28-30, 58, .'9, 70-72, 84, 
 85, 91, 92, 116, 117, 121, 122, 
 131-133,142, 143.) 
 
 Reprinted in Thackeray's Col- 
 lected Works, vol. XXV., 18s5. 
 
 Mr. Spec's Remonstrance. With 
 two illustrations by the author. 
 
 A Turkish Letter concerning the 
 Divertissement " Les Houris." 
 With two illustrations. 
 
 Second Turkish Letter. With 
 one illustration. (Punch, vol. 
 iv.,1843, pp. 69, 70, 199, 209.) 
 
 Fitz - Boodle's Confessions. 
 (Fraser's Magazine, vol. xxv., 
 1842, pp. 707-721.) 
 
 Professions by George Fitz-Boodle. 
 Being appeals to the unem- 
 ployed younger sons of the
 
 Vlll 
 
 BIBLIOGRAPHY. 
 
 nobility. {Fraser's Magazine, 
 vol. xxvi., 1842, pp. 43-60.) 
 
 Fitz-Boodle's Confessions. Miss 
 Lowe. {Fraser's Magazine, vol. 
 xxvi., 1842, pp. 395-405.) 
 
 Confessions of George Fitz-Boodle. 
 Dorothea. (Fraser's Magazine, 
 vol. xxvii., 1843, pp. 76-84.) 
 
 Confessions of George Fitz-Boodle. 
 Ottilia. Fraser's Magazine, vol. 
 xxvii., 1843, pp. 214 224.) 
 
 Confessions of George Fitz-Boodle. 
 Men's Wives. Jilr. and Mrs. 
 Frank Berry. {Fraser's Maga- 
 zine, vol. xxvii., 1843, pp. 
 349-361.) 
 
 Confessions of George Fitz-Boodle. 
 ]\Ien's Wives. No. II. The 
 Ravens wing. {Fmser's Maga- 
 zine, April-Sept. 1843.) 
 
 Jlen's Wives. By George Fitz- 
 Boodle. No. III. Dennis 
 Haggarty's Wife. (Fraser's 
 Magazine, vol. xxviii., 1843, 
 pp. 494-504.) 
 
 Men's Wives. By George Fitz- 
 
 Bnodle. No. IV. The 's 
 
 Wife. (Fraser's Magazine, vol. 
 xx7iii., 1843, pp. 581-592.) 
 
 "The Fitz-Boodle Papers" were 
 collected in Thackeray's Miscel- 
 lanies, with the exception of 
 Dorothea and Ottilia. 
 
 Daddy, I'm Hungry. A Scene in 
 an Irish Coachmaker's Family, 
 designed by Lord Lowther, July 
 1843. Six stanzas of four lines 
 each, with woodcut illustration 
 from a drawing by the author. 
 (Nation, vol. i., 1843, No. 31.) 
 Reprinted in Sir Charles Gavan 
 Duffy's "Young Ireland," 1880, p. 
 243. 
 
 Letterson the FineArts. (Pictorial 
 Times, March 18, April 1, 8, 
 May 6, 13, 27, 1843.) 
 
 Jerome Paturot. With Considera- 
 tions on Novels in General. In 
 
 a letter from M. A. Titmarsh. 
 
 (Fraser's Magazine, vol. xxviii., 
 
 1843, pp. 349-362.) 
 Bluebeard's Ghost. By M. A. 
 
 Titmarsh. (Fraser's Magazine, 
 
 voL xxviii, 1843, pp. 413-425.) 
 Grant in Paris. By Fitz-Boodle. 
 
 (Fraser's Magazine, vol. xxviii., 
 
 1843, pp. 7^2-712.) 
 
 The three preceding articles were 
 reprinted in Tliackera/s Collected 
 Works, vol. XXV., 1885. 
 
 The Luck of Barry Lyndon. A 
 Romance of the Last Century. 
 By Fitz Boodle. (Fraser's Maga- 
 zine, vol. xxix-xxx., 1844.) 
 
 A Box of Novels. (Fraser's Maga- 
 zine, vol. xxix., 1844, pp. 
 153-169.) 
 
 Reprinted in Thackeray's Col- 
 lected Works, vol. XXV., 1885. 
 
 Tlie History of the Next French 
 Revolution. With fourteen 
 illustrations. (Punch, vol. vi., 
 1844.) 
 
 Reprinted in Thackeray's Col- 
 lected Works, vol. XV., 1879, pp. 
 103-201. 
 
 Tilmarsh's Carmen Lilliense. 
 (Fraser's Magazine, vol. xxix., 
 
 1844, pp. 361-363.) 
 Reprinted in Thackeray's "Bal- 
 lads,'' 1855. 
 
 Review of " A New Spirit of the 
 Age, by R. H. Home. (Morning 
 Chronicle, April 2nd, 1844.) 
 
 Reprinted in Thackeray's Col- 
 lected Works, vol. XXV., 1885. 
 
 Little Travels and Roadside 
 Sketches. By Titmarsli. 
 
 (Fraser's Magazine, voL xxix., 
 1844, pp. 517-528.) 
 
 Little Travels and Roadside 
 Sketches. By Titmarsh, Nos. 
 ii.-iii. (Fraser's Magazine, vol. 
 XXX., 1844, pp. 465-471, and 
 vol. xxxi., 1845, pp. 94-96.) 
 
 May Gambols; or, Titmarsh ia 
 the Picture Galleries. {Fraser's
 
 BIBLIOGRAPHY. 
 
 IX 
 
 Magazine, vol. xxix., 1844, pp. 
 700-716.) 
 
 Repi-inted in Thackeray's Col- 
 lected Works, vol, XXV., 1885. 
 
 The Partie Fine, hy Lancelot 
 WagstafF, Esq. — Arabella : or, 
 the Moral of "The Paitie Fine." 
 {New Monthly Magazine, vol. 
 Ixxi., 1844, pp. 22-28, 169-172.) 
 
 Greenwich — Whitebait. By Mr. 
 Wagstaff. ( New Monthly Maga- 
 zine, July 1844, pp. 416-421.) 
 
 Reprinted in Thackeray's Col- 
 lected Works, vol. XXV., 1885. 
 
 Wanderings of our Fat Contri- 
 butor. {Punch, vol. vii., 1844, 
 pp. 61, 62.) With three illus- 
 trations by the author. 
 
 Travelling Notes by our Fat Con- 
 tributor. {Punch, vol. vii., 
 
 1844, pp. 66, 67, 83, 84, 237, 
 256, 257, 265, 266. Thirteen 
 illustrations by the author. 
 
 Punch in the East. From our 
 Fat Contributor. {Punch, vol. 
 viii., 1845, pp. 31, 32, 35, 36, 
 45, 61, 75.) Nine illustrations 
 by the author. 
 
 Picture Gossij) : in a Letter from 
 JMichael Angelo Titmarsh. 
 {Fraser's MaqavAne, vol. xxxi. , 
 
 1845, pp. 713-724.) 
 
 The Chest of Cigars. By Lancelot 
 Wagstafif, Esq. {New Monthly 
 Magazine, vol. Ixxiv., 1845, pp. 
 381-385.) 
 
 Bob Robinson's First Love. By 
 Lancelot Wagstaff, Esq. (New 
 Monthly Magazine, vol. Ixxiv., 
 1845, pp. 519-525.) 
 
 The Pimlico Pavilion. By the 
 Mulligan (of Kilballymulligan.) 
 {Punch, vol. ix., 1845, p. 66. 
 
 Meditations on Solitude. By our 
 Stout Commissioner. {Punch 
 vol. ix., 1845, p. 123.) With 
 an illustration by the author. 
 
 Beulah Spa. By "Punch's 
 
 Commissioner." {Punch, vol. 
 ix., 1845, pp. 137, 138.) With 
 two illustrations by the 
 author. 
 
 The Georges. {Phinch, vol, ix., 
 1845, p. 159.) 
 
 A Legend of the Rhine. By 
 Michael Angelo Titmarsh. With 
 fourteen woodcut illustrations 
 by George Cruikshank. {George 
 CruikshanF s Table Book, 1845.) 
 
 Notice of N. P. Willis's "Dashes 
 at Life." {Edinburgh Review, 
 vol. Ixxxii., 1845, pp. 470-4S0.) 
 
 Two Letters to Mr. Macvey 
 Napier, Editor of the Edinburgh 
 Review, dated "St. James' 
 Street, July 16, 1845," and 
 "October 16, 1845." {Carres- 
 pondence of the late Macvey 
 Napier, 1879, pp. 498, 499.) 
 
 Barmecide Banquets with Joseph 
 Bregion and Anne Miller. 
 George Savage Fitz-Boodle, 
 Esquire, to the Rev. Lionel 
 Gaster. {Fraser's Magazine, 
 vol. xxxii., 1845, pp. 584-593.) 
 Reprinted in Thackeray's Col- 
 lected Works, vol. XXV., 1S85. 
 
 Brighton. By " Punch's Com- 
 missioner." {Punch, vol. ix., 
 1845, p. 158.) With three 
 illustrations by the author. 
 
 A Brighton Night Entertainment. 
 By " Punch's Commissioner." 
 {Punch, vol. ix., 1845, p. 168.) 
 With four illustrations by the 
 author. 
 
 Meditations over Brighton. By 
 " Puncli's Commissioner." 
 
 (From the Devil's Dyke.) 
 (Punch, vol. ix., 1845, p. 187.) 
 With an illustration by the 
 author. 
 
 A Doe in the City. By Frederick 
 Haltamont de Montmorency. 
 {Punch, vol. ix., 1845, p. 191.)
 
 BIBLIOGRAPHY. 
 
 With an illustration by the 
 author. 
 
 About a Christmas Book. In a 
 letter from Michael Anfjelo 
 Titmarsh to Oliver Yorke, Esq. 
 {Frascr's Magazine, vol. xxxii., 
 1845, pp. 744-748.) 
 
 A Lucky Speculator. (With 
 "Jeames of Buckley Square, 
 A Heligy.") (Punch, vol. ix., 
 1845, p. 59.) With an illus- 
 tration by John Leech. 
 
 A Letter from "Jeames of Buckley 
 Square." {Punch, vol. ix., 
 1845, p. 76.) 
 
 Jeames on Time Bargings. (Punch, 
 
 vol. ix., 1845, p. 195.) 
 Jeames's Diary. (Punch, vols, 
 
 ix.-x., 1845-46. With twenty 
 
 illustrations by the author. 
 Reprinted in collected form in 
 
 " Miscellanies," 1856. 
 
 Ronsard to his Mistress. (Fraser's 
 Magazine, vol. xxxiii., 1846, p. 
 120.) 
 
 Reprinted in Thackeray's col- 
 lected " Ballads," 1S55. 
 
 A Brother of the Press on the 
 History of a Literary Man, 
 Laman Blanchard, and the 
 chances of the Literary Pro- 
 fession. In a Letter to the 
 Reverend Francis Sylvester at 
 Rome, from Michael Angelo 
 Titmarsh, Esq. (Fraser's Mag^a- 
 zine, vol. xxxiii., 1846, pp. 
 332-342.) 
 
 Reprinted in Thackeray's Col- 
 lected Works, vol. XXV., 1885. 
 
 Titmarsh v. Tait. Letter to Mr. 
 Punch. (Pinich, vol. x., 1846, 
 p. 124.) 
 
 On some Illustrated Children's 
 Books. By Michael Angelo 
 Titmarsh. (Fraser's Maga- 
 zine, vol. xxxiii., 1846, pp. 
 495-502.) 
 
 Jeames on the Gauge Question. 
 
 Mr. Jeames again. (Punch, vol. 
 x., 1840, pp. 223, 267.) 
 
 Proposals for a Continuation of 
 Ivanhoe. In a letter to Mon- 
 sieur Alexandre Dumas, by- 
 Monsieur Michael Angelo Tit- 
 marsh. (Fraser's Magazine, 
 vol. xxxiv., 1846, pp. 237-245, 
 359-367. 
 
 A Grumble about the Christmas 
 Books. By Michael Angelo 
 Titmarsh. (Fraser's Magazine, 
 vol. XXXV., 1847, pp. 111-126.) 
 
 An Eastern Adventure of the Fat 
 Contributor. (Punch's Pocket- 
 Book for 1847, pp. 148-156.) 
 With full-page illustrations by 
 the author. 
 
 The Mahogany Tree. (Punch, vol. 
 xii., 1847, p. 13.) 
 
 Two Letters to William Edmond- 
 stoune Aytoun, dated January 
 2 and January 13, 1847. 
 [Memoir of William Edmond- 
 stoune Aytoun, by Theodore 
 Martin, 1867, pp. 131-135.) 
 
 Mr. Jeames's Sentiments on the 
 Cambridge Election. (Punch, 
 vol. xii., 1847, p. 102.) 
 
 Love Songs Made Easy. " What 
 makes my heart to thrill and 
 glow ? " Song by Fitzroy 
 Clarence. (Punch, vol. xii., 
 1847, p. 101.) With an illus- 
 tration by the author. 
 
 Love Songs by the Fat Contribu- 
 tor. "The Domestic Love Song. 
 "The Cane-Bottomed Chair." 
 (Punch, vol. xii., 1847, p. 125.) 
 With two illustrations by the 
 author. 
 
 Love Songs of the Fat Contributor. 
 The Ghazul, or Oriental Love 
 Song. The Rocks. The Merry 
 Bard. The Caique. (Punchy 
 vol. xii., 1847, p. 227.) With 
 two illustrations by the author.
 
 BIBLIOGRAPHY. 
 
 x» 
 
 Punch's Prize Novelists : — 
 
 1. George de Barnwell. {Punch, 
 April 3-17, 1S47.) With 
 three illustrations by the 
 author. 
 
 2. Codlingsby. By B. de 
 Shrewsbury, Esq. (Punch, 
 April 24, May 15-29, 1847.) 
 With four illustrations by 
 the author. 
 
 8. Lords and Liveries. [Punch, 
 June 12-26, 1847.) With 
 three illustrations by the 
 author. 
 
 4. Barbazure. By G. P. R. 
 Jeanies, Esq. [Punch, July 
 10-24, 1847.) With five 
 illustrations by the author. 
 
 5. Phil Fogarty, A Tale of the 
 Fighting Onety-Oneth. By 
 Harry Rollicker. [Punch, 
 Aug. 7-21, 1847.) With five 
 illustrations by the author. 
 
 6. Crinoline. By Je — mes 
 PI — sh, Esq. {Punch, Aug. 
 28, Sept. 4, 11, 1847.) With 
 six illustrations by the 
 author. 
 
 7. The Stars and Stripes. 
 [Punch, Sept. 25, Oct. 9, 
 1847.) With two illustra- 
 tions by the author. 
 
 Brighton in 1847. By the F. C. 
 [Punch, vol. xiii,, 1847, pp. 
 153, 157, 158.) With three 
 illustrations by the author. 
 
 Travels in London, by Spec. 
 [Punch, vol. xiii., 1847, p. 193.) 
 
 Travels in London. The Curate's 
 Walk. (Nov. 27, 1847.) 
 
 Travels in London, A Walk with 
 the Curate. (Dec. 4, 1847.) A 
 Dinner in the City. (Dec. 11, 
 25, 31, 1847.) With nine 
 illustrations by the author. 
 
 Travels in London. A Night's 
 Pleasure. [Punch, Jan. 8-29, 
 
 Feb. 12, 19, 1848.) With tea 
 illustrations by the author. A 
 Club in an U|noar. [Punch, 
 March 11, 1848.) With two 
 illustrations b}' the author. A 
 Roundabout Ride. [Punch, 
 March 25, 1848.) With au 
 illustration by the author. 
 
 The Persecution of British Foot- 
 men, By Mr. Jeames. [Punchy 
 vol, xiv,, 1848, pp. 131, US, 
 144.) 
 
 The Battle of Limerick. (Punch, 
 vol. xiv., 1848, p. 195.) 
 
 On the New Forward Movement. 
 A Letter from our old friend, 
 Mr. Snob, to Mr. Joseph Hume. 
 [Punch, vol. xiv., 1848, p. 207.) 
 
 Mr, Snob's Remonstrance with 
 Mr. Smith. [Picnch, vol, xiv.^ 
 1848, p. 217.) 
 
 A Little Dinner at Timmins's. 
 [Punch, vol, xiv., 1843, pp. 
 219-223, 247, 258; vol. xv., pp. 
 5, 13, 33, 34, 43.) With eight 
 illustrations by the author. 
 Reprinted in "Miscellanies,'* 
 1856. 
 
 Letters to a Nobleman visiting 
 Ireland, [Punch, vol, xv., 
 1848, pp. 95, 96, 107.) With 
 two illustrations by the author. 
 
 Science at Cambridge, [Punch, 
 vol, XV,, 1848, p. 201.) 
 
 A Bow Street Ballad, By a 
 Gentleman of the Force. 
 [Punch, vol. XV., 1848, p, 229.) 
 
 Death of the Earl of Robinson. 
 (In the manner of a popular 
 Necrographer. ) [Punch, vol. 
 XV., 1848, p. 231.) 
 
 Bow Street Ballads. No. IL 
 Jacob Omnium's Hoss, [Punch, 
 vol, XV,, 1848, p, 251. 
 
 The Great Squattleboro^ gh Soired, 
 [Punch, vol. xv., 1848, pp. 253, 
 254.) With au illustration by
 
 XII 
 
 BIBLIOGRAPHY. 
 
 tlie autlior roprfsentiiifj Dr. 
 Johnaou and HoswuU walking 
 together. 
 
 Tlie Three Christmas Waits. 
 {Tunch, vol. XV., 1818, p. 26f).) 
 
 An Interesting Event. By ilr. 
 Titniarsli. {Keepsake, 184", pp. 
 207-215.) 
 
 Child's Parties : and a Remon- 
 strance concerning them. 
 (Punch, vol, xvi , 1819, pp. 13, 
 14, 35,36.) With two illustra- 
 tions by tlie author. 
 
 Faiis Revisited. By an Old Paris 
 Man. {Punch, vol. xvi., 1849, 
 pp. 55, 56.) 
 
 The Ballad of Bouillabaisse. 
 From the Contributor at Paris. 
 {Punch, vol. xvi., 1849, p. 67.) 
 
 Two or Three Theatres at Paris. 
 {Punch, vol. xvi., 1849, p. 75.) 
 With an illustration by Richard 
 Doyle. 
 
 Mr. Brown's Letters to a Young 
 Man about Town. {Punch, 
 Mar. 24- Aug. 18, 1849.) With 
 sixteen illustrations. 
 
 The Three Sailors. {Sand and 
 Canvas; a narrative of adven- 
 tures in Egypt, with a Sojourn 
 among the Artists in Pone, by 
 Samuel Bevan, 1849, pp. 336- 
 342.) 
 
 The Dignity of Literature. To 
 the Evlitor of the " Morning 
 Chronicle." {Morning Chronicle, 
 Jan. 12, 1850.) 
 
 Reprinted in Thackeray's Col- 
 lected Works, vol. XXV., 1885. 
 
 Ca)iei's and Anchovies. Letter. 
 {Morning Chronicle, April 12, 
 1850.) 
 
 The Proser : Essays and Dis- 
 courses, by Dr. Solomon Pacifico. 
 {Punch, vol. xviii., 1850, pp. 
 ir.l, 152, 173, 197, 198, £23, 
 224, 234, 235 ; vol, xix., pp. 
 7, 8, 59.) 
 
 Balliuls of Policeman X. {Punch, 
 vol. xviii., pp. 53, 73, 189, 
 209; vol. xix., p. 88.) 
 
 Voltigeur. {Keepsake, 1851, pp. 
 238-250). 
 
 May Day Ode, containing nine- 
 teen stanzas of eight lines each. 
 {Times, April 30, 1851.) 
 
 Mr. Thackeray in the United 
 States. To the Editor of 
 Fraser's Magazine (vol. xlvii., 
 1853, pp. 100-103). 
 
 Reprinted in Thackeray's Col- 
 lected Works, vol. XXV, 1885. 
 
 The Pen and the Album. (Stanzas.) 
 By W. M. Thackeray. {Keep- 
 sake for 1853, pp. 48-50.) 
 
 Preface of five pages, dated "New 
 York: December, 1852." {Selec- 
 tion from his Contributions to 
 Punch. 2 vols. New York, 
 1853.) 
 
 "Mr, Washington." To th« 
 Editor of the Times. {Times, 
 Nov, 23, 1853.) 
 
 Lucy's Birthday. " Seventeen 
 Rosebuds in a Ring." Three 
 stanzas of eight lines each. 
 {Keepsake, 1854, p. 18.) 
 
 Letters from the East by our own 
 Bashi-Bazouk. {Punch, vol. 
 xxvi., 1854, pp. 257, 258, 267, 
 268 ; vol. xxvii., pp. 1, 2, 11, 
 12, 21, 22, 31, 32, 41.) With 
 seven illustrations by the 
 author. 
 
 Pictures of Life and Character. 
 By John Leech. {Quarterly 
 licview, vol. xcvi., 1854, pp. 
 75-86.) 
 
 Reminiscences of Weimar and 
 Goethe, in a letter addressed to 
 Mr. G. H. Lewes, dated "Lon- 
 don, 28th April, 1855." (Lrwes's 
 Life and lFo7-ks of Goethe, 1855, 
 vol. ii., pp. 44-'-446.) 
 
 Letter to Mr. Edmund Yates,
 
 BIBLIOGRAPHY. 
 
 xin 
 
 dated "Michaelmas Day, 1855." 
 (Edmund Yates, his Bccollec- 
 tions and Exiieriences, 1884, 
 vol, i., p. 280.) 
 
 The Idler. Eleven stanzas of 
 eight lines each, signed "Essel." 
 {Idler, Magazine of Fiction, etc., 
 No. 3, 1856, pp. 172, 173.) 
 
 Reprinted in Thackeray's Col- 
 lected Works, vol. XXV., 18s5. 
 
 A Letter ot Thackeray to Captain 
 George Franklin Atkinson, in 
 acknowledgment of his illus- 
 trated work, entitled, " Curry 
 and Rice." (Facsimiled in The 
 Leisure Hour, Sept. 1883, pp. 
 560, 561.) 
 
 Letter to Mr. Anthony Trollope, 
 dated "Oct. 28, 1859." (Auto- 
 biography by Anthony Trollope, 
 1883, vol. i., pp. 183, 184.) 
 
 Letter to Henry Wadsworth 
 Longfellow, dated Nov. 16, 
 
 1859. (Life of Henry Wads- 
 worth Longfellow, edited by 
 Samuel Longfellow, 1886, vol. 
 ii., p. 346.) 
 
 The Cornhill Magazine, [Edited 
 from the commencement to 
 April 1862, by W. M. Thackeray, 
 etc.] London, 1860, etc., Svo. 
 
 Nil Nisi Bonum. (Cornhill Maga- 
 zine, vol. i., 1860, pp. 129-134.) 
 
 The Last Sketch. (A short paper 
 prefixed to " Emma, a Frag- 
 ment of a Story by the late 
 Charlotte Bronte. (Cornhill 
 Magazine, vol. i., 1860, pp. 485- 
 487.) 
 
 Vanitas Vanitatum. (Sixteen 
 stanzas of four lines each.) 
 (Cornhill Magazine, vol, ii., 
 
 1860, pp. 59, '60.) 
 
 A Leaf out of a Sketch Book. 
 (Victoria liegia, a volume of 
 original contributions in poetry 
 and prose, edited by Adelaide 
 
 A. Procter, 1861, pp. 113- 
 125.) 
 
 Cruikshank's Gallery. (Times, 
 May 15, 1863.) 
 
 Mrs. Katherine's Lantern. (Writ- 
 ton by Tliackeiay in a Lady's 
 Album.) (Cornhill Magazine, 
 vol. XV., 1867, pp. 117, 118.) 
 
 The Anglers. Seven stanzas of 
 eight lines each. (Princess 
 Alexandra Gift Book, edited by 
 John aiierer, 1868, pp. 22, 23.) 
 
 IV. SKETCHES, Etc. 
 
 Charles IX. firing at the Hugue- 
 nots out of the windows of the 
 Louvre. (Facsimiled in Recollec- 
 tions and Reflections of J. R. 
 Planchi, 1872, vol. i. 
 
 Si^nor Balfi. Sketch made in 
 Mr. Planche's box during tl e 
 performance of Balfe's opera, 
 "The Siege of Rochelle," 16th 
 Nov. 1835. (Facsimiled in 
 Planche's Recollection'^ and Re- 
 flections, vol. i., p. 241.) 
 
 The " Whitey-Brown Paper Maga- 
 zine." (Facsimiled in the 
 June 1, 1864.) 
 
 Note addressed to Mr. Planche, 
 with pen-and-ink sketch of the 
 State visit of the Queen and 
 Prince Albert to Coven t Garden 
 Theatre, 1840. (Facsimiled in 
 Planche's Recollections and Re- 
 flections, vol. ii., p. 40 ) 
 
 The Gamblers. A Sketch. (Fac 
 similed in the Autographic 
 Mirror, vol. i., 1864, p. 27.) 
 
 Note dated "36 Onslow Sriuare, 
 26th March, 1855." (Facsimiled 
 in the Aidvgraphic Mirror, vol, 
 i., 1864, p, 27.) 
 
 Caricature Sketch of himself 
 seated, writing on the banks of
 
 XIV 
 
 BIBLIOGRAPHY. 
 
 the Nile, sketched on the first 
 pa^e of a coiiy of " Cornhill to 
 Cairo." and two letters. (Fae- 
 similed in the Autographic 
 Mirror, vol. ii., 1864, p. 139.) 
 The Three Sailors. {The Editor's 
 Box, a Midsummer Annual, 
 1880, p. 83.) 
 
 f/w tJic compilation of the List of 
 Thackeray's contributions to 
 Magazines I have been greatly 
 indebt''d to Mr. Shepherds 
 valuable Bibliograj)hy.'\ 
 
 V. APPEXDIX. 
 
 BIOGRAPHY, CRITICISM, ETC. 
 
 BaLjehot, Walter. — Literary 
 
 Studies. 2 vols. London, 1879, 
 
 8vo. 
 Sterne and Thackeray, vol. ii., pp. 
 
 106-145. 
 Bates, William. — The Maclise 
 
 Portrait Gallery of illustrious 
 
 literary characters. London, 
 
 1883, 8vo. 
 Thackeray, pp. 437-448. 
 Bayne, Peter. — Essays in Bio- 
 graphy and Criticism. Boston, 
 
 1857-58, 8vo. 
 The Modern Novel— Dickens, Bul- 
 
 ■wer, Thackeray, Series I., pp. 363- 
 
 392. 
 Berdmore, S. — A Scratch Team of 
 
 Essays, etc. London, 1883, 8vo. 
 Thackeray. From the Westminster 
 
 Review, July 1864, pp. 97-122. 
 Brimley, Georj^e. — Essays. Cam- 
 
 bridge, 1858, 8vo. 
 " Esmond," pp. 258-269. 
 Brown, Dr. John. — Thackeray: 
 
 his literary career. Boston, 
 
 1877, 16mo. 
 Bungay, George W. — Off-Hand 
 
 Takings ; or. Crayon Sketches 
 
 of the Noticeable Men of our 
 Age. New York [1860], 8vo. 
 
 W. M. Thackeray, pp. 224-228. 
 
 Conrad, Hermann. — Willinm 
 Makepeace Thackeray. Eiu 
 Pessimist als Dichter. Berlin, 
 1887, 8vo. 
 
 Crispe, Thomas Edward. — Thack- 
 eray, humourist and satirist, his 
 works, original characters, and 
 comic writings. A lecture, prin- 
 cipally treating on Vanity Fair. 
 London, 1857, 8vo. 
 
 Dawson, George. — Biographical 
 Lectures. London, 1886, 8vo. 
 Thackeray, pp. 438-450. 
 
 Eagles, Kev. Jo'in. — Essays con- 
 tributed to Blackwood's M;iga- 
 zine. Edinburgh, 1857, 8vo. 
 
 Thackeray's Lectures — Swift, pp. 
 213-264. 
 
 Evans, Sebastian. — Brother Fa- 
 bian's Manuscript, and other 
 poems. London, 1865, 8vo. 
 W. M. Thackeray, pp. 249-261. 
 
 Fields, James T. — Yesterdays with 
 Authors. Boston, 1873, Svo. 
 Thackeray, pp. 11-37. 
 
 Another edition. Boston, 
 
 1882. 8vo. 
 Thackeray, pp. 11-37. 
 Fitzgerald, Edward. — Letters and 
 Literary Remains. Edited by 
 W. A. Wright. 3 vols. London, 
 1889, 8vo. 
 
 Numerous references to Thackeray 
 in vol. i. 
 
 Gilfillau, George. — A Third Gal- 
 lery of Portraits. Edinburgli, 
 1854, 8vo. 
 Thackeray, pp. 261-277. 
 
 Griswold, Hattie Tyng. — Home 
 Life of Great Authors. Chicago, 
 1887, Svo. 
 W. M. Thackeray, pp. 322-334. 
 
 Hamilton, Walter. — Parodies of 
 the Works of English and 
 American authors, collected and 
 annotated by W. Hamilton, 
 London, 1885, 4to. 
 Thackeray, vol. v., pp. 212-222. 
 
 Hannay, James. — A brief memoir
 
 BIBLIOGRAPHY. 
 
 XV 
 
 of Mr. Thackeray. [Reprinted 
 from the Edinburgh Courant.'\ 
 Edinburgh, 1864, 8vo. 
 
 Characters and Criticisms. 
 Edinburgh, 1865, 8vo. 
 Thackeray, pp. 42-59. 
 Studies on Thackeray. Lon- 
 don [1869], 16nio. 
 Holloway, Laura C. — The Mothers 
 of Great Men and Women, etc. 
 New York, 1884, 8vo. 
 
 The Mother of Thackeray, pp. 
 174-176. 
 Huet, C. B. — Litterarische Fan- 
 tasien en Kritieken. Haarlem 
 [1883], 8vo. 
 
 Thackeray, 4th Deel, pp. 37-42. 
 Hutton, L. — Literary Landmarks 
 of London. London, 1885, 8vo. 
 Thackeray, pp. 302-307. 
 Jameson, Mrs. A. — A Common- 
 place Book of Thoughts, etc. 
 London, 1877, 8vo. 
 
 Thackeray's "English Humour- 
 ists," pp. 271-275. 
 Jeaffreson, J. Cordy. — Novels and 
 Novelists from Elizabeth to 
 Victoria. 2 vols. London, 
 1858, 8vo. 
 
 W. M. Thackeray, vol. ii., pp. 
 
 262-281. 
 
 Jerrold, Blanchard. — The Best of 
 all Good Company. A Day 
 with W. M. Thackeray. Lon- 
 don, 1872, 8vo. 
 
 Johnson, Charles P. — Hints to 
 collectors of original editions of 
 the works of William Make- 
 peace Thackeray. London, 1885, 
 Svo. 
 
 The Works of W. M. Thack- 
 
 eray contemplated or com- 
 menced, but not completed. 
 ( Walford's Antiquarian, vol. 
 viii., 1885, pp. 81-87.) 
 — The Early Writings of 
 William Makepeace Thackeray. 
 With illustrations after W. 
 M. Thackeray, Chinnery, F. 
 
 Walker, and R. Doyle. London, 
 1888, Svo. 
 Kent, Charles. — Footprints on the 
 Road. London, 1864, 8vo. 
 
 W. M. Thackeray : The Satirist- 
 Humourist, pp. 370-407. 
 
 Lancaster, Henry H. — Essays and 
 Reviews. Edinburcrh, 1876,8vo. 
 Thackeray, pp. 399-479. 
 Lang, Andrew. — Letters to Dead 
 Authors. London, 1886, 8vo. 
 To W. M. Thackeray, pp. 1-9. 
 L'Estrange, A. G. — History of 
 English Humour. 2 vols. Lou- 
 don, 1878, Svo. 
 Thackeray, vol. ii., pp. 216-225. 
 Maceuen, Malcolm. — Celebrities 
 of the Fast and Present. Phila- 
 delphia, 1874, Svo. 
 Thackeray, pp. 203-20S. 
 Mackay, Charles. — Forty Years' 
 Recollections of Life, Literature, 
 and Public Affairs, from 1830 
 to 1870. 2 vols. London, 1877, 
 Svo. 
 Thackeray and Leech, voL ii., pp. 
 
 294-304. 
 
 Mat;inn, William. — A Gallery of 
 Illustrious Literary Ciiaracters. 
 Edited by William Bates. Lou- 
 don [1873], 4to. 
 W. M. Thackeray, pp. 222-226. 
 
 Mason, Edward T. — Personal 
 Traits of British Authors. With 
 Portraits. New York, 1885, 
 Svo. 
 
 Thackeray, pp. 257-314. 
 
 Masson, David. — British Novelists 
 and their styles, etc. Cam- 
 bridge, 1859, Svo. 
 
 Dickens and Thackeray, pp. 229- 
 253. 
 
 Men. — Eminent Men and Popular 
 Books. From "The Times." 
 London, 1859, Svo. 
 
 Thackeray's Miscellanies, pp. 148- 
 166. 
 
 Parton, James. — Some noted 
 Princes, Authors, and States 
 men of our time, etc. Edited
 
 XVI 
 
 BIBLIOGRAPHY. 
 
 by James Parton. New York 
 
 [1886], 8vo. 
 
 Recollections of Thackeray, by C. 
 
 H. Bminard, pp. 52-5(>. 
 I'liillips, Saimu'l. — Essays from 
 
 "The Times." London, 1871, 
 
 8vo. 
 
 Dickens and Thackeray, vol. ii., 
 pp 320-338. 
 Pollock, Walter H.— Thackeray. 
 
 (Encyclopwdia Britannica, vol. 
 
 xxii., pp. 214-217.) Loudon, 
 
 1888, 4to. 
 Reed, W. B. — Hand Immemor. 
 
 A few personal recollections of 
 
 Mr. Thackeray in Philadelphia. 
 
 [Philadelphia] 1864, Svo. 
 Richards, Alfred B. — Poems, 
 
 Essays, and Opinions. 2 vols. 
 
 London, 1851-2, Svo. 
 
 Thackeray and Bickens. The 
 
 Kickleburys on the Rhine, vol. i., 
 
 pp. 215-218 ; Thackeray's Estimation 
 
 of Sterne, vol. iv., pp. 221-225. 
 Rideing, William H. — Thackeray's 
 
 London. A description of liis 
 
 haunts, and the scenes of his 
 
 novels. London, 1885, Svo. 
 Roscoe, William Caldwell. — Poems 
 
 and Essays. 2 vols. London, 
 
 1860, Svo. 
 
 Thackeray, Artist and Moralist, 
 
 vol. ii., pp. '264-308; Thackeray on 
 
 Swift, pp. 524-535. 
 
 Senior, Nassau W. — Essays on 
 
 Fiction. London, 1864, Svo. 
 
 Mr. Thackeray, pp. 321-396. 
 
 Shepard, William. — The Literary 
 Life. Edited by William Shep- 
 ard. Pen pictures of modern 
 authors. New York, 1882, 
 12mo. 
 W. M. Thackeray, pp. 294-320. 
 
 Shepherd, Richard Heme. — The 
 Bibliograpliy of Thackeray. A 
 bibliographical list, arranged in 
 chronological order of the pub- 
 lished writings in prose and 
 verse, and the sketches and 
 drawings of W. M. Thackeray 
 
 (from 1829 to 1880). London 
 
 [1881], Svo. 
 Skelton, John. — Essays in History 
 
 and Biography, etc. Edinburgh, 
 
 1883, Svo. . 
 W. M. Thackeray, pp. 293-295. 
 Smith, George B. — Poets and 
 
 Novelists ; a series of literary 
 
 studies. London, 1875, Svo. 
 Thackeray, pp. 1-56. 
 Stoddard, Richard H. — Anecdote 
 
 Biographies of Thackerav and 
 
 Dickens. Edited by R. H. 
 
 Stoddard. {Bric-a-Brac Series.) 
 
 New York, 1874, Svo. 
 Taine, H. A. — Essais de Critique 
 
 et d'Histoire. Paris, 1858, Svo. 
 Thackeray, pp. 149-214. 
 
 Histoire de la Litt^rature 
 
 Anglaise. 4 tom. Paris, 1863-4, 
 Svo. 
 Thackeray, torn iv., pp. 71-149. 
 -History of English Literature. 
 
 Translated by H. Van Laun. 
 
 4 vols. Edinburgh, 1873-4, Svo. 
 
 Thackeray, vol. iv., pp. 165-226. 
 
 Taylor, Bayard. — Critical Essays 
 and Literary Notes. New York, 
 1880, Svo. 
 Thackeray, pp. 134-154. 
 
 Taylor, Theodore, i.e., John Cam- 
 den Hotten. — Thackeray, the 
 Humourist and the Man of 
 Letters. The story of his life, 
 including a selection from his 
 characteristic speeches. Now for 
 the first time gathered together. 
 With photograph from life by 
 E. Edwards, and original illus- 
 trations. London, 1S64, Svo. 
 
 Thackeray, W. M.— The National 
 Shakespeare Committee and the 
 late Mr. Thackeray. London 
 [1864], Svo. 
 
 Trail, H. D.— The New Lucian, 
 being a series of dialogues of the 
 Dead. London, 1884, Svo. 
 Sterne and Thackeray, pp. 237-253.
 
 BIBLIOGRAPHY. 
 
 XVII 
 
 Trollope, Anthony. — Thackeray. 
 London, 1879, 8vo. 
 
 Vaughan, Robert Alfred. — Essays 
 and Remains. 2 vols. London, 
 1858, 8vo. 
 
 Thackeray's Esmond, toL ii., pp. 
 311-320. 
 
 Watt, James Crabb. — Great Novel- 
 ists. Scott, Thackeray, Dickens, 
 Lytton. Edinburgh, 1880, 8vo. 
 Thackeray, pp. 99-159. 
 
 Another edition. Edinburgh, 
 
 1880, 8vo. 
 
 Another edition. London 
 
 [1885], 8vo. 
 
 "Whipple, Edwin P. — Character 
 and Characteristic Men. Bos- 
 ton, 1866, 8vo. 
 Thackeray, pp. 197-217. 
 
 Williams, S. F. — Essays, critical, 
 biographical, and miscellaneous. 
 London, 1862, 8vo, 
 Thackeray, pp. 35-68. 
 
 Yates, Edmund H.— Mr. Thack- 
 eray, Mr. Yates, and the Garrick 
 Club. The correspondence and 
 facts. Stated by Edmund Yatea. 
 London, 1859, 8vo. 
 Privately printed. 
 
 Edmund Yates: his Recollec- 
 tions and Experiences. 2 vols. 
 London, 1884, 8vo. 
 
 Numerous references to Thack- 
 eray. 
 
 Magazine Articles, Etc. 
 
 Thackeray, William Makepeace. — 
 Dublin' University Magazine, 
 vol. 32, 1848, pp. 444-459 ; vol. 
 51, 1859, pp. 630-640; vol. 55, 
 pp. 22-35. — Eclectic Magazine 
 (trom the People's Journal), 
 vol. 22, 1851, pp. 80-85.— 
 Tait's Edinburgh Magazine, vol. 
 22 N.S., 1855, pp. 670-677.— 
 Littell's Living Age (from the 
 New York Times, 29th Oct.), 
 vol. 47, 1865, pp. 562-665.— 
 
 Thackeray, William Makepeace. 
 Calcutta Review, vol. 37, 1861, 
 pp. 245-280. — Westminster 
 Review, by S. Berdmore, vol. 
 26 N.S., 1864, pp. 172-185; 
 same article. Eclectic Magazine, 
 vol. 29, pp. 141-155 ; reprinted 
 in " A Scratch Team of Essays," 
 by S. Berdmore, 1883.— Eraser's 
 Magazine, vol. 69, 1864, pp. 
 401-418 ; same article, Eclectic 
 Magazine, vol. 62, pp. 236-248. 
 — Macmillan's Magazine, vol. 
 9, 1864, pp. 356-368.— Cornhill 
 Magazine, by Charles Dickens, 
 vol. 9, 1864, pp. 129-132 ; and by 
 Anthony Trollope, pp. 134-137. 
 — Atlantic Monthly, by B. 
 Taylor, vol. 13, 1864, pp. 371- 
 379. — North British Review, 
 vol. 40, 1864, pp. 210-265; 
 same article, Littell's Living 
 Age, vol. 81, pp. 3-34. — 
 Christian Examiner, by E. P. 
 Whipple, vol. 76, 1864, pp. 
 211-222.— Chambers's Journal, 
 1864, pp. 277-279.— Home and 
 Foreign Review, vol. 4, 1864, 
 pp. 476-511. — Leisure Hour, 
 Dec. 3, 1864, pp. 774-780, 790, 
 791. — Littell's Living Age (from 
 the Saturday Review), vol. 80, 
 1864, pp. 413-415.— Hlustrated 
 London News, Jan. 9, 1864. — 
 Revue des Deux Mondes, by E. 
 D. Forgues, torn. 51, 1864, pp. 
 906-936. — Eclectic Magazine 
 (from the Leisure Hour), vol. 
 64, 1865, pp. 340-348. — 
 Lippincott's Magazine, by J. 
 N. Barnes, vol. 3, 1869, pp. 
 150-161. — Harper's Magazine, 
 by R. H. Stoddard, vol. 49, 
 1874, pp. 533-549. 
 
 and Arthur Pendennis. 
 
 Eraser's Magazine, vol. 43, 
 1851, pp. 76-87. 
 
 h
 
 • •• 
 
 xvin 
 
 BIBLIOGRAPHY. 
 
 Thackera}', William Makepeace. 
 
 and Balzac, Style of. Dublin 
 
 University Mafjazine, vol. 64, 
 lS64,pp. 620-627 ; same article, 
 Littell's Living,' Age, vol. 84, 
 pp. 51-58, and Eclectic Maf];a- 
 zine, vol. 1 N.S., pp. 229-236. 
 
 and Currer Bell. Oxford and 
 
 Cambridge Magazine, June, 
 1856, pp. 323-335. 
 
 and David Coppcrfield. 
 
 Southern Literary Messenger, 
 vol. 17, 1851, pp. 499-504. 
 
 and Dickens. North British 
 
 Review, vol. 15, 1851, pp. 57- 
 89 ; same article, Littell's Liv- 
 ing Age, vol. 30, pp. 97-110.— 
 Dublin Eevicw, vol. 16 N.S,, 
 1871, pp. 315-350. — English 
 Review, vol. 10, 1848, pp. 257- 
 275 ; same article. Eclectic 
 Magazine, vol. 16, pp. 370-379. 
 — Critic, by L. L Guiney, June 
 19, 1886, pp. 301, 302. 
 
 and Eiiglish Society. Scrib- 
 
 ner's Monthlv, by E. S. Nadal, 
 vol. 21, 1881,"^ pp. .'■35-543. 
 
 and Fielding. North British 
 
 Review, vol. 24, 1855, pp. 197- 
 216 ; same article, Littell's 
 Living Age, vol. 47, pp. 769- 
 779, and Eclectic Magazine, vol. 
 37, pp. 57-6^. 
 
 and George Eliot, Morality of. 
 
 Atlantic Monthly, by Maria L. 
 Henry, vol. 51, 1883, pp. 213- 
 248. 
 
 and his Female Characters. 
 
 Englishwoman's Domestic 
 Magazine, by T. Hood, vol. 8 
 N.S., pp. 157-164. 
 
 and his Novels. Revue des 
 
 Deux Mondes, by E. D, Forgnes, 
 torn. 7 N.S., 1854, pp. 1001- 
 1032. 
 
 and Modern Fiction. London 
 
 Quarterly, vol. 22, p. 375, etc. ; 
 
 Thackeray, William Makepeace. 
 
 same article, Eclectic Magazine, 
 
 vol. 63, pp. 3S-56. 
 and N. P. Willis. Critic, 
 
 April 26, 1884, p. 194. 
 -and Romanticism. Saturday 
 
 Review, vol. 5S, 1884, pp. 473, 
 474. 
 
 — and Sterne. National Review, 
 vol. 18, 1864, pp. 523-r.53.— 
 New Monthly Magazine, by W. 
 Mackay, vol. 145, 1869, pp. 
 628-644 ; vol. 146, pp. 182-194 ; 
 same article, Littell's Living 
 Age, vol. 104, pp. 387-396. 
 -and the Theatre. Longman's 
 
 Magazine, by Dutton Cook, 
 voh 4, 1884, pp. 409-423 ; same 
 article, Critic, 1884, pp. 80-82, 
 92, 93. 
 
 — as Artist and Moralist. 
 National Review, vol, 2, 1856, 
 pp. 177-213. 
 -as a Draiightsman. Scribner's 
 
 Monthly, bv R. Sturgis, vol. 20, 
 1880, pp. 25-274. 
 
 as an Art Critic. Atlantic 
 
 Monthly, by E. Young, vol. 56, 
 1885, pp. 685-693. 
 
 asa Novelist. North American 
 
 Review, by J. F. Kirk, vol. 77, 
 1853, pp. 199-219.— Christian 
 Examiner, by H. T. Tuckerman, 
 vol. 60, 1856, pp. 102-121.— 
 Eclectic Magazine (from the 
 Athenceum), vol. 36 N.S., 1882, 
 pp. 119-122. 
 
 asa Novelist and Photographer. 
 
 Westminster Review, vol. 18 
 N.S., 1860, pp. 500-523. 
 -as a Poet. Putnam's Monthly 
 
 Magazine, vol. 6, 1855, pp. 623- 
 627.— Temple Bar, vol. 61, 1881, 
 pp. 469-475 ; same article, 
 Eclectic Magazine, vol. 34 N.S., 
 pp. 96-100.
 
 BIBLIOGRAPHY. 
 
 XIX 
 
 Thackeray, William Makepeace. 
 
 as a Preacher. Eclectic Re- 
 view, vol. 6 KS., 1864, pp. 
 562-593. 
 
 as a Satirist. Eclectic, vol. 
 
 2N.S., 1S62, pp. 1-16. 
 
 Autogra/ihic Letter of. Leisure 
 
 Hour, 1883, pp. 560, 561. 
 
 Axitographs of. Saturday Re- 
 view, vol. 58, 1884, pp. 692, 
 693. 
 -Ballads. Chambers's Journal, 
 
 Feb. 2, 1856, pp. 73-76 ; same 
 
 article, Littell's Living Age, 
 
 vol. 49, pp. 142-145. 
 Biographical Sketch of, ivith 
 
 portrait. Eclectic Magazine, 
 
 vol. 62, 1864, pp. 117-119. 
 Discoveries concerning. Na- 
 tion, by \V. C. Brownell, vol. 
 
 32, 1881, pp. 56, 57. 
 The Extremity of Satire. 
 
 Catholic World, by R. M. 
 
 Johnston, vol. 42, 1886, pp. 
 
 685-694. 
 Forged Autographs of. Critic 
 
 (from the Saturday Review), 
 
 Jan. 17, 1885, pp. 33, 34. 
 Four Georges. Chambers's 
 
 Journal, Dec. 6, 1856, pp. 353- 
 
 355. 
 Fwiieral of, icith portrait. 
 
 London Society, vol. 5, 1864, 
 
 pp. 126-128. 
 
 Genealogiesofthe Newcomeand 
 
 Warrington Families. Time, 
 by E. C. K. Conner, May, 
 1889, pp. 501-508. 
 
 Glimpse of. Hours at Home, 
 
 by J. E. Cooke, vol, 10, 1S70, 
 pp. 402-405. 
 
 Henry Esmond. Eraser's 
 
 Magazine, vol. 46, 1852, pp. 
 622-632. — Dublin University 
 Magazine, 41, 1853, pp. 70-74.— 
 New Quarterly Review, vol. 2, 
 1863, pp. 11-17.— United States 
 
 Thackeray, William Makepeace. 
 
 Review, March 1853, pp. 247. 
 254. — Irish Quarterly Review, 
 vol. 2, 1852, pp. 849-870.— 
 Littell's Living Age (from the 
 Times), vol. 36, 1853, pp. 277- 
 280. — Eclectic Review, vol. 5 
 N.S., 1853, pp. 37-49. 
 
 His Talent and his Works. 
 
 Revue des Deux Mondts, by H. 
 Taine, torn. 7, 1857, pp. 165- 
 200. 
 
 — An Hour with. Appleton's 
 Journal, by J. E. Cooke, vol, 
 7 N.S., 1879, pp. 248-254. 
 -in America. Blackwood's 
 
 Edinburgh Magazine, by W. B. 
 Reed, vol. Ill, 1872, pp. 678- 
 690 ; same article, Littell's Liv- 
 ing Age, vol. 114, pp. 157-165, 
 and Eclectic Magazine vol. 16 
 N.S., pp. 148-157.— Putnam's 
 Monthly Magazine, by G. W. 
 Curtis, vol. 1, 1853, pp. 638-642. 
 — Eraser's Magazine, vol. 47, 
 1853, pp. 100-103. 
 
 in London. Critic, by W. H. 
 
 Ridcing, April 19, 1884, pp. 
 181, 182, 193, 194. 
 
 In Memoriam. Cornhill Maga- 
 zine, by Charles Dickens, vol. 
 9, 1864, pp. 129-132 ; by 
 Anthony Trollope, pp. 134-137. 
 
 in the Footsteps of. Century, 
 
 by W. H. Rideing, vol. 26, 
 1883, pp. 830-844. 
 
 Irish Sketch Book. Tait's 
 
 Edinburgh Magazine, vol. 10 
 2nd ser., 1843, pp. 391-405.— 
 Revue des Deux Mondes, tom. 
 4, ser. 5, 1843, pp. 294-307. 
 
 — Later Manner of. New 
 Monthly Magazine, by W. 
 Mackay, vol. 146, 1870, pp. 579- 
 584. 
 
 — Lectures of. Blackwood's 
 Edinburgh Magazine, by J.
 
 XX 
 
 BIBLIOGRAPHY. 
 
 Tliackeray, William Makepeace. 
 
 Eagles, vol. 74, 1853, pp. 
 494-518.— Littell's Living Age 
 (from the Spectator), vol. 30, 
 1851, pp. 11, 12: (from the 
 Spectator) pp. 134, 135; (from 
 the Examiner) pp. 237, 238 ; 
 (from the Times) p. 282 ; (from 
 the Neio York Recorder) vol. 36, 
 1853, pp. 433-436. 
 
 Lectures on English Humour- 
 ists. New Monthly Magazine, 
 vol. 98, 1853, pp. 262-270; same 
 article. Eclectic Magazine, vol. 
 30, pp. 537-542. — International, 
 vol. 4, 1851, pp. 24-26.— Lit- 
 tell's Living Age (from the 
 Spectator), vol. 38, 1853, pp. 
 292-295. 
 
 Miscellanies. Prose and Verse. 
 
 New Quarterly Review, vol. 5, 
 1856, pp. 25-28, 411-413. 
 
 -Miscellaneous Essays. Satur- 
 
 day Review, vol. 60, 1885, pp. 
 514, 515. Athenaeum, Oct. 
 17, 1885, pp. 497, 498; same 
 article. Critic, Nov. 7, 1885, 
 pp. 225, 226. 
 
 -Mrs. Perkins's Ball. Tait's 
 
 Edinburgh Magazine, vol. 14, 
 1847, pp. 59, 60. 
 
 Newcomes. Quarterly Maga 
 
 zine, vol. 97, 1855, pp. 350- 
 378.— Dublin Review, vol. 40, 
 1856, pp. 299-309. — Putnam's 
 Monthly Magazine, vol. 6, 
 1855, pp. 283-290.— New Quar- 
 terly Review, vol. 4, 1855, pp. 
 423-428. — Oxford and Cam- 
 bridge Magazine, Jan. 1856, 
 pp. 50-62. 
 
 Newcomes ; Mme. de 
 
 Florae. Gentleman's Magazine, 
 by H. L. Wilson, voL 260, 1886, 
 pp. 561-576. 
 
 Notes on Denis Duval. Corn- 
 
 Thackeray, William Makepeace. 
 
 hill Magazine, vol. 9, 1864, pp. 
 655-665. 
 
 -Novels. Blackwood's Edin- 
 
 burgh Magazine, vol. 77, 1855, 
 pp. 86-96, 
 -Orphan of Pimlico. Black 
 
 wood's Edinburgh Magazine, 
 vol. 119, 1876, pp. 232-243. 
 
 -Pendennis. North British 
 
 Review, vol. 13, 1850, pp. 335- 
 372 ; same article. Eclectic 
 Magazine, vol. 21, pp. 364- 
 380. — American Whig Review, 
 vol. 13, 1851, pp. 395-o98. 
 — Prospective Review, vol. 7, 
 1851, pp. 157-191. — Dublin 
 University Magazine, vol. 38, 
 1851, pp. 193-206. 
 -Personal Recollections of. 
 
 Western Monthly, by W. Cork- 
 ran, voL 2, 1869, pp. 326-332.— 
 Cassell'a Magazine, vol. 1 N.S., 
 1870, pp. 296-300. 
 — Place in English Literature. 
 Littell's Living Age (from the 
 Spectator), vol 80, 1864, pp. 
 325-328. 
 
 Poem on. Victoria Magazine, 
 
 by R. Noel, vol. 2, 1864, pp. 
 ;!47, 348.— Good Words, 1861, 
 p. 192. 
 
 Recollections of. Chambers's 
 
 Journal, May 31, 1879, pp. 341- 
 343.— Harper's New Monthly 
 Magazine, by G. Hodder, vol. 
 41, 1870, pp. 261-269; by G. 
 Lunt, vol. 54, 1877, pp. 256- 
 265. — Cassell's Magazine, by 
 Richard Bedingfield, vol. 2 
 N.S., 1870, pp. 12-14, 28-30, 
 72-75, 108-110, 134-136, 230- 
 232. 
 
 — Relations to English Society. 
 Scribner's Monthly, vol. 21, 
 1881, pp. 535-543.
 
 BIBLIOGRAPHY. 
 
 XXI 
 
 Thackeray, William Makepeace. 
 
 Reply to the Times's Criticism. 
 
 Littell's Living Age (from the 
 Literary World), vol. 28, 1851, 
 pp. 473-475. 
 
 Schooldays of. Cornhill Maga- 
 zine, vol. 11, 1865, pp. 118-128. 
 
 Sketches of. Blackwood's 
 
 Edinburgh Magazine, vol. 119, 
 1876, pp. 232-243; same article, 
 Littell's Living Age, vol. 1'29, 
 pp. 98-106. 
 
 Some Recollections of, Lip- 
 
 pincott's Magazine, vol. 7, 1871, 
 pp. 106-110. 
 
 Studies on, Broadway, by 
 
 James Hannay, vol. 1 N. S., 
 1868, pp. 38-45, 138-144, 291- 
 297, 324-329. 
 
 To^ir from Cornhill to Cairo. 
 
 Fraser's Magazine, vol. 33, 1846, 
 pp. 85-96. 
 
 Trollope on. Nation, by A. 
 
 G. Sedgwick, vol. 29, 1879, pp. 
 127, 128.— Canadian Monthly, 
 vol. 3, 1879, pp. 223, 22 L — 
 Athenteum, June 14, 1879, pp. 
 749, 750. — Academy, by T. 
 H. Ward, June 21, 1879, p. 
 533. 
 
 UnpvUished Letters of. Scrib- 
 
 ner's Magazine, vol. 1, 1887, 
 pp. 387-409, 551-560, 672-690 ; 
 vol. 2, pp. 18-32, 131-144, 321- 
 331, 412-419 ; appeared in book- 
 form the same year. 
 
 Vanity Fair, Quarterly 
 
 Review, vol. 84, 1848, pp. 153- 
 185 ; same article, Littell's Liv- 
 ing Age, vol. 20, pp. 497-511.— 
 Fraser's Magazine, vol. 38, 
 
 Thackeray, William Makepeace. 
 
 1848, pp. 320-333. — Littell's 
 Living Age (from the Spec- 
 tator), vol. 18, pp. 412-416.— 
 American Whig Review, by 
 C. A. Bristed, vol. 8, 1848, pp. 
 421-431. — Revue des Deux 
 ilondes, by P. Chasles, torn, i., 
 6th .-er., 1849, pp. 537-571, 
 721-759. 
 
 On a Certain Passage in 
 
 Vanity Fair, Belgravia, by 
 George A. Sala, vol. 8, 1869, 
 pp. 345-355. 
 
 Virginians. Edinburgh Re- 
 view, vol. 110, 1859, pp. 438- 
 453. 
 
 — Was he a Sham ? Critic, 
 Jan. 10, 1885, p. 20. 
 
 — Woirten of. Cliristian Ex- 
 aminer, by I. M. Luyster, vol. 
 69, 1860, pp. 1 67-190.— Knicker- 
 bocker, vol. 42, 1853, pp. 
 155-159. 
 
 • JForks of. Edinburgh Review, 
 
 vol. 87, 1848, pp. 46-67 ; same 
 article, Littell's Living Age, 
 vol. 16, pp. 271-280 ; vol. 99, 
 1854, pp. 196-243 ; same article, 
 Littell's Living Age, vol. 40, pp. 
 483-506 ; voh 137, 1873, pp. 
 95-121 ; same article, Littell's 
 Living Age, vol. 116, pp. 579 
 593, and Eclectic Magazine, 
 vol. 17 N.S., pp. 513-528.— 
 Westminster Review, vol. 3 
 N.S., 18; 3, pp. 363 388; same 
 article, Littell's Living Age, 
 vol. 37, pp. 387-399.— Hogg's 
 Instructor, vol. 5 N.S., 1855, 
 pp. 425-437.
 
 XXII 
 
 BIBLIOGRAPHY. 
 
 ADDITIONS. 
 
 Tho Gownsman (formerly called 
 "The Snob"), vol. ii. Cam- 
 bridge, 1830, ]2mo. 
 
 'Die Snob ran for eleven numbers, 
 from April 9 to June 18, 1829, and 
 WAS succeeileil by The Gownsman, 
 which ran for seventeen numbers, 
 from Nov. 5, 1830, to Feb. 25, 1831. 
 
 An Interesting Event, by M. A. 
 Titmarsh, London, 1849, 8vo. 
 Originally appeared in the Keep- 
 sake for the same year. 
 
 A Review of the Speeches of Lord 
 Brougham [BriLish and Foreign 
 L'eview, April 1839, pp. 490- 
 529). 
 
 -a7id Dickens. Temple Bar, 
 
 Barnard, Frederick. — A Series 
 of Character Sketches from 
 Thackeray, from original draw- 
 ings by Frederick Barnard. 
 London, 1886, fol. 
 
 Loftie, W. J. — Kensington, 
 picturesque and historical, 
 London, 1888, 8vo. 
 Thackeray, pp. 114-117, 155, 217. 
 
 Thackeray, "W. M. — London 
 Society, by Joseph Forster, vol. 
 53, 1888, pp. 143-152.— S. Mary 
 Abbots, Kensington, Parish 
 Magazine, September 1889, pp. 
 ?2=i, 226, by J. J. Merriman. 
 
 by Herman Merivale, vol. 83, 
 1888, pp. 188-204 ; same 
 article, Littell's Living Age, 
 vol. 178, pp. 159-168. 
 -Brighton of. All the Year 
 
 Round, Dec. 10, 1887, pp. 513- 
 516 ; same article, Littell's 
 Living Age, vol. 176, pp. 509- 
 511. 
 
 — A Child's Recollections of. 
 Temple Bar, by Henrietta Cork- 
 ran, vol. 81, 1887, pp. 238-241. 
 -Letters. Time, by Walter 
 
 Sichel, vol. 18, 1888", pp. 19- 
 25; same article, Littell's Living 
 Age, vol. 176, pp. 439-443. 
 — Marriage, Date of. Athe- 
 nreum, by F. T. ilarzials, Oct. 
 18, 1890 ; by R. Denny Urliu, 
 Oct. 25, 1890. 
 -Prototypes of Characters of. 
 
 Temple Bar, May 1889, pp. 
 103-110 ; same article, Eclectic 
 Magazine, vol. 50, pp. 1-5. 
 -Reminiscences of. Literary 
 
 Opinion, by C. P. Cranch, vol. 
 2, 1887, p. 178. 
 
 — Some few Thackerayana. 
 National Review, by D. D., 
 vol. 13, 1889, pp. 794-803; 
 same article, Eclectic Magazine, 
 vol. 50, pp. 633-638.
 
 BIBLIOGRAPH V. 
 
 XXllI 
 
 VI. CHRONOLOGICAL LIST OF WORKS. 
 
 Flore et Zephyr . ,1836 
 
 The Paris Sketch-Book . 1840 
 Essay on the Genius of 
 
 George Cruikshank . 1840 
 
 Comic Tales and Sketches . 1841 
 The Second Funeral of 
 
 Napoleon . . .1841 
 Irish Sketch-Book . . 1843 
 Barry Lyndon [Fraser's Maga- 
 zine) .... 1844 
 Notes of a Jon me v from 
 
 Cornhill to Cairo \ . 1?46 
 Mrs. Perkins's Ball . . 1847 
 The Book of Snobs . . 1848 
 Vanity Fair . . .1848 
 Our Street . . . 1848 
 
 History of Pendcnnis 1849-50 
 Doctor Birch and his Young 
 
 Friends .... 1849 
 History of Samuel Titmarsh 
 and the Great Ho^'garty 
 Diamond . . . 1849 
 Rebecca and Rowena . 1850 
 
 Sketches after English Land- 
 scape Painters . . 185u 
 
 The Kickleburys on 
 
 the 
 
 Rhine . 
 
 . 1850 
 
 History of Henry Esmond 1852 
 
 English Humourists of 
 
 the 
 
 Eighteenth Century 
 
 . 1853 
 
 The Newcomes . 
 
 1854-55 
 
 The Rose and the Ring 
 
 . 1855 
 
 Miscellanies 
 
 1855-57 
 
 The Virginians . 
 
 1858-59 
 
 Lovel the Widower . 
 
 . 1861 
 
 The Four Georges 
 
 . 1861 
 
 Adventures of Philip on 
 
 his 
 
 Way through the AVorld 1802 
 
 Roundabout Papers . 
 
 . 1863 
 
 Denis Duval. . . . 1867 
 Ballads and Tales . . 1869 
 
 Orphan of Pimlico . . 1876 
 Etchings while at Cambridge 1878 
 Letters . . . .1887 
 Sultan Stork, etc. . . 1887 
 
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