1 
 
 
 
 •■ 'iV.!c;' • ■■.■^•'»'«^ ■-,■■:•>■ v.- '• ■ , ^ .> i 
 
 •;,'^. *i-SSi-i-'>'^ 
 
 
 
 y\
 
 THACKERAY
 
 THACKERAY 
 
 A STUDY 
 
 BY 
 
 ADOLPHUS ALFRED JACK 
 
 MACMILLAN AND CO. 
 
 AND NEW YORK 
 
 1895 
 
 Tfu right of Translation is reserved
 
 Richard Clav & Sons, Limited, 
 London & Bungav.
 
 
 LIBRARY 
 
 University of California 
 
 ^AHx'A B/iilBARA 
 
 THACKERAY: A STUDY. 
 
 IJST OF ERRATA. 
 
 Page 49, line 11. For Hoggarty read Haggarty 
 
 52, ,, 10. For forty-one read thirty-three 
 
 54, ,, 11. -For iindefensible read indefensible 
 
 54, ,, 14. For quality read quantity. 
 
 57, ,, 7^. For sketches read stretches. 
 
 70, ,, 0. For liberty read levity 
 
 158, ,. 14. Between " George " and " the " insert " and 
 
 179, ,, 17. For charms read charm
 
 TO 
 
 MY FATHER, 
 
 TO WHOSE ADVICE AND ENCOURAGEMENT IS DUE 
 ANYTHING OF MERIT IN THIS BOOK.
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 CHAP. PAGE 
 
 INTRODUCTORY I 
 
 I. BEFORE 'vanity FAIR ' I9 
 
 II. 'vanity fair' 74 
 
 III. 'PENDENNIS' AND AFTER 99 
 
 IV. STYLE AND GENERAL CHARACTERISTICS ... 171 
 
 CHRONOLOGICAL LIST OF WORKS MEN- 
 TIONED IN THIS ESSAY 1 95
 
 THACKERAY: A STUDY. 
 
 LIST OF ERRATA. 
 
 Page 49, line 11. Foi- Hoggarty read Haggavty 
 
 52, ,, 10. For forty-one read thirty-three 
 
 54, ,, 11. For undefensible read indefensible 
 
 54, ,, 14. For quality read quantity. 
 
 57, ,, 7. For sketches read stretches. 
 
 70, ,, (). For liberty 7-ead levity 
 
 158, ,, 14. Between " George " and " the " insert " and ' 
 
 179, ,, 17. For charms read charm
 
 THACKERAY 
 
 INTRODUCTORY 
 
 " We enter on burning ground," says Mr. 
 Arnold in one of those luminous critical essays 
 which are so provocative and so helpful ; — " we 
 enter on burning ground as we approach the 
 poetry of times so near to us, poetry like that of 
 Byron, Shelley, and Wordsworth, of which the 
 estimates are so often not only personal, but 
 personal with passion." And that is why, as 
 the great critic has told us, with as much sagacity 
 as iteration, Time is the true test, and the 
 judgments of the High Court are taken, for so 
 wearisome a period, to avizandum. The justice 
 of the remark is never more evident than when 
 we consider the fallibility of contemporary 
 criticism. If the writer has a new gospel to 
 preach, or what looks like a new gospel, there is
 
 2 THACKERAY: A STUDY 
 
 the natural alienation of those who prefer the old 
 order of ideas, or at least the same ideas in their 
 old setting. If the writer does not pretend to 
 offer anything new, and openly avows that he 
 has nothing to say but what has been said before, 
 only not quite in the same manner, or with quite 
 the same precision, there is the danger that the 
 value of his work may be lost sight of, or his 
 profession of conservatism put down to him as a 
 want of originality. 
 
 But fallible as from its nature contemporary 
 criticism is, prejudiced and careless as it too 
 often has been, when contrasted with the criticism 
 of the decade following the death of a great 
 writer, when placed side by side with the mean- 
 ingless phrases that airily condemn, or feebly 
 prophesy immortality, it assumes the aspect of 
 sobriety and justice. Contemporary criticism 
 has at least this merit, that it is an honest 
 attempt of the critic's own to apportion rewards 
 and punishments. His hostility may be incurred, 
 his sympathy may be enlisted, without adequate 
 cause ; he may not be able to appraise at their 
 true value all these novel sensations, which a new 
 and striking work is bound to generate in an 
 active and reflective mind. In short he may err,
 
 INTRODUCTORY 3 
 
 and he may err tremendously, but the error is his 
 own. He may fall a prey to the dangers that 
 beset the contemporary critic, but the critic who 
 is not quite a contemporary is in a still worse 
 position. He is too near not to be open to the 
 same influences which have distracted the judg- 
 ment of the earlier writer, and he is too apt to be 
 prejudiced not only by the work which he is 
 criticizing, but by the criticisms which have been 
 written upon it. So that in one mood he is 
 tempted servilely to endorse what has been said, 
 in another quite as servilely to contradict it. 
 Add to this that death places an author at the 
 mercy both of enemies and friends, so that it is 
 doubtful whether his memory suffers more from 
 the long-restrained candour of the one class, or 
 the unthinking panegyric of the other, and it will 
 be readily acknowledged that there is no time 
 more unfavourable for arriving at a correct 
 estimate of any writer, than that intervening 
 between his death and the sane decision of 
 posterity. 
 
 How long this critical chaos may continue it is 
 quite impossible to say ; to attempt to fix for it 
 any particular number of years would be worse 
 than useless. The time fluctuates with quite a
 
 4 THACKERAY: A STUDY 
 
 surprising variation, and a moment's glance 
 backward at literary history will show us that 
 the comparative greatness of the writer has little 
 to do with the duration of this period of suspense. 
 It is true also, no doubt, that were we to say 
 that we must wait for that judgment till the 
 generation which he has influenced has passed 
 away, this would be to fix too long a time for a 
 few cases, and one far too short for most. But 
 it would at least be safe to say, that when a 
 generation to whom he has not been a con- 
 temporary has had time to form its opinions, 
 and has received the works of the author not as 
 an offering peculiarly for itself, but only as a part 
 of the legacy of the past, then it is reasonable to 
 exercise critical opinion about him, and to 
 attempt seriously to ascertain what is, or rather 
 what will be, his ultimate position. As much as 
 this at least may be said, and in particular cases 
 it is possible to say more. If when we look 
 round we find that the author is the object of 
 criticism unimpassioned and painstaking, if we 
 see that on the one hand his faults are admitted, 
 while on the other his excellences are allowed, 
 if we feel that responsible criticism has become 
 cautious and discriminating, these are all proofs
 
 INTRODUCTORY 5 
 
 that there is fast forming about us a definite and 
 not easily disturbed opinion. 
 
 That this is the case with Thackeray, Mr. 
 Trollope's fair and admirable monograph is 
 demonstration enough. It was not to be ex- 
 pected that such a book, published only sixteen 
 years after the death of Thackeray, would be 
 received without murmurs by his disciples, but 
 on the whole the position that has since been 
 accorded to it, the treatment it has received, and 
 indeed the very fact of its existence, are strong 
 evidences of a tendency towards agreement in 
 critical opinion. Thackeray has been dead for 
 thirty-one years, ample time for a generation to 
 spring up for whom, except while they were in the 
 nursery, he was never a living writer. His great 
 contemporary Dickens died in 1870, and George 
 Eliot ten years later ; and it is quite noticeable 
 how different is the attitude of the educated 
 public towards these three names. About 
 Thackeray there is, though not by any means a 
 final, a sufficiently marked consensus of opinion. 
 If it is said that he was a cynic, it is at once 
 admitted that he was too ready to label many of 
 his characters, whose weaknesses he brought 
 into prominence, fool or knave. If it is laid to
 
 6 THACKERAY : A STUDY 
 
 his charge that he was too much occupied with 
 mean and little things, few who have read the 
 miscellaneous papers and novelettes are prepared 
 to deny it. With Dickens it is another matter. 
 There are some who will not allow that his 
 characters are exaggerated, and there are many 
 who deny to him that gift of pathos on which, 
 equally with his humour, his reputation was at 
 one time supposed to rest. But if there is little 
 agreement about the merits and demerits of 
 Dickens, there is still less about those of George 
 Eliot, and a critic who would attempt to estimate 
 her future position would be but little, if at all, 
 aided by the general opinion. 
 
 This at first sight is the more curious, as the 
 genius of Dickens or George Eliot is not at all 
 difficult to understand. There was never any 
 doubt about it in either case. The)- both 
 achieved distinction by quite different, but by 
 quite simple processes. Dickens, a man of 
 great sensibility, and possessing a fund of 
 humorous description that has in its way never 
 been equalled, took the town by storm by virtue 
 of these qualities. The strong understanding 
 and depth of analytical power which belonged 
 to George Eliot were at once acknowledsfed as
 
 INTRODUCTORY / 
 
 the causes of her success. Thackeray's genius 
 was of a more complex order. Alternately- 
 amusing and irritating his generation, at one 
 moment sneering at those very follies which 
 at the next set him off into a strain of almost 
 irresistible tenderness, he presented a problem 
 to his contemporaries that seemed to admit 
 of many answers. It is, in reality, precisely 
 because of the difficulty of the problem that 
 we may be said already to be within measurable 
 distance of its solution. It was so impossible 
 for his contemporaries to agree about this kind- 
 hearted cynic, this courtier of Queen Anne 
 who waged unrelenting war against the aris- 
 tocracy, this fine gentleman who peered into 
 cupboards, and assessed the price of his enter- 
 tainment, that the critical intelligence was 
 thoroughly aroused. There was no one who 
 was content to read him and be thankful ; there 
 was not one of his books which did not start 
 the question : — Who is this man, so many-sided, 
 so contradictory } And it was just because this 
 question was so frequently asked, and so fre- 
 quently answered, because Thackeray was an 
 author of such complexity as to force the public 
 to set themselves to understand him, that his
 
 8 THACKERAY : A STUDY 
 
 position in letters has been so quickly and so 
 nearly ascertained. 
 
 But it would be a great mistake to suppose 
 that we have yet arrived at anything more than 
 an approximation to the judgment of posterity. 
 We are still far too near for that. Before any- 
 thing final may be said, or even attempted, by 
 a critic, it is necessary to wait, not only till a 
 new generation shall have grown up to criticize 
 the author, but till a new generation of original 
 writers, who have felt his influence, shall in 
 their turn have had their places apportioned 
 to them, and his influence upon them weighed 
 and appreciated. And so, though the task of the 
 critic of Thackeray is, at the present day, easier 
 than it might have been, it is by no means easy. 
 He will be helped, no doubt, by the prevailing 
 opinion, but he will still have to depend to 
 some extent upon his own intuition, and in a 
 greater degree upon those canons of criticism, 
 by the correct use of which the place of all 
 authors is ultimately decided. Happily there is 
 in general no dispute about the canons ; the 
 difficulty lies in their application. The business 
 of criticism being to anticipate the judgment of 
 the world, the obvious course in dealing with
 
 INTRODUCTORY 9 
 
 any author is to compare him with those upon 
 whom a favourable judgment has already been 
 pronounced. He is to be compared then with 
 the classical authors, and just in so far as he 
 has qualities that are common to the classics, 
 is he likely himself to become classical. There 
 is no disagreement about the classics ; it is the 
 fact of this agreement that gives them their 
 name. We may be said to call only those 
 authors classics whom every one acknowledges 
 to be so. 
 
 But though there may be no doubt as to 
 what authors are classical, and as to the fact 
 that the author we are criticizing ought to be 
 compared with them, the question may very 
 well be asked, with what classics he ought to be 
 compared .-' A novelist, it may be urged, ought 
 only to be compared with the classical novelist, 
 a romance-writer with the best writers of 
 romance, and a dramatist with Shakespeare or 
 Moliere ; to compare a writer with any or all 
 of the classics would not only be tedious but 
 confusing. There is truth in the remark, and 
 no doubt it would be a roundabout way of 
 proving that Tennyson's plays were not well 
 fitted for the stage, to show that Hawthorne's
 
 10 THACKERAY: A STUDY 
 
 romances possessed a far higher dramatic power, 
 and that there were in ' Queen Mary ' and 
 ' Becket ' few of the marvellous touches that give 
 to Scott's historical novels an appearance of 
 reality. But that is because we have ready to 
 hand an immense and classical literature written 
 in the form of Tennyson's plays, by comparison 
 with which they can easily be tried. The 
 drama, besides, is almost as old as literature 
 itself. It has portrayed nearly every epoch, it 
 has chronicled nearly every passion, its capa- 
 city, if not completely known, has yet had so 
 wide a range that it would be difficult to extend 
 it ; many of the greatest names in the world are 
 the names of dramatists. But the novel is still 
 in its infancy. When one speaks of it, the 
 classical names that rise to one's memory, 
 Cervantes and Le Sage, arc not properly those 
 of novelists at all. They came too early for 
 that. Le Sage, indeed, has been called the 
 father or progenitor of the novel, and Fielding, 
 who copied much of his manner, and who wrote 
 immediately afterwards, died within sixty years 
 of Thackeray's birth. That period produced no 
 work of fiction greater than the adventures of 
 Humphry Clinker, and extended to within
 
 INTRODUCTORY 1 1 
 
 three years of the production of ' Waverley.' But 
 not only is the novel an essentially modern 
 growth, not only is its province undetermined, 
 so that we apply the name indiscriminately to 
 the adventures of Tom Jones and Roderick 
 Random, the prose dramas of Hawthorne, and 
 the historical romances of Scott, — not only is 
 the novel new and its capacity unknown, but it 
 has not as yet given us many names of the first 
 excellence. Fielding, Scott, Hawthorne ; if we 
 were to try to add anything to that trio we 
 should have to seek among the moderns. 
 Richardson we may dismiss as too little read 
 to be useful for purposes of comparison, and 
 Smollett, where he is not surpassed by Fielding, 
 is purely a humourist. 
 
 Thus it would be plainly impossible to test 
 an author who chose to put his writings in the 
 form of a novel by comparing him with other 
 novelists alone. There are so few great names 
 that it becomes necessary to supplement the 
 criterion, and for this purpose we may fairly 
 use the romantic and dramatic fields that are 
 open before us. We may fairly use the 
 romantic, because the distinction between a 
 romance and a novel has never been accurately
 
 12 THACKERAY: A STUDY 
 
 drawn. ' The Castle of Otranto,' though its 
 author is careful to call it a Gothic story, would 
 probably be classed as a romance, on account of 
 the supernatural element which it contains ; but 
 in ' The Mysteries of Udolpho, a romance,' the 
 mysteries are all finally attributed to natural 
 causes, and ' The Monastery,' though in its 
 pages unsparing use was made of the White 
 Lady, was not for that reason differentiated 
 from the other novels of the series to which it 
 belongs. ' The Recess,' by the sisters Lee, 
 might well be called a romance from the license 
 which it takes with historical characters, but the 
 Waverley novels were never supposed to be free 
 from that fault. A novel, it may be said, deals 
 with character, but no novel can show more 
 careful character-drawing than ' The Blithedale 
 Romance,' and there is nothing more super- 
 natural or romantic in it than a socialistic 
 community. 
 
 And wc may fairly use the dramatic field, 
 because all novels more or less partake of the 
 character of the drama. A novel, it is almost 
 needless to say, need not be so dramatic as a 
 drama. The latter, as it appeals to the eye as 
 well as to the ear, and has to make its effect in
 
 INTRODUCTORY 1 3 
 
 a much shorter period, depends more upon 
 striking situations. The novel, moreover, has 
 not been subjected to the same extent to the 
 unities of time and place. But many of the 
 greatest dramas have flagrantly broken them, 
 and when all limitations are allowed, it remains 
 true that the qualities that are necessary to 
 produce a good drama are approximately the 
 same qualities that are necessary for a good 
 novel. The object of both is to tell a story, and 
 to tell it in an attractive way ; both are occupied 
 with the representation of life and the delinea- 
 tion of character. Not that it follows that a 
 good novel will be easily dramatized, because 
 the situations may not occur at the proper 
 intervals for an adaptation into scenes and acts, 
 they may not be sufficiently frequent or suffi- 
 ciently pictorial ; but in so far as it is a good 
 novel, the situations, when they do occur, must 
 be dramatic enough to leave a definite impress 
 on the mind, the story, when told, must have so 
 much in common with a drama that it can be 
 viewed as a connected whole. The adventures 
 of Gil Bias fail, it is true, when tried by this 
 criterion. Any other series of adventures might 
 •equally well have led up to the castle of Lirias
 
 14 THACKERAY : A STUDY 
 
 and the patent of nobility, and, though the book 
 affords much of the most deHghtful reading, it 
 is impossible to remember anything more of it 
 than that the hero fell among robbers, spent 
 some time with the actors, and served rather 
 longer with the Count Duke than with the 
 Archbishop of Granada. The book contains 
 enough incident and imagination to make half- 
 a-dozen novels, but it is just because it leaves 
 no definite or connected impression upon the 
 mind that, though it has received the seal of 
 posterity's approbation, and has as much likeli- 
 hood of immortality as any disconnected story 
 that was ever written, the title of novel has 
 generally been withheld from it. 
 
 We have, then, in attempting to estimate the 
 value of Thackeray's works, to keep the example 
 of the great classics constantly before us, the 
 example of those classics, that is, who have 
 occupied themselves with the representation of 
 life. And in making any attempt of the kind, 
 w^e might at once considerably lighten our task 
 by discarding all those tales and sketches which 
 were written as mere journeyman's work, and 
 which are clearly ephemeral. We might at 
 once, without any compunction, discard ten or
 
 INTRODUCTORY I 5 
 
 twelve volumes, and at the same time do a real 
 service to Thackeraj^ for no author is helped by 
 having to carry a load of old magazine literature 
 along with him. By this means we might 
 lighten our task, but we should probably miss 
 the object of it. The early works of every 
 author, his essays and imperfect attempts, are 
 of considerable service to those who would 
 understand his character and genius. And of 
 no author is this more true than of Thackeray. 
 There have been authors who at a certain period 
 of their career have entirely changed their 
 manner of working, so that it would almost 
 seem that they came to look at the world from 
 the opposite point of view to that from which 
 they had started. Thackeray in later life 
 modified his attitude, but there is no abrupt 
 transition. One of his latest works was a 
 rehabilitation of one of his earliest sketches, 
 and one of the catastrophes in that book of 
 many catastrophes, 'The Newcomes,' was 
 borrowed from the turning incident in ' The 
 Amours of Mr, Deuceace.' ^ The Marquis of 
 
 T- Cf. the attack upon Deuceace, by which he lost 
 his hand, and the duel of which Lord Kew was the 
 victim.
 
 I 6 THACKERAY: A STUDY 
 
 Farintosh was taken as a peg for the sermon 
 he began to preach in * The Hoggarty Diamond.' 
 The lot of Catherine, the heroine of his first 
 story, is cast among thieves. Denis Duval, the 
 hero of his last, is the son of a smuggler. The 
 moral of all his earlier stories is to be found in 
 ' Vanity Fair.' 
 
 Thackeray had three distinct periods, but 
 they are periods which illustrate each other. 
 First, there is the period before ' Vanity Fair,' 
 the period of his shorter stories, which fore- 
 shadow both his first important book, and in a 
 lesser degree ' Pendennis,' ' Esmond,' and ' The 
 Newcomes.' Then there is the period of 'Van- 
 ity Fair,' in which he gathered up and used 
 with greater effect all the qualities that had 
 gone to the making of his earlier tales ; and after 
 that there is what may properly be called the 
 period of ' Pendennis,' for it was in ' Pendennis ' 
 that he first adopted the larger and humaner 
 manner that was to ripen in ' Esmond ' and 
 ' The Newcomes.' But the three periods, 
 though they are quite clearly marked, overlap. 
 In the year in which ' Vanity Fair' was pro- 
 duced, he was still writing ' A Little Dinner at 
 Timmins's,' which appeared as a kind of belated
 
 INTRODUCTORY I 7 
 
 appendix to * The Book of Snobs.' The year 
 that saw the completion of ' Pendennis ' gave 
 him time to write * The Kickleburys on the 
 Rhine,' a story quite in the method of ' Vanity 
 Fair,' 
 
 It follows, then, that a writer like Thackeray, 
 who is throughout his career so true to himself, 
 cannot properly be judged by samples. There 
 is no book of his so bad that it does not bear 
 some likeness to his best, and but one so good 
 that it does not remind the reader of how far 
 from his best it was possible for him to fall 
 away. Concealed behind an attitude that varies 
 from pity to mockery, and from mirth to tears, 
 hid behind a multitude of characters in reality 
 astonishingly diverse, there lies a sameness so 
 provoking that there remains nothing which it 
 is allowable to discard. Thackeray was a man- 
 nerist, and of most mannerists one book is as 
 good as all. He, almost alone, was the possessor 
 of a manner which, though seldom varying in 
 essentials, abounds in variety. Between his 
 best book and his worst there is a surprising 
 distance. With most authors who have left a 
 body of work of widely differing degrees of 
 
 C
 
 l8 THACKERAY: A STUDY 
 
 excellence, it is possible to discard something ; 
 he, almost alone, remains amid his differences 
 essentially the same. To borrow a phrase from 
 Mr. Arnold, " the real Thackeray " is not to be 
 found by any process of selection.
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 BEFORE 'VANITY FAIR' 
 
 Few authors have suffered more than Thack- 
 eray from the republication of stories that would 
 not live by themselves ; but the industry of 
 disciples must stop somewhere, and the twenty- 
 four volumes already published do not contain 
 all that he wrote. Neither the title nor the 
 subject of his first story are known, but he 
 appears in a drawing of Maclise's, as one of the 
 contributors to 'Fraser' in 1835, and before 
 that he wrote for, and lost much money by, a 
 transitory paper called ' The National Standard.' 
 But the first work of any importance upon 
 which we find him engaged is ' The Memoirs of 
 Mr. C. J. Yellowplush, sometime footman in 
 many genteel families.' There are two tales 
 worth notice in the Memoirs, ' Miss Shum's 
 Husband,' and 'The Amours of Mr. Deuceace.'
 
 20 THACKERAY: A STUDY CH. 
 
 The hero of the first is a crossing-sweeper by 
 profession, who plays the gentleman of small 
 means in the evening, at a tumble-down lodging 
 in John Street. The backbone of the story is a 
 situation of which Thackeray did not weary till 
 the period of Pendennis, the situation, in some 
 form or other, of Cinderella and her sisters. It 
 is a comparatively simple way of providing a 
 heroine, all that is necessary being to place a 
 spiritless and amiable young woman amid vulgar 
 surroundings. However uninteresting in herself, 
 she excites interest by virtue of the juxtaposi- 
 tion. It is the wicked sisters that make us 
 desire the prince for the little kitchen-wench, 
 not the humility with which she receives their 
 blows. The character of Mary Shum, as that 
 of Caroline in the ' Shabby Genteel Story,' is 
 hardly drawn at all ; they shine, where every- 
 thing else is vulgar and mean, not by their 
 virtues but by their nothingness. Many years 
 later, in a far longer story, Thackeray tried to 
 arouse interest in Amelia by contrasting her 
 with Becky, and when this was found to be 
 insufficient, by vulgarizing the characters of her 
 parents. But it is easy to see that he grew tired 
 of the negative doll he had created, and, from
 
 I BEFORE 'VANITY FAIR' 21 
 
 his not recurring to the artifice after ' Vanity- 
 Fair,' that he came to acknowledge his mistake. 
 The truth is that if we consent to be interested 
 in Cinderella, it is because the story is so slight 
 that we never take the trouble to analyze the 
 character at all. The artifice, though it may 
 pass in a sketch, is quite unsuited for a work 
 of a more important kind. Puppets, no doubt, 
 have been introduced into the greatest works of 
 imagination, but it is not for the purpose of 
 shining. On the contrary, it is that they may- 
 afford a background from which the more 
 brilliant characters may stand out in relief. For 
 the rest, Mr. Yellowplush tells his story with 
 much of that humour which consists in bad 
 spelling and the alliance of pretentiousness and 
 poverty. 
 
 * The Amours of Mr. Deuceace ' is an effort 
 of a more ambitious nature. It is the story of 
 the career of a gambler, considerably more 
 highly placed in society than Mr. Yellowplush's 
 last master, but possessing none of the advan- 
 tages that rank and education are supposed to 
 confer. The portrait is said to be drawn from 
 nature, Thackeray having actually been the 
 " pigeon " of the tale ; but for the subsequent
 
 22 THACKERAY : A STUDY CH. 
 
 career of Mr. Deuceace, recourse has been had 
 to the imagination. The story is told with great 
 skill. We find ourselves following, with close 
 attention, the career of a number of characters, 
 in not one of whom we have the least interest. 
 We are glad when Mr. Deuceace steals his four 
 thousand pounds, we are quite satisfied that he 
 should be maimed, and we rather enjoy the 
 triumph which his worthless parent finally gains 
 over him. The story, which was meant to be 
 highly moral, is written in so low a tone that it 
 is difficult to have a moral idea in connection 
 with it. Mr. Dawkins is a foolish snob, Mr. 
 Blewitt is as unprincipled as Mr. Deuceace, and 
 the Earl of Crabs is the despicable prototype of 
 the Marquis of Steyne. Of the female char- 
 acters one is merely unfortunate and contempt- 
 ible, but the other hunts for a title and attempts 
 a murder. And even Mr. Yellowplush betrays 
 the interests of his rascally employer. There is 
 nothing for the mind to rest upon except the 
 conflicting schemes of the disreputable crew, 
 but so well is the story told that though we are 
 indifferent as to which of the schemes is 
 ultimately successful, we retain our interest in 
 the denouement. Thackeray's intention was to
 
 I BEFORE 'VANITY FAIR' 23 
 
 show that the profession of the gambler was as 
 hurtful to himself as to his associates ; but in 
 his effort to effect this he so crowded his canvas 
 with vice and folly that he left little room for 
 the moral sentiments to have play, and the 
 chief impression we derive from the book is 
 that Mr. Deuceace was no worse than his 
 neighbours. 
 
 The most remarkable thing about the two 
 stories is the extraordinary care and patience 
 with which the meanest actions are portrayed, 
 and the absence of any sentiment more generous 
 than the reflection of the runaway footman, with 
 which the second story closes — 
 
 " Deuceace turned round. I see his face now 
 — the face of a devvle of hell ! First he lookt 
 towards the carridge and pinted to it with his 
 maimed arm ; then he raised the other, and 
 struck the woman by his side. She fell, scream- 
 ing. Poor thing, poor thing ! " 
 
 Surely no moralist ever made a more unfortu- 
 nate start than Thackeray with ' The Memoirs 
 of Mr. Yellowplush.' 
 
 In the next year or two there appeared another 
 story of a somewhat similar character, which is 
 open in some degree to the same objections.
 
 24 THACKERAY: A STUDY CH. 
 
 It also was written with an avowed purpose, 
 and as the purpose was not so definite as that 
 which inspired ' The Amours of Mr. Deuceace,' 
 and indeed was almost banal in its simplicity, 
 it sufficiently served the object of the author. 
 Bulwer Lytton and Harrison Ainsworth had 
 attracted the attention of the public with novels 
 of the class of * Eugene Aram,' ' Dick Turpin,' 
 and ' Jack Sheppard,' and at the same time had 
 excited the indignation of Thackeray, who was 
 anxious to show to the world how " disgusting 
 would be the records of thieves, cheats, and 
 murderers, if their doings and language were 
 described according to their nature, instead of 
 being handled in such a way as to create 
 sympathy, and therefore imitation." ^ The 
 result was a story in which thieves and murderers 
 were shown to be commonly very bad people 
 indeed, and if the proposition could ever have 
 been doubted, he may be said to have proved 
 it. At the end of ' Catherine,' he makes I key 
 Solomons, its supposed author, remark, " Be it 
 granted Solomons is dull, but don't attack his 
 morality." The wonder is that he should ever 
 have thought it necessary to use such language 
 ^ Trollope's ' Thackeray.'
 
 I BEFORE 'VANITY FAIR' 25 
 
 in connection with it. The tendency of the 
 story is not immoral, — the tendency of nothing 
 that Thackeray ever wrote was immoral, — but 
 neither is it moral. It was written to serve a 
 moral purpose, but there is no opportunity in 
 the whole of it for the exercise of morality. To 
 say that there are some completely bad people 
 in the world is not to utter a moral sentiment, it 
 is merely to be guilty of a slightly uncharitable 
 truism. Nor is it immoral for Shakespeare to 
 refuse to paint Macbeth as wholly black, or for 
 Scott to give to Rob Roy the qualities of courage 
 and magnanimity. To give to a man who com- 
 mits murder some of the finer feelings was no 
 more a fault in Lytton ; and Ainsworth was 
 entitled to assume that a man might be a high- 
 wayman and at the same time dashing and 
 debonair. Eugene Aram no doubt is a stilted 
 character, and the almost forgotten romances of 
 * Jack Sheppard ' and ' Dick Turpin ' have now 
 few admirers left. If in them vice was painted 
 so as to allure, though it is difficult to imagine 
 what reasonable being could have been allured 
 by them, in so far they were immoral. But 
 they were not immoral because they gave a 
 medley of faults and excellences to the same
 
 26 THACKERAY: A STUDY CH. 
 
 character, any more than ' Catherine ' is moral 
 merely because it depicts vice in unattractive 
 colours ; if that were so the ' Newgate Calendar ' 
 would be a moral production. Morality does 
 not exist by the mere absence of immorality. 
 In books, it is by the reasoned alternation of 
 good and evil that the moral effect is produced. 
 
 Faithful to the object with which he set out, 
 Thackeray has enlivened the prevailing sombre- 
 ness of ' Catherine' with few redeeming traits of 
 character, and the latter half of the book is too 
 sordid for the purposes of fiction ; but the tale, 
 as Mr. Trollope has remarked, is rendered toler- 
 able by the art with which it is narrated. There 
 are few more characteristic bits of irony to be 
 found in Thackeray than Count Galgenstein's 
 reception of his offspring, and the saturnine 
 playfulness with which the career of Captain 
 Brock is chronicled, was the samts that enabled 
 his creator, five years afterwards, to write that 
 ' Jonathan Wild ' of the nineteenth century, 
 ' The Memoirs of Barry Lyndon.' 
 
 But ' Catherine ' and ' The Memoirs of Mr. 
 Yellowplush ' were not the only result of the 
 four years between 1837 and 1841. With that 
 indolent industry for which he was famous.
 
 I BEFORE ' VANITY FAIR ' 2/ 
 
 Thackeray poured out a succession of sketches 
 and novelettes, only two of them, however, ' A 
 Shabby Genteel Story' and 'The Great Hog- 
 garty Diamond,' possessing more than a bio- 
 graphical interest. 
 
 ' The Tremendous Adventures of Major 
 Gahagan ' are nearly as broad farce as those of 
 Baron Munchausen. The story is parody all 
 through, and even the artifice of exactness, by 
 which in the most preposterous tale an impres- 
 sion of truth is conveyed, comes in for its share 
 of caricature. " I aimed so true," says the 
 Major, " that one hundred and seventeen best 
 Spanish olives were lodged in a lump in the 
 face of the unhappy Loll Mahommed." ' The 
 Fatal Book ' and ' Cox's Diary ' are also humor- 
 ous efforts. There is some resemblance between 
 the two stories, and it is satisfactory that in the 
 treatment of the later there is a distinct advance 
 in good-nature. There is a certain harshness in 
 our being invited to laugh broadly at the ac- 
 cumulated misfortunes of the idiot Stubbs, and 
 his treatment of his mother is too wicked to be 
 in keeping with his farcical character. But the 
 ups and downs of Mr. Cox, and his final anchor- 
 age in a station suited to him, are a justifiable
 
 28 THACKERAY: A STUDY CH. 
 
 subject for humour. With the happy philosophy 
 that induces Mr. Cox to acknowledge that "he 
 is like the Swish people, and can't flourish out 
 of his native hair," and with his daughter com- 
 fortably paired with Mr. Crump, the comical 
 barber can afford to let us laugh at his many 
 absurdities. 
 
 ' The Bedford Row Conspiracy ' is a more 
 serious tale, that brings little credit to its author. 
 The plot, which was borrowed, is extremely 
 unfortunate, the happiness of the young couple 
 being brought about by a trick which does not 
 deserve a reward. The dramatis personae are 
 nearly all self-seeking nonentities, and the 
 gravity of the charges preferred against society 
 in the tale is quite out of proportion to its im- 
 portance. Forty pages suffice to tell us that 
 there are old women without dignity, and young 
 women without reserve, that there is nothing 
 unusual in two old people keeping an assignation, 
 or in a small bevy of men and women of all 
 ages listening at a keyhole, that there are many 
 toadies and liars in the world, and that political 
 life is corrupt. ' Captain Rook ' and ' The 
 Fashionable Authoress ' are studies of the same 
 class. We learn here also that there are many
 
 I BEFORE ' VANITY FAIR ' 29 
 
 people who swindle, and many who are swindled, 
 and an additional fact, which does not indeed 
 surprise us, that if an author or authoress has 
 rank or power, their productions are not likely 
 to be less favourably reviewed. 
 
 ' The Paris Sketch-Book ' is a more remark- 
 able production. It is a curious but instructive 
 medley of tales, translations, and reflections. 
 Here we find every mood of Thackeray's young 
 days represented, and the critic who would 
 understand what kind of man it was who wrote 
 ' Barry Lyndon ' and ' Vanity Fair ' has no more 
 to do than to study it. The same hand which 
 drew Messrs. Cox and Dawkins drew Mr. 
 Pogson. The same taste that made it possible 
 to write ' Catherine,' was responsible for Car- 
 touche and the story of Mary Ancel. The same 
 moralizing tendency which made Thackeray 
 indignant with Bulwer Lytton, dictated the 
 review of the fashionable novels of France. 
 The same feeling that gives its pathos to the 
 homely little tragedy in the ' Hoggarty Diamond,' 
 Led him to write the charming morality of 
 Beatrice Merger, and gave occasion for the 
 attack on George Sand, The gambler's death- 
 bed is reminiscent of Mr. Deuceace, and the
 
 30 THACKERAY: A STUDY CH. 
 
 same cynicism which induced him to chronicle 
 the pity of Mr. Yellowplush, puts an epitaph 
 into the mouth of the landlady. 
 
 It is with some feelings of curiosity that we 
 turn to the last paper in the book. Here surely 
 (' Meditations at Versailles ') we shall find some- 
 thing new. The palace of the greatest monarchy 
 of modern times must surely awaken other 
 reflections than a druggist out for a holiday,^ a 
 swindler,^ or a thief.^ Here at least have been 
 men as great, and feelings and passions as 
 ennobling, as any in the world. But our expect- 
 ations are doomed to be disappointed. Amid 
 the crowd of its memories, what arrests his 
 attention is that the courtiers desert Louis XV. 
 on his death-bed, as meaner servants desert 
 their masters ; and the Grand Monarque himself 
 gives rise to no other idea, than that as a journey- 
 man may be tricked out to pass for a gentleman, 
 so a puppet may be painted and padded to look 
 like a king. " It is curious," he writes, " to see 
 how much precise majesty there is in that figure 
 
 1 Mr. Pogson, in ' A Caution to Travellers.' 
 
 2 The Hon. A. P. Deuceace, in 'The Amours of Mr. 
 Deuceace.' 
 
 2 Mr. Macshane, in ' Catherine.'
 
 I BEFORE 'VANITY FAIR' 3 1 
 
 of Ludovicus Rex. In the plate opposite we 
 have endeavoured to make the exact calculation. 
 The idea of kingly dignity is equally strong in 
 the two outer figures ; and you see at once that 
 majesty is made out of the wig, the high-heeled 
 shoes, and cloak all fleurs-de-lis bespangled. As 
 for the little, lean, shrivelled, paunchy old man 
 of five feet two, in a jacket and breeches, there 
 is no majesty in him at any rate ; and yet he 
 has just stepped out of that very suit of clothes. 
 Put the wig and shoes on him, and he is six feet 
 high ; — the other fripperies, and he stands before 
 you majestic, imperial, and heroic ! Thus do 
 barbers and cobblers make the gods that wc 
 worship." 
 
 When this is the treatment that Louis XIV. 
 receives, it is no matter for surprise that the 
 Second Funeral of Napoleon should not awake 
 in Thackeray any sentiments of admiration or 
 of awe, but that he should feel himself impelled 
 to write a burlesque account of the ceremony is 
 more than the ' Meditations at Versailles ' had 
 given us reason to expect. The ' Meditations 
 at Versailles ' were certainly not those to which 
 we should have anticipated the place would give 
 birth, but the criticisms upon Louis XIV., when
 
 32 THACKERAY : A- STUDY CH. 
 
 made, are quite easy to understand. Great as 
 he was, Louis was more the centre of a vast 
 system than the creator of it ; the throne that 
 was his by right of birth was already one of 
 the most distinguished in Europe, and it is 
 historically true that not only was his court a 
 court of pomp and parade, but also that an 
 excessive respect was paid to the central figure 
 within it. The criticism is an unjust caricature 
 but had the paper been entitled ' Meditations 
 upon Louis XIV.,' that would have been all that 
 was to be said about it. 
 
 None of the circumstances, however, which 
 go to justify in a slight degree his references to 
 Louis XIV. assist us to explain his attitude 
 regarding Napoleon, Napoleon began life as a 
 private man ; he is not only the central figure 
 in the nineteenth century, but he was the creator 
 of modern France. His court was more like the 
 head-quarters of a general than the seat of a 
 king, and there was no more pomp and parade 
 in it than is inseparable from any court, ancient 
 or m.odcrn. There is no story more splendid in 
 history than that of his rise and fall. It was 
 politically necessary after Waterloo that his 
 people should desert him, but the fact of their
 
 I BEFORE 'VANITY FAIR' 33 
 
 desertion remains. He might well be excused 
 if he imagined, as he was sinking to an undis- 
 tinguished grave in St. Helena, that the country 
 for which he had done so much had treated him 
 with ingratitude. 
 
 It was not till nearly twenty years afterwards, 
 when the political aspect of affairs had changed, 
 that his countrymen determined to testify, as 
 best they could, their regard for his memory. 
 The means that suggested itself was to provide 
 a more honourable sepulture for his remains. 
 The preparations may have been insufficient, 
 but there could hardly have been an occasion 
 more solemn. From Austerlitz to St. Helena, 
 from St. Helena to the Invalides, — there have 
 been few careers, or few reputations, with transi- 
 tions more abrupt, few that could better furnish 
 a text for a sermon on the evanescent character 
 of existence, or point more sharply the contrast 
 between the ambitious achievements of man 
 and the essential nothingness of his busy and 
 anxious life. 
 
 But Thackeray, from the time when the 
 expedition sets out, under the command of the 
 Prince de Joinville, to the time when, " My dear 
 Miss Smith, the great Napoleon was buried," 
 
 D
 
 34 THACKERAY: A STUDY CH. 
 
 assails the ceremony with ridicule. At the 
 grave at St. Helena, indeed, he allows another 
 to tell the story, but at the Invalides he has no 
 such reticence. The procession is described as 
 if it were a scene from a pantomime, and the 
 narrative is interspersed with such stage direc- 
 tions as, " Enter a fat priest who bustles up to 
 the drum-major," or such curiously vial a propos 
 reflections as, " The very fact of a squeeze dissi- 
 pates all solemnity " ; but he reserves the brunt 
 of his raillery for the Q^^y that surmounted the 
 funeral car. If it were usual to be critical in 
 such things, it is probable that the effigy was a 
 mistake ; but surely it is not usual to find a fit 
 subject for ridicule in the trappings of a hearse. 
 This is how Thackeray writes of it : — " His 
 Majesty the Emperor and King reclined on his 
 shield, with his head a little elevated. His 
 Majesty's skull is voluminous, his forehead broad 
 and large. We remarked that his Imperial 
 Majesty's brow was of a yellowish colour, which 
 appearance was also visible about the orbits of 
 the eyes. He kept his eyelids constantly closed, 
 by which we had the opportunity of observing 
 that the upper lids were garnished with eye- 
 lashes. Years and climate have effected upon the
 
 I BEFORE 'VANITY FAIR' 35 
 
 face of this great monarch only a trifling altera- 
 tion ; wc may say indeed that Time has touched 
 his Imperial and Royal Majesty with the lightest 
 feather in his wing. In the nose of the Conqueror 
 of Austerlitz we remarked very little alteration ; 
 it is of the beautiful shape which we remember 
 it possessed five-and-twenty years since, ere 
 unfortunate circumstances induced him to leave 
 us for a while. The nostril and the tube of the 
 nose appear to have undergone some slight 
 alteration, but in examining a beloved object 
 the eye of affection is perhaps too critical. Vive 
 I'Empereur! the soldier of Marengo is among 
 us again." 
 
 Thackeray has his own excuse for this treat- 
 ment of the subject. He protests, in effect, that 
 one may ridicule the funeral without ridiculing 
 the dead. No doubt it is perfectly possible, but 
 Thackeray has not attempted to do it. He does 
 not, it is true, ridicule the career of Napoleon, 
 because even with his talents for caricature the 
 task was quite beyond his capacity, but he 
 ridicules Napoleon through his funeral. And 
 even if wc allow his excuse, there was nothing 
 ridiculous in the funeral itself If the pomp 
 were not sufficiently magnificent to satisfy M.
 
 36 THACKERAY: A STUDY CH. 
 
 Thiers, Thackeray would not have had it more 
 so ; and if he would, the fact that the prepar- 
 ations were insufficient did not add to the 
 humour of the occasion. The humour, on his 
 own confession, must have consisted either in 
 the removal of the body, or in its not being 
 removed as quietly as possible. Reduced to 
 this, the subject does not appear as particularly 
 laughable ; but the truth of the matter is, that 
 Thackeray, all through his life, was absolutely 
 incapable of being impressed with those ideas 
 of grandeur and majesty that produce so great 
 an effect upon the rest of the world. In his 
 later years there were none so quick to seize on 
 the grandeur of simplicity, there were none who 
 had a profounder idea of the majesty of virtue. 
 Greatness, beauty, unselfishness ; — all the quali- 
 ties which go to make a grand character, these 
 he understood and admired. Before the sacred- 
 ness of prayer, before a character as courageous 
 and as simple as Scott's, he was the first to bow 
 the knee ; but he seems never to have known 
 what is meant by the word magnificent, or to 
 have been dazzled by what is famous and 
 splendid in life.^ His Prince in ' Esmond ' is 
 1 Cf., for an instance of this, his treatment of Rome,
 
 I B:EF0RE ' VANITY FAIR ' 37 
 
 royal, but he is not majestic ; and he judges of 
 the four Georges as if they were English squires. 
 He had an absolute genius for the historical 
 novel, but it was the historical novel of private 
 life. He never introduces us to a monarch, and 
 hardly gets nearer a court than to tell us that 
 Beatrix was a maid-of-honour, and that Captain 
 Brock was presented. He was no chronicler of 
 princes, and he seems with such labour to have 
 come to the conclusion that a monarch is a man, 
 that he resents the distinctions which a throne 
 and a crown create. The same feelings are 
 noticeable when he speaks of the petty princes 
 of Germany, or of our landed aristocracy. The 
 possession of a coronet is enough to provoke 
 his resentment. At the idea of majesty all his 
 hostility is incurred ; he begins at once to laugh 
 or to sneer. When he comes to deal with the 
 majestic and terrible Swift, he does not laugh 
 indeed, — who could laugh at that tragedy ? — he 
 is even surprised into an involuntary expression 
 of admiration : — " So great a man he seems to 
 me, that thinking of him is like thinking of an 
 
 in the thirty-fifth chapter of ' The Newcomes,' with 
 Hawthorne's, in the eleventh chapter of the second 
 volume of ' The Marble Faun.'
 
 38 THACKERAY: A STUDY CH. 
 
 empire falling," — but the larger part of his essay- 
 is occupied in sneering at his religion, and mis- 
 judging his genius ; and he drags him into 
 ' Esmond ' ^ that he may call him a bully and a 
 coward. 
 
 It would indeed have been remarkable had it 
 been otherwise. Had Thackeray been dazzled 
 by the greatness of Louis XIV. or Napoleon, 
 his character would have been even more com- 
 plex than it is. Scott, it has been said with 
 great critical truth, was equally at his ease with 
 George IV. or Adam Purdie, equally at home 
 with Queen Mary - or Jeanie Deans.^ The 
 same man that, in ' Twenty Years After,' gave 
 us Charles II. at the Hague, was able to depict 
 with a charming tenderness of observation the 
 bourgeois qualities of Goodman Buvat.* It is 
 a commonplace that princes and peasants abso- 
 lutely jostle each other in the pages of Shake- 
 speare. But none of these authors ever drew 
 anything that was merely squalid. Shakespeare 
 has not the word in his vocabulary. The cabin 
 of Meg Merrilees has none of the comforts of 
 
 ^ ' Esmond,' Book iii., chap. v. 
 
 2 ' The Abbot.' 
 
 ^ * The Heart of Midlothian.' 
 
 ■* ' Le Chevalier d'Harmenthal.'
 
 I BEFORE ' VANITY FAIR ' 39 
 
 civilization, but who would hesitate to affirm 
 that it is infinitely less contemptible and mean 
 than the surroundings of Caroline Gann ? 
 Dumas, Scott, or Shakespeare would not have 
 understood, or if they had understood would 
 have scorned to chronicle, the doings of the 
 household which forms the subject of ' A 
 Shabby Genteel Story.' From the cottage to 
 the palace is only a step, but for the man who 
 could look with unblinking eyes on the vulgar 
 wickedness of Firmin,^ on the vulgar passion of 
 Fitch,^ on the vulgar maternity of Mrs. Gann,^ 
 Solomon in all his glory was no more than the 
 naked Prince in the fairy tale, who, every one 
 else thought, was clothed in the garments of 
 majesty. 
 
 It would be difficult to find anything favour- 
 able to say of the book in which these persons 
 appear. The reader may consent to be interested 
 in the scheming wretches who surround Mr. 
 Deuceace, and even in * Catherine ' the characters, 
 once we allow that they will stick at nothing, 
 act much as other selfish people do who have 
 only their own ends to gain ; but in ' A Shabby 
 Genteel Story' the atmosphere is impregnated 
 1 ' A Shabby Genteel Story.'
 
 40 THACKERAY : A STUDY CH. 
 
 with a vulgarity so intense as to be brutal, and 
 the laugh with which the sordid story is re- 
 counted jars in our ears. It is not that satire 
 offends ; it is that the methods of this satirist 
 are offensive. Mankind, it may almost be said, 
 appreciates abuse. The indignation that runs 
 riot among the Yahoos forces us to receive the 
 lesson in a thankful, if in a sorrowing spirit. 
 We confess in church every Sunday that we 
 are miserable sinners, and say over again the 
 wonderful and penitent sentence that embraces 
 the whole catalogue of crimes. But the lesson 
 is accepted, and the admission is made, with 
 anger and tears. Swift, it has been said, never 
 threw filth except when he was angry. The 
 remark is profound ; and we turn to demand 
 from Thackeray what right he had to bring us 
 into such company, unless he were very angry 
 indeed. The gibe of the satirist is forgiven, 
 because of the curse that follows and explains 
 it ; but a laughter that has no pity in its mockery, 
 that is neither merry nor scornful, cannot be 
 forgiven, because it cannot be understood. No 
 man ever rose from reading ' Gulliver's Travels ' 
 without being either wiser or better. We close 
 the ' Shabby Genteel Story ' with a shudder,
 
 I BEFORE ' VANITY FAIR ' 41 
 
 because we dare not allow ourselves to be 
 ashamed of our species. 
 
 It was at this period of Thackeray's life, just 
 after the completion of this story, that his great 
 sorrow befell him ; and the increased tenderness 
 of some passages in ' The Great Hoggarty 
 Diamond' may, no doubt, be traced to this 
 cause. It was written at a time, he says in one 
 of his letters, " when my heart was very soft and 
 humble. Ich habe auch viel geliebt." But 
 though this influence is noticeable, the manner 
 remains very much the same. We are intro- 
 duced again to " shabby-genteel " society, and 
 there is quite the usual proportion of fools and 
 knaves in the book. The plot is sufficiently 
 simple. A young clerk has his head turned by 
 the gift of a diamond pin, which not only draws 
 attention to him, but induces him to live rather 
 beyond his small means. This leads through 
 the debtor's prison, and his wife's going out as a 
 nurse, to the ultimate resuscitation of their small 
 fortunes by the generosity of her employer. 
 Partly because of the period at which it was 
 written, and partly because there is to be found 
 in it Thackeray's first serious attempt at the 
 pathetic, the story has received much higher
 
 42 THACKERAY : A STUDY CH, 
 
 praise than it deserves. The characters are not 
 drawn with a firm enough hand to provoke 
 disgust, but it is only their insignificance that 
 saves them. Mr. Brough, a pompous promoter of 
 bubble companies, Miss Hoggarty, a quite incon- 
 sistent old harridan, Gus Hawkins, a singularly 
 rough piece of honesty, and the Misses Brough, 
 who talk French and affect the airs of fashion, 
 form the nucleus of a society whose acquaintance 
 few would care to possess. Mr. Titmarsh himself 
 is not a peculiarly attractive person, and his nick- 
 name, " the West-Ender," gives a fair idea of the 
 company which he frequents. The story is 
 further garnished with a caricature portrait of 
 an aristocratic menage, and winds up with the 
 unnecessary incident of a frivolous attempt at 
 seduction. But even with these unpromising 
 materials, Thackeray has contrived to write a 
 comparatively readable novel, and the troubles 
 of Mr. Titmarsh and his young wife are told 
 with some traces of that feeling which is so 
 prominent a feature of his later work. " It was 
 not, however," writes the autobiographical 
 Titmarsh, " destined that she and her child 
 should inhabit that little garret. We were to 
 leave our lodgings on Monday morning ; but on
 
 I BEFORE ' VANITY FAIR 43 
 
 Saturday evening the child was seized with 
 convulsions, and all Sunday the mother watched 
 and prayed for it ; but it pleased God to take 
 the innocent infant from us, and on Sunday, at 
 midnight, to lay it a corpse on its mother's 
 bosom. Amen. We have other children, happy 
 and well, now round about us, and from the 
 father's heart the memory of this little thing 
 has almost faded ; but I do believe that every 
 day of her life the mother thinks of the first- 
 born that was with her so short a while : many 
 and many a time has she taken her daughter to 
 the grave, in Saint Bride's, where he lies buried ; 
 and she wears still at her neck a little, little lock 
 of gold hair, which she took from the head of 
 the infant as he lay smiling in his coffin. It has 
 happened to me to forget the child's birthday, 
 but to her never ; and often, in the midst of 
 common talk, comes something that shows she 
 is thinking of the child still, — some simple allu- 
 sion that is inexpressibly affecting." 
 
 Two other papers, * Going to see a Man 
 hanged ' and an article on George Cruikshank, 
 were also the product of this busy period. As 
 to the former, there was no particular reason 
 why Thackeray should have mixed himself up
 
 44 THACKERAY: A STUDY CH. 
 
 with a controversial question, the different sides 
 of which he does not appear to have studied. 
 But the paper contains some graphic description, 
 and represents fairly the popular view of the 
 time. The review on Cruikshank was a kind 
 office to an artist who was in danger of being 
 neglected, and it is quite remarkable how, when 
 he leaves fiction, he lays aside his prejudices, 
 and his heart begins to expand. The article is 
 full of discriminating, if lenient criticism, and a 
 kindliness that in doing honour to Cruikshank 
 does equal honour to its author. Even the 
 spirited illustrations to the hated ' Jack 
 Sheppard ' come in for their full measure of 
 praise ; and every one who has had in his hand 
 the queer old romances of Pierce Egan, and 
 remembers what they were to our grandfathers, 
 will appreciate the wise charity of the references 
 to Bob Logic and Corinthian Tom. Seldom 
 has an appeal for a brother genius been put 
 more delicately or better than this : — 
 
 " What labour has Mr. Cruikshank's been ! 
 Week by week, for thirty years, to produce 
 something new ; some smiling offspring of pain- 
 ful labour, quite independent and distinct from its 
 ten thousand jovial brethren ; in what hours of
 
 I BEFORE ' VANITY FAIR 45 
 
 sorrow and ill-health to be told by the world, 
 'Make us laugh or you starve — Give us fresh 
 fun ; we have eaten up the old and are hungry.' 
 And all this he has been obliged to do — to 
 wring laughter day by day, sometimes, perhaps, 
 out of want, often certainly from ill-health or 
 depression — to keep the fire of his brain per- 
 petually alight ; for the greedy public will give 
 it no leisure to cool. This he has done, and 
 done well. He has told a thousand truths in as 
 many strange and fascinating ways ; he has 
 given a thousand new and pleasant thoughts to 
 millions of people ; he has never used his wit 
 dishonestly ; he has never, in all the exuberance 
 of his frolicsome humour, caused a single painful 
 or guilty blush ; how little do we think of the 
 extraordinary power of this man, and how 
 ungrateful we are to him ! " 
 
 More than twelve years afterwards, he was 
 occupied in doing a similar service for Leech, 
 but the later article, though excellent, as was all 
 the work of that period, does not exceed the 
 former in grace. Neither paper pretends to be 
 a complete critical estimate of its subject. They 
 both remain as perfect examples of the manner 
 in which to teach a careless public how to admire.
 
 46 THACKERAY: A STUDY CH. 
 
 Much of the same good-nature is evident in 
 ' The Confessions and Professions of Mr. Fitz- 
 boodle,' the least unimportant of the stray- 
 works which occupied 1S42. George Fitzboodle 
 is a man about town, and his confessions are the 
 narrative of the love-affairs of his youth. He 
 introduces himself with much bonJioinie : — 
 " What is the simple deduction to be drawn 
 from this truth.?"— the truth that Mr. Fitz- 
 boodle was more than a match for " these 
 literary fellows " — " Why, this — that a man to 
 be amusing and well-informed has no need of 
 books at all, and had much better go to the 
 world and to men for his knowledge. There 
 was Ulysses, now, the Greek fellow engaged in 
 the Trojan war, as I dare say you know. Well, 
 he was the cleverest man possible, and how .-' 
 From having seen men and cities, their manners 
 noted and their realms surveyed, to be sure. 
 So have I. I have been in every capital, and 
 can order a dinner in any language in Europe." 
 It is in this spirit that Mr. Fitzboodle rattles 
 on, with no very clear idea of the distinction in 
 things, but always self-satisfied and jovial. It 
 is a style which admirably suits the little 
 historiettes of Mary, Dorothea, and Ottilia.
 
 « BEFORE 'VANITY FAIR' 47 
 
 With great self-complacency he tells us how he 
 lost Mary on account of his affection for 
 tobacco, Dorothea through a disastrous tumble 
 at a ball, and Ottilia because he discovered that 
 she was a glutton. Besides this, there are 
 glimpses of the court of Pumpernickel, and 
 some of Ottilia's peculiarities were reproduced 
 in Blanche Amory. Blanche also ate too much, 
 but unlike Ottilia she had the sense to do it in 
 private, and Ottilia scribbles verses that if they 
 were not so good would remind us of ' Mes 
 Larmes ' : — 
 
 "All, happy childish tales — of knight and faerie ! 
 I waken from my dreams — but there's nev er a knight 
 
 for me. 
 I waken from my dreams — and wish that I could be 
 A child by the old hall fire — upon my nurse's knee." 
 
 The character is well kept up in the ridiculous 
 * Professions,' and fairly preserved in ' Mr. and 
 Mrs. Frank Berry,' but it is difficult to imagine 
 what induced Thackeray to credit Mr. Fitz- 
 boodle with the authorship of ' The Ravens- 
 wing.' The humorous idler who is at once the 
 historian and the hero of his own trifles had no 
 motive for telling it, and a club-lounger could 
 not have had any knowledge of the society
 
 48 THACKERAY : A STUDY CH. 
 
 which it professes to depict. There is no reason 
 for attempting to deny what is so palpable, that 
 the novel was written by the author of 'A 
 Shabby Genteel Story ' and ' The Great Hog- 
 garty Diamond.' The story is sad enough in 
 itself. Morgiana Crump, the daughter of the 
 landlord of the Bootjack, refuses both the selfish, 
 though passionately devoted Eglantine, and the 
 genuine Mr. Woolsey, preferring the attractions 
 of a certain Captain Walker, whose name does 
 not appear in the Army List. She pays the 
 penalty of her folly, and her husband, who lives 
 on her voice, and turns out to be a swindler and 
 a bankrupt, returns her affection with ill-usage. 
 It is only in a postscript that we are told that 
 she lived to survive him, and passed the re- 
 mainder of her days as the respectable Mrs. 
 Woolsey, The characters, good, bad, and in- 
 different (and there is only one that is good), 
 are so deplorably vulgar as to become, long 
 before the end of the book, intolerably weari- 
 some. But that is not how Thackeray regards 
 them. To him they are a constant source of 
 amusement, and their escapades and misfortunes 
 amazingly diverting. He tells us that Mrs. 
 Crump was a retired ballet-dancer, and to him
 
 I BEFORE ' VANITY FAIR ' 49 
 
 it is an excellent joke ; that Mr. Woolsey was a 
 tailor, and for him thenceforward his virtues 
 are merely an occasion for ridicule ; that Mr. 
 Eglantine was a hairdresser, and he bids us 
 agree with him that it is the funniest thing in 
 the world. Indeed, so uncontrollably merry is 
 he, that we are constrained to laugh in spite of 
 ourselves ; but we pause to consider whether we 
 have laughed at a man for being a tradesman, 
 or at a tradesman for falling in love. The next 
 story, ' Dennis Hoggarty's Wife,' has a widely 
 different treatment accorded to it. It is a short 
 and gruesome study of the relations between an 
 honest simpleton and the worthless woman 
 whom he has married, but it hardly repays the 
 trouble of reading, and throws no new light on 
 Thackeray's character. 
 
 The same remark might almost be made 
 about * The Irish Sketch-Book,' which, however, 
 of its kind is exceedingly well done. But 
 guide-books and itineraries, be they ever so 
 industrious and painstaking, must of their nature 
 have little interest, except for the generation for 
 which they are written. Wordsworth's ' Guide 
 to the Lake District,' no doubt, will continue to 
 be read, but then not only is it a model of
 
 50 THACKERAY : A STUDY CH. 
 
 English classical prose, but it contains some of 
 the most philosophical reflections upon scenery 
 that have ever appeared. But from the inform- 
 ation that was amassed in ' The Irish Sketch- 
 Book,' Thackeray seldom takes the trouble to 
 derive a general conclusion, and there are none 
 of those wide disquisitions upon society and 
 government, which the investigation of a par- 
 ticular country suggests to writers of the class of 
 De Tocqueville and M. Taine. It is not easy 
 even to get an accurate idea from it of his views 
 on Ireland itself. At one moment he seems to 
 incline to the opinion that there is a large class 
 in a state of apparently helpless poverty, at 
 another to the more optimistic one, that the 
 country was generally advancing, and that we 
 had good reason to hope for the best. There is 
 a legend that he wrote a preface for the second 
 edition, advocating the disestablishment of the 
 Irish Church, and the repeal of the Union.^ 
 This preface, however, has not appeared. If it 
 was ever written, it must have fitted in oddly 
 with some other parts of the work. But though 
 ' The Irish Sketch-Book ' has few attractions for 
 
 ' ' The Life of Thackeray,' p. 117, Great Writers Series. 
 Herman Merivale and Frank T. Marzials.
 
 I BEFORE 'VANITY FAIR' 51 
 
 the general reader, neither the traveller nor the 
 historian can afford to neglect it ; and there arc 
 many passages which help the critic of Thack- 
 eray's novels more thoroughly to understand his 
 treatment of the Irish. 
 
 ' Little Travels and Roadside Sketches,' 
 though only about a tenth part of the length, is 
 also very much of a guide-book, but the author 
 is more inclined to moralize upon what he 
 observes, and here and there there is a touch of 
 his ironical manner. " An instance of honesty," 
 he remarks, " may be mentioned with applause. 
 The writer lost a pocket-book containing a pass- 
 port and a couple of modest ten-pound notes. 
 The person who found the portfolio ingeniously 
 put it into the box of the post-office, and it was 
 faithfully restored to the owner ; but somehow 
 the two ten-pound notes were absent. It was, 
 however, a great comfort to get the passport and 
 the pocket-book, which must be worth about 
 ninepence." And again, writing of his doings at 
 the Hospital of Bruges, " The box-bearer did not 
 seem at first willing to accept our donation — 
 we were strangers and heretics ; however, I held 
 out my hand, and he came perforce as it were. 
 Indeed it had only a franc in it ; but que voulez-
 
 52 THACKERAY: A STUDY CH. 
 
 voiis ? I had been drinking a bottle of Rhine 
 wine that day, and how was I to afford more ? 
 The Rhine wine is dear in this country, and 
 costs four francs a bottle." The writer who 
 spoke in this tone of the motives that prompted 
 his own good actions, was not likely, when he 
 came to more serious work, to be much impressed 
 with the feelings that are responsible for the 
 little kindnesses of everyday life. 
 
 In 1844, when Thackeray was forty-one 
 years of age, ' Barry Lyndon ' was published ; 
 and ' The Next French Revolution,' a burlesque 
 which appeared about the same time, is interest- 
 ing, though a trifle, as showing how completely 
 he had caught the art of telling a fictitious story 
 with a semblance of truth. The seriousness of 
 the narrator is preserved in a wonderful manner, 
 and the attitude maintained throughout is one of 
 judicial calm. But the incidents are so intention- 
 ally monstrous that no skill could induce us even 
 for a moment actually to believe in them. Barry 
 Lyndon's adventures, on the contrary, though it 
 is true they are not the most probable, do not 
 exceed the bounds of probability ; and the art, 
 which is conspicuous in ' The Next French 
 Revolution,' is here in such complete perfection,
 
 » BEFORE 'VANITY FAIR' 53 
 
 that under its spell we would have no hesitation 
 in believing a tale fifty times less probable. 
 Here indeed we have "old friends with new 
 faces." Over and over again Thackeray had 
 shown the public that out of the most un- 
 fortunate materials he could construct a story 
 that would interest, even when it did not please, 
 and that would amuse even when it excited 
 disgust. But no one was ever disgusted at ' The 
 Memoirs of Barry Lyndon.' It is as pleasant a 
 story of its kind as ever excited the mirth, or 
 absorbed the interest of a reader. Already he 
 had shown that he had patience to deal with 
 every species of rascal, and with every variety of 
 vice, a patience so vast indeed that in many 
 cases it exceeded that of his audience. But 
 Redmond Barry might recount his rascalities for 
 €ver, and his audience would only be thankful. 
 Often he had told us that gambling was a vice, 
 that mercenary marriages invariably led to mis- 
 fortune, and that brutality was almost a crime ; 
 but we scarcely troubled to listen to the sermon, 
 and we hastened to forget the text. ' The 
 Memoirs of Barry Lyndon ' contains all these 
 moral sentiments, yet we not only listen to them 
 with eagerness, but they impress themselves on
 
 54 THACKERAY: A STUDY CH„ 
 
 the mind. In ' Catherine ' and 'The Amours of 
 Mr. Deuceace/ he had preached to unheeding 
 ears that there were wicked people in the world, 
 and that it behoved us to beware of them ; — we 
 at once acknowledge that Redmond Barry is a 
 bad man, because we recognize that he is human. 
 Four years before, Thackeray had shouted from 
 the housetops that it was the height of morality 
 to talk about rascals, and here certainly we have 
 rascality enough and to spare. But he has 
 completely unlearned the undefensible part of 
 his lesson, and in giving to Redmond Barry a 
 medley of qualities, good as well as bad, though 
 no doubt a preponderating quality of evil, he 
 has adopted the very method which, with un- 
 critical haste, he had fastened on as the fault of 
 Ainsworth and Lytton. But no work was ever 
 more unlike ' Jack Sheppard ' and * Dick Turpin,' 
 because from the real faults of these novels, from 
 their over-colouring and want of proportion, 
 he was preserved by a kind of artistic intuition. 
 
 Many of the characters in ' The Memoirs 
 of Barry Lyndon' had been seen before, and 
 all its component parts, to the student of 
 Thackeray, were tolerably familiar, but he had 
 never sfiven more than a foretaste of its match-
 
 ^ BEFORE ' VANITY FAIR ' 55 
 
 less composition. Yet great as the book is, and 
 with all its merits, it takes rank rather as a 
 tour de force than as a work of the highest order. 
 And to see that this is so, it is only necessary to 
 glance for a moment at things not comparable 
 indeed, but in this connection instructive, at 
 three or four of the best works of imagination. 
 Arthur Dimmesdale, in ' The Scarlet Letter,' 
 is faulty and weak, but though he has allowed 
 another to suffer for him, he remains capable of 
 an act of heroic self-sacrifice. Miriam, in ' The 
 Marble Faun,' gives way to gusts of passion, but 
 who does not appreciate the greatness of her 
 character and the warmth of her heart 1 Even 
 Tom Jones, pleasure-loving and careless as he is, 
 keeps bright the pure image of Sophia. And 
 these are only the central, and in two cases the 
 tragic characters of the books which they adorn. 
 What a host of others there is, who have not an 
 evil thought, and never did anything but a good 
 action. For any people at all resembling Hilda, 
 or the kind Squire Allworthy, we might search 
 ' The Memoirs of Barry Lyndon ' in vain. In- 
 deed it may be conscientiously said, that there 
 is not a good man or a good woman to be found 
 in its pages. There are some characters, it is
 
 $6 THACKERAY: A STUDY CH. 
 
 true, that are not utterly wicked, but there is 
 none in whom vice does not immensely pre- 
 dominate over virtue. It would be a poor 
 standard to set up for the masterpieces of our 
 language to say that it was enough that vice 
 should be charitably treated. But if that were 
 the standard, ' The Memoirs of Barry Lyndon ' 
 would be something more than a remarkable 
 achievement, and Thackeray would have had to 
 wait no longer before being hailed as a classic. 
 
 From the first page to the last, the book 
 sparkles with vivacity, and it was a stroke of 
 genius which induced its author to allow the 
 reckless hero to tell his own story, — a hazardous 
 experiment always from the difficulty of the 
 task, but in this instance crowned with complete 
 success. It is the use of this artifice which 
 makes the novel, though in many ways com- 
 parable with, in many ways so immeasurably 
 the superior of ' Jonathan Wild.' It might 
 indeed almost be laid down as an axiom, that a 
 good man should never write an autobiography, 
 and that a bad one should himself tell his own 
 reminiscences. A virtuous man who recounts 
 his own virtues can hardly escape the charges 
 of vain-glory and self-satisfaction, and a writer
 
 I BEFORE ' VANITY FAIR ' 57 
 
 who respects the opinion of the pubh'c must, 
 of necessity, in following the career of a scamp, 
 reprehend the course of conduct which is pur- 
 sued. This is why Colonel Esmond, though 
 admirable, does not take captive our admiration, 
 and why Fielding, though a perfect master of 
 irony, has in ' Jonathan Wild ' many sketches 
 of ironical narrative that are a little too obvious 
 and thin. 'Jonathan Wild' has some ad- 
 vantages over ' The Memoirs of Barry Lyndon.' 
 It contains the character of Heartfree, whose 
 honesty, though a little stagey, forms an ex- 
 cellent foil to the excesses of the hero of the 
 book, and there are passages in it of a humour 
 so broad, so Rabelaisian in their grasp, as to 
 be quite beyond anything of the kind that 
 Thackeray ever attempted. But ' The Memoirs 
 of Barry Lyndon ' possesses a 7iaivete far more 
 surprising, as when we find Mr. Barry repri- 
 manding, with an imperturbable seriousness, 
 the very faults in others which he has just been 
 committing ; and the tenderness of the blubber- 
 ing scoundrel has in it something quite essen- 
 tially modern. This is how he writes of the fatal 
 accident to his son, to whom he had guaranteed 
 a " good flogging " if he mounted an unbroken
 
 58 THACKERAY: A STUDY CH. 
 
 pony, which when trained he had intended to 
 give him : — " I took a great horse-whip and 
 galloped after him in a rage, swearing I would 
 keep my promise. But heaven forgive me ! I 
 little thought of it, when at three miles from 
 home I met a sad procession coming towards 
 me : peasants moaning and howling as our 
 Irish do, the black horse led by the hand, and, 
 on a door that some of the folks carried, my 
 poor dear, dear little boy. There he lay in 
 his little boots and spurs, and his little coat 
 of scarlet and gold. His dear face was quite 
 white, and he smiled as he held a hand out 
 to me, and said, painfully, * You won't whip 
 me, will you, papa ? ' I could only burst into 
 tears in reply. I have seen many and many a 
 man dying, and there's a look about the eyes 
 which you cannot mistake. There was a little 
 drummer-boy I was fond of who was hit down 
 before my company at Kuhnersdorf; when I 
 ran up to offer him some water, he looked 
 exactly like my dear Bryan then did — there's 
 no mistaking that awful look of the eyes." 
 
 The child is taken home, and lies in a help- 
 less condition for two days : — " During this time 
 the dear angel's temper seemed quite to change :
 
 I BEFORE ' VANITY FAIR ' 59- 
 
 he asked his mother and me pardon for any 
 act of disobedience he had been guilty of 
 towards us ; he said often he should Hke to 
 see his brother Bulh'ngdon. ' Bully was better 
 than you, papa,' he said ; ' he used not to swear 
 so, and he told and taught me many good things 
 while you were away.' And, taking a hand of 
 his mother and mine in each of his little clammy 
 ones, he begged us not to quarrel so, but love 
 each other, so that we might meet again in 
 heaven, where Bully told him quarrelsome 
 people never went. His mother was very much 
 affected by these admonitions from the poor 
 suffering angel's mouth ; and I was so too. I 
 wish she had enabled me to keep the counsel 
 which the dying boy gave us." 
 
 How admirably the whole thing is done : the 
 man's tears for the loss of his offspring, his 
 last hope in life, as he sadly and beautifully 
 calls him ; and with what truth he is made to 
 dash the tears away, and turn round with a 
 snarl on poor Lady Lyndon. Thackeray was 
 too well acquainted with the nature of such 
 men, — and there are many of them, though few 
 so bad as Redmond Barry, — not to know that 
 the last thing that the tragedy of their lives
 
 60 THACKERAY: A STUDY CH. 
 
 would induce them to confess to, is a feeling of 
 remorse. 
 
 The two next years were, it is not remarkable 
 to find, somewhat barren in matters of pro- 
 duction. The ' Legend of the Rhine,' a bur- 
 lesque of the historical romance, is little more 
 than a first study for ' Rebecca and Rowena,' 
 and is too long to be as effective as the better- 
 known parodies collected under the title of 
 ' Punch's Prize Novelists.' The ' Journey from 
 Cornhill to Grand Cairo ' is more readable than 
 ' The Irish Sketch-Book,' from the greater 
 variety of the objects which are described, but 
 the author is not so much at home as he was 
 in Dublin or Limerick, and some of the remarks 
 upon scenes which usually call up historical 
 associations are bald and jejune. The splendour 
 of Versailles irritated him, and he is annoyed 
 with the seraglio because it is not magnificent 
 enough. He has nothing more to say of the 
 Pyramids than that they are surrounded by 
 a crowd of dirty ruffians, and when the Sultan 
 passes he tries to comfort himself by reflecting 
 that he must be nearly the most miserable of 
 men. In short, he finds a cause of quarrel 
 with everything that could by any possibility
 
 I BEFORE ' VANITY FAIR ' 6l 
 
 awaken the sentiment of awe, or dazzle the 
 imagination. This was, however, his practice ; 
 but so blinded is he by annoyance, that when 
 other people take to pointing his moral, he 
 does not stop to perceive it. " What a chival- 
 rous absurdity," he writes, " is the banner of 
 some high and mighty prince, hanging over 
 his stall in Windsor Chapel, when you think 
 of the purpose for which men are supposed to 
 assemble there ! The Church of the Knights of 
 St. John is paved over with sprawling heraldic 
 devices of the dead gentlemen of the dead 
 order ; as if in the next world they expected 
 to take rank in uniformity with their pedigrees, 
 and would be marshalled into heaven according 
 to the orders of precedence." The heraldic 
 devices are there for no such purpose. They 
 are there partly to preserve the memory of the 
 dead, as old Mortality re-cut the names on the 
 tombstones of people of lower rank, and partly 
 to point, as they do very effectively, the 
 mutability of human affairs. As to the flags 
 in St. George's Chapel, they are there not only 
 to mark in a more artistic manner than letters 
 can do the seats of the separate knights, but also 
 as a visible sign, that there prince and peasant
 
 ■62 THACKERAY: A STUDY CH. 
 
 alike acknowledge a majesty before which all 
 distinctions are forgotten. 
 
 In a later page, Thackeray gives a very fair 
 sample of one of the ways of looking at life that 
 were to become so familiar in ' The Book of 
 Snobs' and its attendant productions. He is 
 describing the tumble-down condition of sleepy 
 old Rhodes. "A ragged squad of Turkish 
 soldiers lolled about the gate ; a couple of boys 
 on a donkey ; a grinning slave on a mule ; a pair 
 of women flapping along in yellow papooshes ; 
 a basket-maker sitting under an antique carved 
 portal, and chanting or howling as he plaited his 
 osiers ; a peaceful well of water, at which knights' 
 chargers had drunk, and at which the double- 
 boyed donkey was now refreshing himself — 
 would have made a pretty picture for a senti- 
 mental artist. As he sits and endeavours to 
 make a sketch of this plaintive little comedy, a 
 shabby dignitary of the island comes clatteringly 
 by on a thirty-shilling horse, and two or three of 
 the ragged soldiers leave their pipes to salute 
 him as he passes under the Gothic archway." 
 The peculiarity of the passage lies in the fact 
 that he mentions the probable value of the horse, 
 when any other adjective would have done as
 
 I BEFORE ' VANITY FAIR ' 63 
 
 well as the adjective of price. Had he substi- 
 tuted some such expression as ' a broken-down 
 horse,' the romance of the delicate piece of 
 description would have been preserved, and a 
 writer who falls into traps of this kind with 
 facility must have a more than ordinarily keen 
 eye for the commercial aspect of things. But 
 money and its influence upon society was a 
 subject that always had a strange fascination for 
 Thackeray, though never a stronger one than in 
 the years from 1846 to 1848. 
 
 The whole plot of the farcical story of Mr. 
 Jeames de la Pluche turns upon the sudden ac- 
 quisition of a fortune by a footman in love with 
 a housemaid. Of the vulgarity of newly-acquired 
 wealth Thackeray was no doubt cognisant, but 
 it was not till ' Vanity Fair ' that he treated it 
 with the scorn that it deserves. In Mr. Jeames 
 it receives very gentle treatment, and the satire* 
 which throughout the book is never unkindly, 
 only begins to lose its suavity when he comes to 
 write of a genteel poverty that insists upon pre- 
 serving appearances. " Old Lord Bareacres," he 
 tells us, " was as stiff as a poker, as proud as 
 Lucifer, and as poor as Job." The sting of the 
 sentence is in its conclusion, and once we are
 
 64 THACKERAY: A STUDY CH. 
 
 informed that he is not only indigent, but 
 bravely determined not to confess it, we must 
 have little knowledge of Thackeray if we expect 
 Lord Bareacres to find any mercy at his hands. 
 He positively delights in rendering the character 
 contemptible, and it is but fair to say that, using 
 all the license of burlesque, he speedily completes 
 his intention. This is a method of enlisting the 
 reader's sympathy in favour of one's prejudices, 
 which a writer of fiction finds excessively con- 
 venient. If he dislikes the notion of kingship, 
 it is as good as an argument to set Richard I. 
 about the murder of a child.^ If he has no high 
 opinion of journalists, it is easy to have them at 
 a disadvantage by locating them in the Fleet.^ 
 But it is a method which an essayist is debarred 
 from employing, and when a writer is about to 
 give rein to every one of his prejudices, essays 
 or papers are quite the unsafest material in 
 which to embody them. 
 
 It was, therefore, by an artistic mistake so 
 serious as to be remarkable in the author of 
 ' Barry Lyndon,' that Thackeray was induced to 
 put his reflections upon English society into the 
 
 ^ 'Rebecca and Rowena.' 
 2 Captain Shandon in ' Pendennis.'
 
 Jt BEFORE 'VANITY FAIR' 65 
 
 form of * The Book of Snobs.' ' The Book of 
 Snobs ' is only not a failure, because every now 
 and then it is enlivened with anecdotes, and far 
 the most readable part of it is the comparatively 
 lengthy history of Major and Mrs. Ponto. It is 
 not long before the reader is completely weary 
 of the discursive series of papers, and it is diffi- 
 cult to believe that they were much less tiresome 
 as they came out week by week in the pages of 
 < Punch.' It is not merely that there are too 
 many of them ; they have little or no connection 
 with each other, and, as Mr. Trollope has pointed 
 out, the word snob is made to embrace so much, 
 that it loses its precision and interest. It is 
 impossible, it seems, to avoid being a snob, 
 unless one dines upon chops and porter, and 
 marries on nothing a year. But though it is not 
 clear from the book what is a snob, or rather 
 what a snob is not, an instructive catalogue of 
 what was obnoxious to Thackeray could readily 
 be compiled from it. 
 
 He applies the term snob indiscriminately to 
 every person he dislikes, and for this purpose he 
 sweeps together James I., Louis XIV., and the 
 Prince Consort, though there is no other likeness 
 between them than that they were royal ; but
 
 66 THACKERAY: A STUDY CH. 
 
 Thackeray hated the ceremonial of courts. He 
 so despised all forms of pretentiousness that he 
 would have erected a universal palace of truth. 
 If he had had his will, old women would 
 have gone about bald-headed, and his Lady 
 Susan Scrapers would have proclaimed their 
 monetary difficulties aloud. Though there is no- 
 thing to be ashamed of in poverty, people may 
 be pardoned for struggling against a reversal of 
 fortune, and the satirist who thought it was a 
 disgrace that at the Universities rich and poor 
 should be distinguished by their costume, might 
 have had some sympathy with a gentlewoman 
 who, when she lost money, did not at once 
 diminish her state. 
 
 There are many passages, no doubt, in ' The 
 Book of Snobs,' in which the little meannesses 
 of men are ridiculed with temperance and 
 justice, but the whole philosophy of it is wrong. 
 " He who meanly admires mean things," says 
 Thackeray, " is a snob," but that is not how 
 he used the word, nor what it is generally sup- 
 posed to connote. A snob neither admires 
 mean, nor despises great things. He admires 
 and despises the things which he ought to 
 admire and despise, but he admires overmuch.
 
 I BEFORE 'VANITY FAIR' Gj 
 
 and despises without a sense of proportion. It 
 is not in his admiration or contempt, but in 
 their quah'ty, that he is in error, and it would be 
 much more near the truth to say, if the phrase 
 were read with proper Hmitations, that a snob is 
 one who wrongly admires the right things. But 
 it is not easy to define a snob, as the word has 
 acquired an artificially restricted meaning ; and 
 it is obvious that a man might wrongly admire 
 the right things without being snobbish, as the 
 mistaken admiration might arise from ignorance 
 and not from snobbery. A man might con- 
 ceivably admire the Madonna di San Sisto, not 
 on account of its own excellence, but because it 
 reminded him of a much inferior painting. But 
 though this is true, and though it is evident that 
 the class that wrongly admires is wider than the 
 " genus snob," the characteristic of the genus, in 
 so far as it has a characteristic, is an undue and 
 false admiration of certain things quite admir- 
 able in themselves. These things, as the word 
 snob is now used, will all be found to be con- 
 nected in some way or another with the ideas 
 of rank, wealth, dignity, or power. To be mis- 
 taken in one's admiration for this restricted 
 class of objects is to run in danger of snobbery,
 
 68 THACKERAY: A STUDY ch. 
 
 but to safeguard oneself by refusing to admire 
 them at all is to make a graver mistake. There 
 is nothing mean in those ideas, on the contrary, 
 they are the antithesis of what is mean ; and to 
 say that it is snobbish to meanly admire mean 
 things is to shoot very wide of the mark. In 
 this epigram, which depends on an adverb and 
 an adjective, the adverb hardly conveys the 
 right idea, and the epithet is exactly wrong. 
 Rank and wealth have had privileges extended 
 to them in all countries and at all times, and 
 unless the government of mankind has been 
 conducted from the beginning on false prin- 
 ciples, they are no more mean, and they have 
 as much right to evoke their proper share of 
 admiration, as learning, or courage, or any other 
 of those abstract ideas which command habitual 
 respect. "The word snob," writes M. Taine, 
 " does not exist in France, because they have 
 not the thing." This is not the reason of the 
 poverty of the French language in this particular. 
 Wherever there are distinctions of place or 
 wealth, and quite irrespective of the form of 
 government, there will be found many to over- 
 estimate their value. 
 
 To take only two instances : — The same
 
 I BEFORE 'VANITY FAIR' 69 
 
 feeling that, in unworthy excess, prompts a 
 man to be ashamed of being a novus homo, 
 is responsible for the motto " Noblesse oblige," 
 and has made government by oligarchies 
 historically possible. The same feeling, that, 
 disproportioned and absurd, induces us to think 
 poverty dishonourable, awakens us to a sense of 
 the value of those privileges of environment and 
 education, which only money has the power to 
 confer. Snobbery, indeed, is a much more com- 
 plex and a much less humorous affair than 
 Thackeray imagined, and the sudden changes 
 of fortune in families and individuals may be 
 looked at as well from their serious as from 
 their ridiculous side. It is no unusual thing for 
 a man to raise himself in the world, and to 
 become fitted to take his place in a different 
 society from that of his origin. Let him 
 formerly have been a footman, and if he is 
 momentarily flustered at the ill-timed arrival of 
 the washerwoman and the coalheaver, many of 
 the readers of novels will be content to laugh,^ 
 and to label him a snob ; but let him be Car- 
 lyle writing to his future wife that her mother 
 
 ^ ' The Diary of C. Jeames de la Pluche.'
 
 7C THACKERAY: A STUDY CH. 
 
 and his must not meet/ and the sentiment 
 aroused is more akin to tears than to mirth. 
 The critical intelligence of the public has not 
 been slow to seize upon this, and to resent the 
 one-sided aspect from which Thackeray viewed, 
 and the liberty with which he treated, failings 
 that have their root in the necessary conditions 
 of life. And indeed there is something harsh 
 and uncharitable in a book that has nothing 
 else to say of pride, shame, and ambition, but 
 that they are all forms, more or less disguised, 
 of a snobbery that is rampant everywhere. The 
 critic would have cause for anger in the flip- 
 pancy of the attitude, even were the remarks, 
 with this deduction, otherwise fair ; but when 
 he finds their author gravely telling him, that 
 from the institution of civil society, man has felt 
 pride and shame on the wrong occasions, and 
 that the objects of his ambition have always 
 been misplaced, patience is exhausted, and ' The 
 Book of Snobs ' is speedily condemned. 
 
 Once started, however, on an investigation 
 into the faults and foibles of contemporary 
 existence, Thackeray was not a writer to re- 
 
 ^ ' Thomas Carlyle,' by John Nichol. English Men of 
 Letters Series, p. 47.
 
 I BEFORE 'VANITY FAIR' Jl 
 
 linquish it until he had exhausted his invention, 
 and pointed the same moral in a hundred similar 
 ways. ' Mrs. Perkins's Ball,' ' Our Street,' and 
 ' A Little Dinner at Timmins's ' quickly followed 
 each other from the press, and in them the 
 satirist has the immense advantage of being 
 able to make the fictitious snobs whom he 
 assembles together as ridiculous as his fancy 
 desires. They are all nearly entirely narrative, 
 and the author seldom ventures on a reflection ; 
 if he does, he is betrayed into his earlier manner. 
 He has been describing a young man of fashion 
 " who would borrow ten guineas from any man 
 in the room, in the most jovial way possible," 
 and he adds, — " When I see these magnificent 
 dandies yawning out of ' White's ' or caracoling 
 in the Park on shining chargers, I like to think 
 that Brummel was the greatest of them all, and 
 that Brummel's father was a footman." The 
 habits of fops are contemptible, because they 
 can be learnt in a generation. How much better 
 is Horace's simple chronicle of his desires and 
 tastes, — " Persicos odi, puer, apparatus." 
 
 In ' Mrs. Perkins's Ball ' and ' Our Street,' the 
 names of the guests, and the headings of the 
 chapters, are a fair index to their style. There
 
 72 THACKERAY: A STUDY CH. 
 
 is Mrs. Perkins, who entertains beyond her 
 means ; Mr. Minchin, a simpering barrister ; 
 Mr. Flam, a flatterer; Miss Meggot, a neglected 
 spinster; Mr. Winter, a satirist; Miss Toady; 
 and the Lords Methuselah, Billygoat, and Tar- 
 quin : while in ' Our Street ' we have such titles 
 as " The Bungalow," " Captain and Mrs. Bragg," 
 " Levant House Chambers," " Some of the 
 Servants," "The Dove of the Street," "The 
 Bumpshers," and " Somebody whom nobody 
 knows." 
 
 In 'A Little Dinner at Timmins's,' Thackeray, 
 to render the account more graphic, condescended 
 to allow the story of their " somewhat osten- 
 tatious hospitality " to be told by one who had 
 partaken of the feast. So anxious was he to 
 hunt down this particular form of what he called 
 snobbery, that to effect his purpose he was ready 
 to act in a manner which he had been the first 
 to deride.' The ' Little Sketches and Travels 
 in London ' are marred by no fault of this sort, 
 and no better idea could be given of the range 
 of Thackeray's intellect than by comparing them 
 
 ^ Cf. the comment on Lord L.'s travels in ' The Book 
 of Snobs ' (chapter iii., Influence of the Aristocracy on 
 Snobs).
 
 I BEFORE ' VANITY FAIR ' 73 
 
 with ' The Book of Snobs ' and * Mrs. Perkins's 
 Ball.' A man of no great diversity of mind 
 may, at different times, look at the same subject 
 from different points of view ; but it is in the 
 insensible gradations of one particular mood, so 
 difficult to seize upon, and so obvious at once, 
 that the capacity of a really fertile and various 
 writer is most conclusively shown. The ' Travels 
 in London ' point much the same moral as the 
 other books of this period, and they are likewise 
 occupied in satirizing those who pay undue 
 attention to trifles, but the gentle if slightly 
 senile benignity that breathes in their pages 
 gives us a regard for their author, and there are 
 few who have not a warm place somewhere in 
 their hearts for Don Pacifico and Spec.
 
 CHAPTER II 
 
 'VANITY FAIR' 
 
 On the threshold of * Vanity Fair ' the atten- 
 tion of the student is arrested by a work not so 
 remarkable in itself as in its subject and the 
 time selected for its publication. It is a collec- 
 tion of parodies, and bore the title of ' Punch's 
 Prize Novelists,' These sketches have received 
 all the praise which it is possible to bestow on 
 this species of composition. They have been 
 called the best of parodies, and where there 
 were no serious competitors it was easy for a 
 man of Thackeray's eminence to distance what 
 competition there was, but they appeared simul- 
 taneously with the production of his own bid 
 for success. They are characterized by little of 
 the rudeness of the earlier ' Epistle to the 
 Literati,' but he was engaged in satirizing his 
 great contemporaries at the moment when he
 
 CH. II ' VANITY FAIR ' 75 
 
 was clamouring to be admitted of their company. 
 Mr. Arnold combined the functions of poet and 
 critic, and a serious estimate of Tennyson or 
 Browning would have been welcome from his 
 pen, but he never could be induced to refer, 
 except in the conventional language of compli- 
 ment, to any original writer of his time. This 
 was, perhaps, to err on the other side ; but 
 Byron's references to " Wordsworth, Coleridge, 
 Southey," and Shelley's ' Peter Bell the Third,' 
 are blots upon their fame. The one, however, 
 was but an occasional burst of irritation, the 
 other a solitary lapse. But that Thackeray should 
 sit down whenever he was tired of ' Vanity Fair,' 
 to laugh at the other travellers who had brought 
 back different accounts of that city, forms an 
 instructive commentary on his character. 
 
 Of the many-sidedness and perplexity of that 
 character there was further proof to come, but 
 'Vanity Fair' itself gave no added demonstra- 
 tion of it. The book is singularly straightfor- 
 ward. The same attitude is preserved throughout, 
 and that attitude, though severer than, is in 
 all essentials similar to that formerly adopted. 
 There is a greater diversity in the personages 
 of the novel, and more sagacity in the com-
 
 y^ THACKERAY : A STUDY CH. 
 
 mentary which accompanies the record of their 
 doings than is to be found in any of Thackeray's 
 earHer works. But the figures are such as we 
 should have expected him, when concentrat- 
 ing his faculties, to be able to draw, and the 
 sentiments have nothing surprising in them, 
 coming from the author of ' Catherine,' ' The 
 Hoggarty Diamond,' and * The Book of Snobs.' 
 Miss Wirt, the governess of the two Miss 
 Osbornes, was formerly in the service of Major 
 Ponto ; Dobbin's fight at Slaughter House 
 School is a repetition of Mr. Frank Berry's ; 
 Deuceace, Viscount Cinqbars,and Lord Bareacres 
 flit about in the background, and just as the 
 mother of the heroine of * The Ravenswing' 
 was a ballet-dancer, so Mrs. Sharp is an opera- 
 girl. These are not merely superficial resem- 
 blances, but there are others that are still more 
 striking. " The richly - dressed figure of the 
 wicked nobleman " is merely a compound of all 
 those vices which Thackeray had for long 
 pointed out as appertaining especially to the 
 aristocracy. Dennis Haggarty's devotion to a 
 woman unworthy of him gave a hint for Dobbin's ; 
 Rawdon Crawley has not the ability of Redmond 
 Barry or of Deuceace, but he has as many of
 
 " 'VANITY fair' yy 
 
 their vices as were compatible with his stupidity ; 
 Amelia gave scope for an elaborate study of 
 the virtues of Mary Titmarsh and Caroline 
 Gann ; while it is easy to see that Becky is a 
 cleverer Catherine Hayes, moving in a higher 
 rank of society, and amid less melodramatic 
 surroundings. Mr. Sedley in his misfortunes, 
 and Mr. Osborne in his prosperity, are both 
 indebted to the earlier portraiture of the oil- 
 merchant in ' A Shabby Genteel Story ' ; the 
 feelings entertained for Caroline by the Misses 
 Macarthy, and those that characterize the re- 
 lations of George Osborne's sisters with his 
 fiancee, are the same with a difference ; while 
 Sir Pitt has as much bluster as Sir George 
 Tufto, and more vulgar arrogance than Lord 
 Crabs. 
 
 The origins of George Osborne, Pitt Crawley, 
 and Miss Briggs, it is true, are not so easily 
 traceable ; and though Miss Hoggarty's money 
 had been an object of much solicitude to Mr. 
 Brough, she has no other likeness to Miss 
 Crawley. Major O'Dowd and his wife, and the 
 admirably drawn Jos Sedley, are also original. 
 But though these figures give variety to the 
 canvas, and we are forced to confess that wc
 
 78 THACKERAY: A STUDY CH. 
 
 do not recognize them, they all have a family- 
 likeness to the people whom we already knew, 
 and take their places naturally by their sides. 
 Nor is the treatment accorded to these characters 
 unfamiliar. The sub-title of the book is ' A 
 Novel without a Hero,' a phrase that, effective 
 as it is, fails to express the meaning of the 
 author. There was nothing to necessitate a 
 flourish in the absence of a hero. Shakespeare 
 wrote plays without a hero : — the interest of one 
 is centred in Lady Macbeth, and in ' Twelfth 
 Night' it is Olivia and Viola who arrest our 
 attention ; while ' The Blithedale Romance ' 
 subordinates Miles Coverdale and Hollingsworth 
 to the more commanding personality of Zenobia. 
 Rebecca Sharp takes up as much of the space 
 of ' Vanity Fair ' as is usually allocated to a 
 heroine, and there was nothing remarkable in 
 giving to a woman the chief position in a tale. 
 The characteristic of ' Vanity Fair ' is not that 
 it has no hero, but that there is nothing heroic 
 in it, and this it is that differentiates the novel 
 from the works of other writers, and supplies 
 the real reason of its effect upon the public. 
 But this, for Thackeray, was not a new departure ; 
 on the contrary, it is this that furnishes the
 
 " 'VANITY fair' 79 
 
 distinct peculiarity of all his earlier tales. 
 ' Vanity Fair ' came with the novelty of a new 
 sensation, only because they were so little read. 
 But the book itself is the best justification of its 
 success. 
 
 In some ways it is the most striking thing 
 that Thackeray ever did. He never surpassed 
 it for quiet observation of character, and for the 
 skill with which he has contrived to make the 
 most unreal and fantastic of its personages 
 appear to live. But it is hard, one-sided, and 
 the peculiarity which made it famous is the most 
 marked of its defects. It has been said that it 
 is an actual transcript from life, but the 'Mid- 
 summer Night's Dream ' is more near to reality. 
 While we read the book, so great is its fasci- 
 nation, we can almost believe it to be true, but 
 as soon as we lay it down, the narrative begins 
 to assume its true form for us, and we see it as 
 it is, from the beginning to the end " one entire 
 impossibility." It is not that the characters are 
 impossible, though some of them are impossible 
 enough. It is not that no woman was ever 
 simply a calculating machine, it is not that no 
 man was ever merely sanctimonious, it is not 
 that no baronet was ever a brutal bully and
 
 80 THACKERAY: A STUDY CH. 
 
 nothing more, or a peer ever wholly profligate, 
 or a merchant ever made up only of vulgarity 
 and rage, because such people have on rare 
 occasions existed, and may by possibility again. 
 It is not in this that the impossibility consists, 
 but such a collection was never got together 
 in one corner of the world. There are two 
 good people in the book, — Dobbin, who is a 
 simpleton, and Amelia, who is a fool. But 
 these are not the only virtuous inhabitants of 
 the Vanity Fair in which we live. If it were 
 otherwise, if there were no other virtuous inhabit- 
 ants, a man walking through it would not only 
 " not be oppressed by his own or other people's 
 hilarity," but he would decline, and very properly 
 decline, to walk through it at all. If life were 
 as Thackeray depicts it in ' Vanity Fair,' not 
 only would the earth be more sparsely populated 
 than it is, but it would have been impossible for 
 true virtue ever to have manifested itself. Virtue 
 being the product of precept and example, Scott 
 could not have lived, nor the qualities of the 
 Vicar of Wakefield had opportunity to develop. 
 Had the world been peopled with Neros, there 
 would have been no room for Seneca, and were 
 every one a Crawley or a Sharp, Esmond's self-
 
 " 'VANITY FAIR' 8l 
 
 sacrifice or Colonel Newcomc's heroism would 
 never have been understood. 
 
 In ' The Memoirs of Barry Lyndon ' the 
 company is worse than in ' Vanity Fair,' and 
 * The Memoirs of Barry Lyndon ' is a triumph 
 of art but it would have been far from a triumph 
 if we had been asked to take the company there 
 assembled as a fair representation of society. 
 We should have rejected it at once as an 
 imposture, whereas the falsehood underlying 
 'Vanity Fair' is only apparent — and it is a 
 tribute to Thackeray's power — after a careful 
 perusal of the work. But when this fact is 
 allowed, when we turn to look at ' Vanity Fair ' 
 not as a portrait, not even as a caricature of 
 society, but as a brilliant painting of a section 
 of it, there remains much that is admirable. It 
 is almost as difficult to draw a woman without 
 a heart as a woman without a soul, and the 
 latter has not yet been seriously attempted. 
 Mr. Benson's Dodo is an ingenious and clever 
 study of such a character, but it is only necessary 
 to compare his method with Thackeray's to see 
 why he has failed, and how much he has under- 
 rated the gravity of the task. Thackeray devotes 
 
 all his resources to the creation of Becky Sharp. 
 
 G
 
 82 THACKERAY: A STUDY ^^h. 
 
 He was well aware how long a course of 
 observation had to be undertaken before even 
 the broad lines of such a figure could be accur- 
 ately sketched. And it is this that makes him 
 watch Becky with a solicitude that might deceive 
 the reader into imagining that her creator could 
 not resist occasionally admiring her cleverness 
 and resource. He calls her " darling," it is true ; 
 but the epithet is always abusive, never laudatory, 
 and though in a sense she is the darling of his 
 eye, it is only that he knew that, if he was for a 
 moment to lose sight of her, her interest for the 
 reader could not have been sustained. She is 
 hardly ever absent from the stage, and her 
 introduction is so bold that Mr. Trollope thought 
 it must have slipped in by mistake. " No school- 
 girl," he writes, " who ever lived would have 
 thrown back her gift-book as Rebecca did the 
 ' dixonary ' out of the carriage-window as she 
 was taken away from school." The error is 
 comprehensible, even in so acute a critic, but 
 the facts are quite the other way. No woman 
 so selfish and calculating as Becky afterwards 
 became could have failed to make mistakes of 
 temper and forwardness in her youth. It was 
 natural that she should speak French to Miss
 
 II 'VANITY fair' 83 
 
 Pinkerton, who could not understand it, and 
 bestow on Jos Sedley " ever so gentle a pressure 
 with her hand." " The latter," says Thackeray, 
 " was an advance, and as such, perhaps, some 
 ladies of indisputable correctness and gentility 
 will condemn the action as immodest ; but, you 
 see, poor dear Rebecca had all this work to do 
 for herself. If a person is too poor to keep a 
 servant, though ever so elegant, he must sweep 
 his own rooms ; if a dear girl has no dear 
 Mamma to settle with the young man, she must 
 do it for herself." And it was equally natural 
 that when elated by her marriage with the son 
 of a baronet, she should forget her manners, and 
 speak rudely to George Osborne. "What an 
 honour," she says to him, " to have had you for 
 a brother-in-law, you are thinking ? To be 
 sister-in-law to George Osborne, Esquire, son of 
 John Osborne, Esquire, son of — what was your 
 grandpapa, Mr. Osborne.-'" 
 
 Her second appearance as Clytemnestra is, 
 however, less to be defended. She had by that 
 time acquired too much experience to risk, even 
 when driven to bay, poisoning Jos Sedley ; but 
 the incident is improbable, not impossible, and 
 the same artist who leaves a lingering suspicion
 
 84 THACKERAY: A STUDY CH. 
 
 that Lord Steyne may, at the last moment, 
 have been baulked of his prey, refrains from 
 deliberately accusing her of murder. The intro- 
 duction of Sir Pitt Crawley, on the other hand, 
 is caricature, and Mr. Trollope is justified in 
 supposing that it must have been written before 
 any of the other members of the Crawley family 
 had been conceived. And what a family it is ; 
 a selfish old woman who has money, a dissolute 
 clergyman, a hypocritical diplomatist, and a 
 dissipated bully. But they all manage to pre- 
 serve some relation to humanity, and their 
 actions and sentiments are for the most part 
 chronicled with a strange fidelity to life. 
 
 " ' Shut up your sarmons, Pitt, when Miss 
 Crawley comes down,' said his father. ' She 
 has written to say that she won't stand the 
 preachifying.' 
 
 " ' O sir, consider the servants.' 
 
 " ' The servants be hanged,' said Sir Pitt ; and 
 his son thought even worse would happen were 
 they deprived of the benefit of his instruction. 
 
 " ' Why, hang it, Pitt ! ' said the father to his 
 remonstrance, ' you wouldn't be such a flat 
 as to let three thousand a year go out of the 
 family.'
 
 II 'VANITY FAIR' 85 
 
 " ' What is money compared to our souls, sir ?' 
 continued Mr. Crawley. 
 
 " * You mean that the old lady won't leave the 
 money to you ? ' And who knows but it was 
 Mr, Crawley's meaning." 
 
 For Rawdon Crawley it is difficult to under- 
 stand Thackeray's admiration. He calls him 
 " honest Rawdon," with real fondness in his 
 voice, and seems to pity him for his connection 
 with his wife. But the man was a drunkard 
 and a cheat long before Becky had anything 
 to do with him ; and we are left to supply the 
 occasion of the duel which ended disastrously 
 for Captain Marker. Duelling days were nearly 
 over then, and it is as likely as not that Captain 
 Marker had some serious cause for offence. 
 That Rawdon should experience a passion for 
 a fascinating governess was nothing particularly 
 meritorious. He did not expect to lose money 
 by it, and when he discovered that he had, even 
 he had sense enough to perceive that he owed 
 something to the woman who alone was able to 
 keep him above water. Besides, the money was 
 never really his, and he was too stupid to appre- 
 ciate the excellence of his chance. That he 
 should beat an old man who had been intriguing
 
 86 THACKERAY: A STUDY CH. 
 
 with his wife so openly that every one but he 
 had seen it long before, was no more praise- 
 worthy than the resentment of a. thief when his 
 own property is stolen. It is true that there 
 was a pitch of baseness to which he could not 
 bring himself to descend, and he returned the 
 price of Becky's dishonour to Lord Steyne ; 
 but he sulkily accepted from the same noble- 
 man the considerable income of a sinecure 
 which he could easily have refused, and for the 
 slight duties of which he was totally unfit. All 
 this was natural enough, but it was no subject 
 for admiration ; and though it was human of 
 him to be fond of his son, there was as much 
 merit in the maudlin tears of Redmond Barry, 
 or the pleasure Catherine took in the fine clothes 
 of the adopted son of Mr. Hayes. 
 
 It is one thing to treat vice with charity, and 
 quite another to speak of its professors with 
 affection. The same book that spoke of 
 " honest Rawdon " could hardly contain a 
 character that would ensure our respect. 
 Amelia fails even to enlist our sympathy. In 
 prosperity she is childish, in adversity she 
 becomes petted and wilful, and Mr. Senior has 
 pointed out that her reluctance to part with
 
 II ' VANITY FAIR ' 8/ 
 
 her boy is due wholly to a desire that they 
 should not be separated, not to any fear of 
 the prejudicial results for him that might arise 
 from acquaintance with the Osbornes. She is 
 passionately devoted during his life to George 
 Osborne, who half despises her, and after his 
 death she cherishes a romantic attachment to 
 his memory. To Amelia Sedley, however, a 
 large portion of the book is devoted, and it 
 is not to be supposed that she should not 
 occasionally be betrayed into animation. 
 Thackeray's purpose in delineating this charac- 
 ter was twofold ; he introduced her first as 
 an example of the negative virtues, and after- 
 wards continued the study of her disposition 
 as a foil to that of Becky. He maintains an 
 unswerving determination to keep her as we 
 first met her, a timid, expansive school-girl, 
 with a fund of maudlin sensibility dangerously 
 apt to develop into selfishness. Again and 
 again, in her passages with Dobbin, Thackeray 
 resists the temptation to endow her with a 
 heart, and where one would have expected 
 from the most long-suffering, righteous anger, 
 or an outburst of wronged and passionate love, 
 we find only sobs and protestations, and a page
 
 88 THACKERAY: A STUDY CH. 
 
 of sentimental reflection. Once or twice she 
 finds her lot too hard, and becomes peevishly 
 unreasonable, as in the scene with Mrs. Sedley 
 and the baby's medicine, or flings out into a 
 momentary burst of irritation. But these pas- 
 sages are for the most part calculated, and 
 have a touch of artifice. They serve to vary 
 the monotony of her characterless virtue, but 
 they give a laboured effect to the portrait. 
 Once only Nature takes the pen from his hand, 
 and allows us to have a peep at the heart of 
 this too real Cinderella. It is the morning 
 after the Duchess of Richmond's ball, when 
 the English officers have left for Waterloo. 
 At the ball Becky (Mrs. Crawley) has con- 
 cluded her long and successful siege of Amelia's 
 husband. Captain Osborne. Mrs. Crawley bears 
 the absence of " honest Rawdon " lightly, and 
 calls upon Amelia to condole with her on her 
 anxiety : — 
 
 " After the first movement of terror in 
 Amelia's mind — when Rebecca's green eyes 
 lighted upon her, and rustling in her fresh silks 
 and brilliant ornaments, the latter tripped up 
 with extended arms to embrace her — a feeling 
 of anger succeeded, and from being deadly pale
 
 II 'VANITY FAIR' 89 
 
 before, her face flushed up red, and she returned 
 Rebecca's look after a moment with a steadiness 
 which surprised and somewhat abashed her 
 rival. 
 
 " ' Dearest Amelia, you are very unwell,' the 
 visitor said, putting forth her hand to take 
 Amelia's. ' What is it .-' I could not rest until 
 I knew how you were.' 
 
 "Amelia drew back her hand — never since 
 her life began had that gentle soul refused to 
 believe or to answer any demonstration of 
 goodwill or affection. But she drew back her 
 hand and trembled all over. 'Why are yoii 
 here, Rebecca t ' she said, still looking at her 
 solemnly with her large eyes. These glances 
 troubled her visitor. 
 
 " ' She must have seen him give me the letter 
 at the ball,' Rebecca thought. ' Don't be agi- 
 tated, dear Amelia,' she said, looking down. ' I 
 came but to see if I could — if you were well.' 
 
 " ' Are you well .■* ' said Amelia. ' I dare say 
 you are. You don't love your husband. You 
 would not be here if you did. Tell me, Rebecca, 
 did I ever do you anything but kindness } ' 
 
 '"Indeed, Amelia, no,' the other said, still 
 hanging down her head.
 
 90 THACKERAY : A STUDY CH. 
 
 " ' When you were quite poor, who was it that 
 befriended you ? Was I not a sister to you ? 
 You saw us all in happier days before he 
 married me. I was all in all then to him ; or 
 would he have given up his fortune, his family, 
 as he nobly did to make me happy ? Why did 
 you come between my love and me ? Who sent 
 you to separate those whom God joined, and 
 take my darling's heart from me — my own 
 husband ? Do you think you could love him as 
 I did ? His love was everything to me. You 
 knew it, and wanted to rob me of it. For 
 shame, Rebecca ; bad and wicked woman — false 
 friend and false wife.' 
 
 " ' Amelia, I protest before God, I have done 
 my husband no wrong,' Rebecca said, turning 
 from her. 
 
 " ' Have you done inc no wrong, Rebecca } 
 You did not succeed, but you tried. Ask your 
 heart if you did not .'* ' 
 
 " She knows nothing, Rebecca thought. 
 
 " ' He came back to me. I knew he would. I 
 knew that no falsehood, no flattery, could keep 
 him from me long. I knew he would come. I 
 prayed so that he should.' 
 
 " The poor girl spoke these words with a spirit
 
 u ' VANITY FAIR ' 9 1 
 
 and volubility which Rebecca had never before 
 seen in her, and before which the latter was 
 quite dumb. ' But what have I done to you,' 
 she continued in a more pitiful tone, * that you 
 should try and take him from me ? I had him 
 but for six weeks. You might have spared me 
 those, Rebecca. And yet, from the very first 
 day of our wedding, you came and blighted it. 
 Now he is gone, are you come to see how un- 
 happy I am .'' ' she continued. ' You made me 
 wretched enough for the past fortnight : you 
 might have spared me to-day.' 
 
 "' I — I never came here,' interposed Rebecca, 
 with unlucky truth. 
 
 " ' No. You didn't come. You took him 
 away. Are you come to fetch him from me ? ' 
 she continued in a wilder tone. ' He was here, 
 but he is gone now. There on that very sofa 
 he sate. Don't touch it. We sate and talked 
 there. I was on his knee, and my arms were 
 round his neck, and we said " Our Father." 
 Yes, he was here : and they came and took him 
 away, but he promised me to come back.' 
 
 " * He will come back, my dear,' said Rebecca, 
 touched in spite of herself. 
 
 " ' Look,' said Amelia, ' this is his sash — isn't
 
 92 THACKERAY: A STUDY CH. 
 
 it a pretty colour ? ' and she took up the fringe 
 and kissed it. She had tied it round her waist 
 at some part of the day. She had forgotten her 
 anger, her jealousy, the very presence of her 
 rival seemingly. For she walked silently, and 
 almost with a smile on her face, towards the 
 bed, and began to smooth down George's 
 pillow. 
 
 " Rebecca walked, too, silently away. ' How 
 is Amelia } ' asked Jos, who still held his position 
 in the chair. 
 
 " ' There should be somebody with her,' said 
 Rebecca. * I think she is very unwell ' : and she 
 went away with a very grave face, refusing Mr. 
 Sedley's entreaties that she would stay and 
 partake of the early dinner which he had 
 ordered." 
 
 But Amelia never again rises to this height of 
 womanly indignation, and she sinks back into 
 the spiritless creature whom the worthy and 
 clumsy Dobbin was content to pursue. His 
 devotion is disinterested and noble, but it is 
 expended on so poor an object that it lessens 
 him in our esteem. She was no "dear lady 
 Disdain," whose waywardness increased her 
 attraction, and it is natural and fitting that her
 
 " ' VANITY FAIR ' 93 
 
 knight-errant should be as uninteresting as 
 herself. 
 
 Thackeray might have gauged the effect 
 Amelia would have upon the public from the 
 fate he prescribes for Dobbin. Like her, he is a 
 compound of all the negative virtues, though he 
 has a warmer heart, and is, as all soldier-heroes, 
 necessarily courageous. But she prefers the 
 memory of her first husband, who, if he had few 
 virtues, had just enough character to commit 
 occasional and ineffectual sins. His approbation 
 was perhaps also the more precious as she was 
 conscious of having partially lost it. As to 
 Dobbin's affection, it was to be had long before 
 it was asked, and always at her command. He 
 is so formally precise that he cannot even 
 blunder into his own happiness, and it is by a 
 subtle touch of irony that he is made to win 
 Amelia at length, not because her sentiments 
 towards him are altered, but because she has 
 discovered that her first husband was unfaithful. 
 " This is what he has asked for every day and 
 hour for eighteen years. This is what he pined 
 after. Here it is — the summit, the end — the last 
 page of the third volume." Well might Thack- 
 eray conclude his book with the melancholy
 
 94 THACKERAY: A STUDY CH. 
 
 ' question, " Ah, Vanitas Vanitatum ! which of us 
 has his desire ? or having it is satisfied ? " 
 
 A satirist speaking in this tone, and offering 
 at the same time to the world so extended a 
 gallery of portraits, was bound, however, to 
 secure attention, and the success of ' Vanity 
 Fair,' though not immediate, was very great. 
 But the influence of what Carlyle has called 
 " the poison of popular applause " is not always 
 beneficial, and as often as not has proved the 
 ruin of a writer. Those who have long listened 
 for it in vain are too apt to be intoxicated with 
 it when it comes. Thackeray had waited ten 
 years for it, but when it came it was of ines- 
 timable service to his nature. Like Byron, he 
 woke one morning to find himself famous, but 
 he also, like Rip van Winkle, awoke to discover 
 that he was a hundred years older than when he 
 fell asleep ; — so great is the gap that lies between 
 the sober observation and large humanity of ' Pen- 
 dennis ' and the brilliant satire and character- 
 drawing of ' Vanity Fair.' Under the rays of a 
 steady sun of popularity, the seeds of latent 
 and unsuspected qualities in him began to grow. 
 Once sure of his public, he far less often was 
 betrayed into those faults of over-statement and
 
 Ji ' VANITY FAIR ' 95 
 
 exaggeration of manner with which he had 
 caught its ear. He had played the satirist to 
 good effect in ' Vanity Fair,' but after all it was a 
 game ; and as much satire as was really genuine 
 to Thackeray is to be found in ' Pendennis,' 
 * Esmond,' and ' The Newcomes.' Two trifles 
 of this period serve sufficiently to mark the 
 change. In ' Mr. Brown's Letters to his 
 Nephew,' the garrulous old man, " full of wise 
 saws and modern instances," has always a kind 
 word for the follies from which he warns the 
 younger, and a fellow-feeling for the youthful 
 indiscretions which he knows well his corre- 
 spondent will commit. In * Dr. Birch and 
 his young Friends ' we have the spectacle of 
 an author, always determined to see sermons 
 in stones, if not good in everything, coping suc- 
 cessfully with the difficulties of an unromantic 
 subject. Childhood is pretty when it is kept 
 in the place of childhood, and bears its proper 
 relation to age. There is no lovelier couple 
 than a mother and a child, nothing pleasanter 
 to contemplate than a father's love for his 
 boy. But when children are placed in un- 
 natural situations, they lose all the qualities 
 which induce us to care for them. A boardine-
 
 96 THACKERAY: A STUDY CH. 
 
 school, however useful for hardening the char- 
 acter, in an age when most have to " fend for 
 themselves," contains of necessity conditions that 
 are quite out of the course of nature. It is there 
 that we see youths with all the exaggerated 
 sense of individuality characteristic of the begin- 
 ning period of life, aping the conduct, and 
 assuming the attitudes, of middle-aged men. 
 As a result we have there independence without 
 restraint, and selfishness unrelieved by any 
 knowledge of our comparative unimportance 
 to others. 
 
 Boys, moreover, however high an opinion 
 they may have of themselves, are seldom re- 
 markable for self-respect, and they will pay a 
 far higher price than grown-up people for 
 immunity from ill-usage, and for their own 
 personal security. To ingratiate themselves 
 with the powerful, the weak will take sides 
 against the weak. Hence it is that the strong, 
 who are not ashamed to use their strength, are 
 always secure of a servile following, and that, 
 at school, to be unpopular is to lose every 
 friend. These things happen of necessity where 
 both body and spirit are timid and unformed, 
 but they are not pleasant to look back upon,
 
 " 'VANiTV fair' 97 
 
 and English authors, writing for an English 
 
 public, have found them convenient to forget. 
 
 For these reasons alone it would be idle to 
 
 expect that an accurate or serious portrait of 
 
 school-boy life should ever be drawn, but there 
 
 are others equally powerful that help to obscure 
 
 the past, and it is the lot of many to come to 
 
 look back upon it from the troubles and distress 
 
 of life as a vague but glorious period, or to 
 
 suppose that the actions which they but dimly 
 
 remember were prompted by the same feelings 
 
 which, in similar circumstances, would have 
 
 actuated them in manhood or in age. Canon 
 
 Farrar's ' Eric ' is the product of pne of these 
 
 ideas, * Tom Brown's School-days ' of the other. 
 
 Eric is a sentimental impossibility, and Tom 
 
 Brown is merely an average middle-aged Briton, 
 
 with a better appetite, and a greater interest 
 
 in football. In a field of this kind, Thackeray's 
 
 triumph with his little comedy is the more 
 
 unique. He glosses over nothing, and his boys 
 
 are no older than their years, but the portrait 
 
 drawn is not repellent, and if while reading it 
 
 we regret, we also understand, the follies and 
 
 the vices of our youth. He watches and 
 
 comments on the little fortunes of his human 
 
 H
 
 98 THACKERAY : A STUDY CH. ii 
 
 beings in miniature with a perception which 
 is never at fault, and with a wisdom that is 
 always bland. 
 
 Come wealth or want, come good or ill, 
 Let young and old accept their part, 
 And bow before the awful Will, 
 And bear it with an honest heart. 
 Who misses, or who wins the prize ? 
 Go lose or conquer as you can : 
 But if you fail or if you rise. 
 Be each, pray God, a gentleman.
 
 CHAPTER III 
 
 *PENDENNIS' AND AFTER 
 
 ' The History of Pendennis,' the work that 
 immediately succeeded ' Vanity Fair/ both from 
 its importance and from its unlikeness to any- 
 thing Thackeray had done before, demands 
 a close inspection. In his shorter efforts, 
 whatever we may think of them, however good 
 or bad they individually may be, the story 
 was always constructed with care, and led for 
 the most part naturally enough to the con- 
 clusion. Even in ' Vanity Fair ' it was essential 
 that Becky should rise before she could fall. 
 Her rise might have been brought about by 
 other means, no doubt, and much of the em- 
 broidery of the novel is unnecessary to the plot. 
 There is little that must have happened or that 
 is inevitable in ' Vanity Fair,' but at least it has 
 a central idea. * Pendennis,' on the other hand,
 
 lOO THACKERAY: A STUDY CH. 
 
 may be said with safety to have no story at all. 
 It is so carelessly constructed that the incidents 
 of Fanny and Miss Costigan are practically 
 identical, and the opening scene is so abrupt 
 that it requires, and receives, seventy pages of 
 elucidation. ' Pendennis,' besides, is a satirical 
 work. It is satire all through, and serious 
 satire, and whenever before Thackeray had 
 written satire seriously, his accent had been 
 harsh. But it would be difficult to imagine an 
 urbanity more undisturbed than belongs to the 
 satirist of ' Pendennis,' and there is no kindlier 
 combination of observation and wit in the 
 language, than is contained in the first volume 
 of the novel. 
 
 In his preface he sets out accurately the object 
 of the book. " It is an attempt to describe one 
 of the gentlemen of our age, one no better nor 
 worse than most educated men " ; and again, 
 " A little more frankness than is customary has 
 been attempted in this story ; with no bad 
 desire on the writer's part, it is hoped, and with 
 no ill consequence to any reader. . . . Truth 
 is best, from whatever chair." It is odd, how- 
 ever, to find an author so gravely unconscious 
 of his own inconsistency. It was just two years
 
 "I 'PENDENNIS' AND AFTER lOI 
 
 before that 'Vanity Fair' had been ushered 
 into the world as also a fair representation of 
 society. Two pictures so dissimilar could not 
 both be true, and the author of ' Pendennis,' one 
 would have thought, must have been alive to 
 the shortcomings of his earlier book. But to 
 make any such supposition would be to mis- 
 understand the character of Thackeray. His 
 manner of writing was desultory, and he was 
 always ready to give rein to whatever mood was 
 uppermost. He rarely formed any conception 
 of a book before he had finished it, and never 
 took the trouble to think about the canons of 
 his art. He stumbled on right methods, just as 
 he floundered into mistakes. After ' Pendennis,' 
 he was capable of writing ' The Kickleburys on 
 the Rhine ' ; after ' Esmond,' ' The Wolves and 
 the Lamb ' ; and after * The Newcomes,' of 
 serving that little drama up again in the form 
 of ' Lovel the Widower.' It is no matter of 
 surprise, therefore, that the author of ' Catherine ' 
 should tell us in the preface to ' Pendennis ' that 
 the manners of ruffians and gaol-birds were to 
 him quite unfamiliar, whereas it would be more 
 true to say that * Pendennis ' was his first con- 
 siderable story in which there were not more
 
 102 THACKERAY: A STUDY CH. 
 
 than plenty of them. The nearest approach to 
 a ruffian in the book is John Armstrong Amory 
 Altamont, and he, as if to make the statement 
 in the preface good, is not merely a badly-drawn 
 character, but goes off, like the villain in a fairy 
 tale, in pantomimic smoke. There are other 
 characters, however, that are by no means 
 amiable. Sir Francis Clavering is so despicable 
 in his weakness and wickedness, that it is only 
 by the skill with which he is portrayed that he 
 becomes sufficiently human to serve his purpose 
 in the story ; and it would be hard to find any- 
 thing besides her " sensibility " to recommend 
 Blanche Amory to our affection. 
 
 But ' Pendennis ' is not made up of these 
 characters ; and from Alcide Mirobolant, the 
 miraculous French cook, to the Prince of Fair- 
 oaks himself, from Madame Fribsby to Laura 
 Bell, there is hardly one of them who does not 
 say or do something for which the reader would 
 wish to shake them by what he is fain to believe 
 are their substantial hands. They are no com- 
 pounds of vices "that come like shadows," no 
 puppets that dance before the booths of Vanity 
 Fair as the showman cries his sermon, but real 
 living men and women, and nothing would sur-
 
 ni 'PENDENNIS' AND AFTER 103 
 
 prise us less than to see Major Pendennis eyeing 
 us from a club window as we walked down Pall 
 Mall, or to have to listen after lunch to Lady 
 Clavering's interminable troubles. Even the 
 old apothecary, Arthur's father, looks out from 
 the pages a staid and familiar little figure : — 
 
 " The old man never spoke about the shop 
 himself, never alluded to it ; called in the 
 medical practitioner of Clavering to attend his 
 family ; sunk the black breeches and stockings 
 altogether; attended markets and sessions, and 
 wore a bottle-green coat and brass buttons with 
 drab gaiters, just as if he had been an English 
 gentleman all his life. He used to stand at his 
 lodge gate, and see the coaches come in, and 
 bow gravely to the guards and coachmen as 
 they touched their hats and drove by. It was 
 he who founded the Clavering book club ; and 
 set up the Samaritan soup and blanket society. 
 It was he who brought the mail, which used to 
 run through Cacklefield before, away from that 
 village and through Clavering. At church he 
 was equally active as a vestryman and wor- 
 shipper. At market, every Thursday, he went 
 from pen to stall ; looked at samples of oats 
 and munched corn ; felt beasts, punched geese
 
 104 THACKERAY : A STUDY CH. 
 
 in the breast, and weighed them with a knowing 
 air ; and did business with the farmers of the 
 Clavering Arms, as well as the oldest frequenter 
 of that house of call. It was now his shame, 
 as it formerly was his pride, to be called doctor, 
 and those who wished to please him always 
 gave him the title of Squire. 
 
 " Heaven knows where they came from, but 
 a whole range of Pendennis portraits presently 
 hung round the Doctor's oak dining-room ; 
 Lelys and Vandykes he vowed all the portraits 
 to be, and when questioned as to the history 
 of the originals, would vaguely say they were 
 'ancestors of his.' His little boy believed in 
 them to their fullest extent, and Roger Pen- 
 dennis of Agincourt, Arthur Pendennis of Crecy, 
 General Pendennis of Blenheim and Oudenarde, 
 were as real and actual beings for this young 
 gentleman as — whom shall we say ? — as Robin- 
 son Crusoe, or Peter Wilkins, or the Seven 
 Champions of Christendom, whose histories 
 were in his library," 
 
 This is satire certainly, but how different in 
 tone from the cruel comments on the shifts of 
 Becky, or the rough jeer that assailed the house- 
 hold of the Pontos. In 'Vanity Fair' the Mar-
 
 Ill 'PENDENNIS' AND AFTER IO5 
 
 quis of Steyne is represented without a single 
 virtue to balance his "thousand crimes." In 
 ' Pendennis ' Thackeray utilized his previous and 
 bald creation to complete a stroke of consum- 
 mate art. Major Pendennis, Arthur's bachelor 
 uncle, we learn in the novel itself, is a man of 
 the world whose emotions arc not easily aroused. 
 The Marquis of Steyne those who had read 
 'Vanity Fair' knew to be cold and heartless to 
 a degree. 
 
 " The next day Major Pendennis was going 
 out shooting, about noon, with some of the 
 gentlemen staying at Lord Steyne's house ; and 
 the company, waiting for the carriages, were 
 assembled on the terrace in front of the house, 
 when a fly drove up from the neighbouring 
 station, and a grey-headed, rather shabby old 
 gentleman, jumped out, and asked for Major 
 Pendennis. It was Mr. Bows. He took the 
 Major aside and spoke to him ; most of the 
 gentlemen round about saw that something 
 serious had happened, from the alarmed look 
 of the Major's face. 
 
 *' Wagg said, ' It's a bailiff come down to 
 nab the Major ' ; but nobody laughed at the 
 pleasantry.
 
 I06 THACKERAY: A STUDY CH. 
 
 " ' Hullo ! What's the matter, Pendennis ? ' 
 cried Lord Steyne, with his strident voice. 
 ' Anything wrong ? ' 
 
 " ' It's — it's — my boy that's deadl said the 
 Major, and burst into a sob — the old man was 
 quite overcome. 
 
 " ' Not dead, my lord ; but very ill when I 
 left London,' Mr. Bows said, in a low voice. 
 
 " A britzska came up at this moment as the 
 three men were speaking. The Peer looked at 
 his watch. ' You've twenty minutes to catch 
 the mail train. Jump in, Pendennis ; and drive 
 like h , sir, do you hear?' 
 
 " The carriage drove off swiftly with Pen- 
 dennis and his companions, and let us trust 
 that the oath will be pardoned to the Marquis 
 of Steyne." 
 
 The long episode of the Costigans is told 
 with equal truth, and in its charming pendant, 
 the love of the curate for Arthur's mother, the 
 irony is so delicate that we laugh at Arthur 
 before we perceive that we are laughing at 
 ourselves. 
 
 Arthur Pendennis, the son of the old apothe- 
 cary and the nephew of the Major, is the 
 character round which the various incidents of
 
 "I 'PENDENNIS' AND AFTER 10/ 
 
 the novel group themselves with a kind of 
 happy ease. He merely slips through the 
 world in an accidental way, but though his 
 adventures are without interest, the character is 
 drawn with such fidelity to life, and his relations 
 with his mother, and half sister, half love, Laura 
 Bell, are so natural and pleasing, that he fills 
 the part of hero to perfection, and if the story 
 is too long, it is not when we are reading about 
 Arthur that we think it so. His career at the 
 University is not distinguished ; he spends his 
 time with acquaintances who can afford to waste 
 theirs, and the result for a poor man is suffi- 
 ciently serious. " The lists came out," says 
 Thackeray, " and a dreadful rumour ran through 
 the University that Pendennis of Boniface was 
 plucked." The element of caricature in this 
 Pendennis of course was not the first to see, 
 and he spends some time as the knight of the 
 rueful countenance at his mother's cottage of 
 Fairoaks ; but his spirits rise with the appear- 
 ance on the scene of Miss Blanche Amory, the 
 step-daughter of Sir Francis Clavering of Clav- 
 ering Hall, and he divides his attention between 
 paying court to her, and patronizing Laura, 
 whom it is his mother's wish that he should
 
 I08 THACKERAY : A STUDY CH. 
 
 marry. Neither of these means of passing his 
 time having led to anything, he proceeds to 
 London and the Temple, where he falls in with a 
 steady companion who procures a paper for his 
 essays, and a publisher for his novel. His uncle 
 introduces him to polite society, and, by trading 
 upon a family secret of the Claverings, gets him 
 the prospect of a seat in Parliament and a rich 
 wife. Pendennis finds out, through the treach- 
 ery of his uncle's valet, to what he owes his 
 good fortune, and refuses to advance himself by 
 being a party to such schemes. The engage- 
 ment falls through, and he returns to the woman 
 who has waited for him, and is finally married 
 to Laura. Such is the simple story of Arthur 
 Pendennis ; a journalist, and not a particularly 
 good one ; a gentleman, and not a particularly 
 noble one ; but alive in every mood and feature, 
 his whole body absolutely tingling with life. 
 There has been no such portrait drawn, as 
 Thackeray hinted, but modestly refrained from 
 saying, since Tom Jones. Fielding's present- 
 ment of a youth of his time is as accurate as 
 Thackeray's of his nineteenth-century represent- 
 ative, and about Fielding's novel there plays a 
 breezy air of freshness which is quite foreign to
 
 Ill 'PENDENNIS' AND AFTER lOQ 
 
 the more subtle genius of Thackeray, but the 
 character of Arthur Pendennis is more com- 
 phcated than that of Tom Jones, and by con- 
 sequence more difficult to draw. It is the 
 peculiarity of our high state of civilization, that 
 there must be many who, like Pendennis, 
 experience the whole range of passion and 
 sensation, without being able to find for them 
 any adequate expression. Those feelings, which 
 formerly only came to a man after long trouble 
 and thought, that complicated series of emotions 
 and ideas which once belonged only to philoso- 
 phers and poets, have now, by the wide-spread 
 influence of education, become the common 
 property of minds that have no originality or 
 power. To draw such a character without 
 leaving the slightest opening for a charge of 
 inconsistency, was difficult indeed, but Thack- 
 eray never makes a mistake, and the most 
 trivial conversations are so literal, it is hard 
 to believe they did not take place. Pendennis 
 has been detailing to Warrington the talk of a 
 certain young lady, formerly an actress, whom 
 he met at a ball. 
 
 " ' From the gravity of that woman,' he con- 
 cludes, ' you would have fancied she had been
 
 no THACKERAY: A STUDY CH. 
 
 born in a palace and lived all the seasons of her 
 life in Belgrave Square.' 
 
 " ' And you, I suppose you took your part in 
 the conversation pretty well, as the descendant 
 of the Earl your father, and the heir of Fair- 
 oaks Castle,' Warrington said. ' Yes, I re- 
 member reading of the festivities which occurred 
 when you came of age. The Countess gave a 
 brilliant tea soiree to the neighbouring nobility ; 
 and the tenantry were regaled in the kitchen 
 with a leg of mutton and a quart of ale. The 
 remains of the banquet were distributed among 
 the poor of the village, and the entrance to the 
 park was illuminated until old John put the 
 candle out on retiring to rest at his usual 
 hour.' 
 
 " ' My mother is not a countess,' said Pen, 
 ' though she has very good blood in her veins 
 too — but commoner as she is I have never met 
 a peeress who was more than her peer, Mr. 
 George ; and if you will come to Fairoaks 
 Castle you shall judge for yourself of her and 
 of my cousin too.' " 
 
 This is exactly how a high-spirited boy would 
 have answered the badinage of his companion, 
 and the creation of Arthur Pendennis, with his
 
 in 'PENDENNIS' AND AFTER III 
 
 bursts of anger, his enthusiasms, and his pride, 
 was an achievement in itself. 
 
 But the characters of the women in the book 
 do not come far behind it. Blanche Amory, 
 with her lannes and soupirs, with her sensibility 
 and selfishness, with her elegance and her freaks 
 of temper, with her desire for a grandc passion 
 and her deceit, almost justifies the testimonial 
 which her extremely candid step- father gives of 
 her to the Chevalier Strong. She is an unami- 
 able woman, but has the interest that is common 
 to all the personages of fiction whom it is not 
 unusual to meet. Thackeray speaks of her with 
 an almost unnecessary harshness, and metes out 
 to her at the end a justice that is more rigorous 
 than poetical. He plies her, as was his habit, 
 with every term of endearment, and his manner 
 of treating " dear Blanche " is, though gentler, 
 not entirely dissimilar to the method he adopted 
 when dealing with " darling Becky." For the 
 other two women he had a real and excusable 
 tenderness, and Laura, though slightly sketched, 
 has a bewitching personality. It is a far easier 
 task to draw a good man than a good woman. 
 When we speak of a good man, we think of a 
 being who has the world to conquer. A man, if
 
 112 THACKERAY: A STUDY CH. 
 
 he is to be good, must possess not only great 
 but even contradictory qualities. He must at 
 the same time have both courage and tender- 
 ness, both reverence and strength, and if there is 
 some difficulty in combining these excellences 
 in one character, once that difficulty is sur- 
 mounted the interest of the reader is secure. 
 But the virtues that we love to associate with 
 our ideal of womanhood have none of the 
 attraction of paradox. Her true attitude in 
 regard to matters both spiritual and of this 
 world, is one of fond submission. She was 
 made not to be the equal, but the helpmeet of 
 man. She must rebel no more against her sur- 
 roundings than against her fate. Tenderness is 
 so essential a part of her that it has become pro- 
 verbial ; and her courage is derived, not as 
 man's from a consciousness of power, but from 
 an assured belief in the right government of 
 things, and a desire to bear unflinchingly what- 
 ever may befall. Women who possess these 
 qualities are not colourless in life. Each of our 
 little triumphs brings out a new wonder of 
 admiration, and constant sorrows only serve to 
 prove the variety of their reliant and sustaining 
 love. But in fiction, when we try to chronicle these
 
 in 'PENDENNIS' AND AFTER II3 
 
 similar occasions, we produce in general a same- 
 ness of effect, and Art fails to remember what 
 Nature has so often shown. It required a 
 Shakespeare to create a Desdemona, and there 
 are no flawless women in the pages of Thackeray ; 
 Lady Castlewood is not perfect, Ethel Newcome 
 is fickle, and even Laura and Mrs. Pendennis 
 have their little fits of hardness, jealousy, and 
 pique. But except for these Pendennis' mother 
 and betrothed are as good women as ever 
 passed their lives between the covers of a 
 book. 
 
 Many are the readers who, like Mr. Merivale, 
 have felt a passion for Laura, and have watched 
 the colour mounting to her cheeks when " Pen " 
 made his absurd proposal, and later her hanging 
 blushing on his arm, " her bright eyes beaming 
 with the light of love." Many are the readers 
 whose eyes have dimmed over the death of Mrs. 
 Pendennis, and who have closed the volume, 
 and looked back and admired the delicate shades 
 in this gentle picture of confiding motherhood. 
 The scene takes place when Warrington, in a 
 grand manner of his own, has just explained 
 that Pen was innocent in his connection with 
 Fanny.
 
 114 THACKERAY: A STUDY CH. 
 
 " As for Helen, she was so delighted, that she 
 started up, and said, ' God bless you — God for 
 ever bless you, Mr. Warrington ; ' and kissed 
 both his hands, and ran up to Pen, and fell into 
 his arms. 
 
 " ' Yes, dearest mother,' he said, as he held her 
 to him, and with a noble tenderness and emotion, 
 embraced and forgave her. ' I am innocent, 
 and my dear, dear mother has done me a 
 wrong.' 
 
 " * Oh, yes, my child, I have wronged you, 
 thank God, I have wronged you ! ' Helen 
 whispered. * Come away, Arthur — not here — 
 I want to ask my child to forgive me — and — 
 and my God to forgive me ; and to bless you, 
 and love you, my son.' 
 
 " He led her, tottering, into her room, and 
 closed the door, as the three touched spectators 
 of the reconciliation looked on in pleased silence. 
 Ever after, ever after, the tender accents of that 
 voice faltering sweetly at his ear — the look of the 
 sacred eyes beaming with an affection unutter- 
 able — the quiver of the fond lips smiling mourn- 
 fully — were remembered by the young man. 
 And at his best moments, and at his hours of 
 trial and grief, and at his times of success and
 
 Ill 'PENDENNIS' AND AFTER II5 
 
 well-doing, the mother's face looked down upon 
 him, and blessed him with its gaze of pity and 
 purity, as he saw it in that night when she yet 
 lingered with him 
 
 "A little time after, it might have been a 
 quarter of an hour, Laura heard Arthur's voice 
 calling from within, ' Laura ! Laura ! ' She 
 rushed into the room instantly, and found the 
 young man still on his knees, and holding his 
 mother's hand. Helen's head had sunk back 
 and was quite pale in the moon. Pen looked 
 round, scared with a ghastly terror. ' Help ! 
 Laura, help ! ' he said, ' she's fainted — she's ' 
 
 "Laura screamed, and fell by the side of 
 Helen. The shriek brought Warrington and 
 Major Pendennis and the servants to the room." 
 
 The end of the year which saw the conclusion 
 of ' Pendennis ' was occupied by Thackeray in a 
 curiously characteristic manner. ' Pendennis ' 
 was a picture of society drawn with unusual 
 elaboration and care. It had covered a great 
 deal of ground ; it had dealt with very large 
 issues ; and had included in its range " a wedding 
 and a funeral " ; but it had not omitted to look 
 upon these lighter things which had formed the 
 groundwork of ' The Book of Snobs,' and in its
 
 Il6 THACKERAY: A STUDY CH. 
 
 method of dealing with them it had completely 
 given the lie to his earlier manner. But for the 
 author of ' The Kickleburys on the Rhine ' 
 * Pendennis ' might just as well not have been 
 written. If it was necessary to produce a Christ- 
 mas book, there was no necessity why this 
 particular Christmas book should have been 
 written. It has all the faults of ' Mrs. Perkins's 
 Ball ' and * Our Street,' and contains an even 
 graver indiscretion. The character of the 
 Countess is not only an absurdity, but a feeble 
 absurdity. Lady Rockminster in ' Pendennis ' 
 is almost too patently introduced to show that 
 a woman may wear a coronet, and yet not be 
 inane ; but Thackeray at least takes the trouble 
 to draw the character, and the result is not un- 
 pleasing. Lady Knightsbridge in ' The Kickle- 
 burys ' is merely a name, and we are asked to 
 take on trust the excellences of her disposition. 
 The introduction of this lady among the better 
 drawn and pitiful personages of the sketch 
 reduces the satire to a thinness beyond which it 
 is impossible to go. The book was the subject, 
 on its appearance, of an acute, though personal 
 and grandiloquent review. In his ' Essay on 
 Thunder and Small Beer ' Thackeray prints the
 
 I" 'PENDENNIS' AND AFTER 11/ 
 
 article at length, and though he laughs at the 
 grandiloquence and personality, the criticisms 
 which he was careful to print he is careful to 
 leave unanswered. Indeed they were unanswer- 
 able, as they merely said what was patent to 
 every observer, that the kind of work which 
 might turn a penny, without credit, for an un- 
 known writer, was unsuitable for a distinguished 
 novelist. 
 
 The writing of ' Esmond ' formed the real 
 occupation of the next two years, but before 
 Thackeray got properly under way with it, he 
 found time to write a burlesque of the historical 
 novel. This, however, though one of the most 
 amazing of his numerous inconsistencies, may be 
 pardoned to the author of Rebecca and Rowena.' 
 It had, unlike many of Punch's Prize NoveHsts,' 
 the advantage of taking for its subject the work 
 of a writer who was no longer a contemporary, 
 and his admiration for Scott prevented its author 
 from degenerating into rudeness. It has plenty 
 of good humour, and is perhaps the best parody 
 in the language. It is interspersed with several 
 ballads, and that of King Canute is so excellent 
 as almost to reconcile us to the wanton attack on 
 King Richard. Athelstane, Rowena, and Sir
 
 Il8 THACKERAY: A STUDY CH. 
 
 Wilfrid are lively and humorous comments 
 upon their chivalric counterparts in ' Ivanhoe,' 
 and Wamba jests and sings so well as to be fitted 
 for more serious company — 
 
 The reddest lips that ever were kissed, 
 The brightest eyes that ever have shone, 
 May pray and whisper and we not list. 
 Or look away and never be missed 
 Ere yet ever a month is gone. 
 
 But the man who could stop his caricature to 
 write verses of that quality was getting past such 
 frivolities. 
 
 ' The History of Henry Esmond, a colonel in 
 the service of Her Majesty Queen Anne, written 
 by himself,' appeared in three volumes in the 
 year 1852, when Thackeray was forty-one 
 years of age. In several particulars it was an 
 effort of a quite different kind from any he had 
 before attempted. It followed much more nearly 
 than any other of his important books the 
 prescribed form of the novel. It was much less 
 a mere series of adventures ; all its incidents 
 contribute in their degree to shape the character, 
 and to influence the life of Henry Esmond ; and 
 the book is not, as was Thackeray's usual habit, 
 interspersed with detailed studies of personages
 
 ni 'PENDENNIS' AND AFTER II9 
 
 and families that have little or no bearing on the 
 central figure of the story. It is moreover not a 
 satire, but on the contrary a careful attempt to 
 delineate life as it appears to the sentimental 
 and reflective, rather than to the critical faculties 
 of man. The form and attitude are both un- 
 familiar, and the success that awaited the book 
 was not such as to induce Thackeray to return 
 to it, until the closing years of his life, when he 
 began ' Denis Duval.' The author of ' Esmond ' 
 gave proof of a versatility too large to be imme- 
 diately understood by the public. ' Esmond ' 
 would have been a triumph for any writer ; but 
 it was so great a triumph for the author of 
 'Vanity Fair' that it seemed at first almost out 
 of the course of nature, and not to be under- 
 stood. In ' Pendennis ' the world had seen 
 Thackeray at his best in the manner which he 
 had made his own. ' Esmond ' was quite unlike 
 'Vanity Fair' and ' Pendennis,' and the public 
 was content to mark the difference, without 
 admiring the versatility which was responsible 
 for it. 
 
 But ' Esmond ' does not only deserve praise 
 as a humane and discerning criticism, not of 
 society, but ot life ; it is also one of the very
 
 120 THACKERAY: A STUDY CH. 
 
 few completely successful attempts to take the 
 reader back into a historical period. How 
 difficult a task this is can readily be understood 
 when we remember the immense multitude of 
 historical novels, and how many of them do not 
 attempt to do anything more than to show us 
 modern characters moving about in antique 
 costumes, and amidst antiquated surroundings. 
 Mr. Stevenson's ' Catriona,' however good in 
 itself, is in this respect, as Dr. Verrall has told 
 us,^ completely a failure. David Balfour is a 
 sensitive writer of the nineteenth century, con- 
 demned to masquerade as a man of action, with 
 a rapier dangling at his side. Even in Scott the 
 sentiments of the characters, though not essen- 
 tially modern, and though seldom inconsistent, 
 have no genuine antique flavour about them. 
 They seem, except when he is dealing with the 
 great characters of history, not so much to have 
 stepped out of by-gone centuries, as to have 
 stepped easily and naturally into them by virtue 
 of the wide humanity of their author. But 
 Thackeray had so steeped himself in the 
 eighteenth century, that while we are reading 
 ' Esmond ' we seem to be listening to a sadder 
 ^ ' Cambridge Review,' January 25, 1894.
 
 Ill 'PENDENNIS' AND AFTER 121 
 
 Addison or to a profounder Steele. The his- 
 torical atmosphere is even more real than that 
 in 'The Memoirs of Barry Lyndon,' for Redmond 
 Barry, with all his humanity, is a monstrosity, 
 and though he belongs to the eighteenth, would 
 have been an unnatural product of any century. 
 How much of this labour, admirably spent for 
 its purpose, was worth expending on such an 
 object is of course another question, Shake- 
 speare never troubled to reproduce the thoughts 
 of the past, but was satisfied, as far as history 
 went, if Caesar behaved as Plutarch tells us he 
 did, or if Macbeth's actions accorded with the 
 legend. He had no idea of making Hamlet 
 reason as a Prince of Denmark would, or of 
 putting into the mouth of Lear sentiments 
 belonging properly to an early Briton. His 
 object was not to show us Romans or Britons, 
 Venetians or Veronese, but to put men in 
 different situations, and to provide, by a variety 
 of incidents, full play for the human heart. And 
 in this he was followed by the other great 
 Elizabethan dramatists. There are no real 
 Romans to be found in the historical plays of 
 Massinger or Dekker ; and few authors are 
 ashamed when they draw Catos to let them talk
 
 122 THACKERAY: A STUDY CH. 
 
 the language of Whig and Tory. But whatever 
 merit there may be in reproducing in a work 
 of fiction the sentiments of by-gone times, that 
 merit among others belongs to the author of 
 ' Esmond.' Thackeray indeed seems in this 
 book to have gone out of his way to create 
 difficulties, and, having created them, to over- 
 come them. It was not enough that Esmond's 
 companions should belong to the eighteenth 
 century, but his author, by allowing him to tell 
 his own story, forbids himself a single opportunity 
 of speaking in his own voice. At first sight also 
 it appears unreasonable that a character intended 
 to be perfect should be forced into the unpleasant 
 position of recounting his own excellences ; but 
 even this difficulty has been partially, though 
 only partially, overcome, and Thackeray, by the 
 happy device of making Esmond speak at once 
 in the first and third persons, has given the 
 book the interest of an autobiography, without 
 laying its hero patently open to the charge of 
 vain -glory. 
 
 Of the book itself, of its characters, and of 
 the fine and almost spiritual insight in it, it is 
 impossible to speak in terms of too high a 
 praise. To Fielding or to Scott there was
 
 HI 'PENDENNIS' AND AFTER 1 23 
 
 nothing difficult in life. In one the life-blood 
 was too warm, in the other the character was 
 too simple and too manly, to appreciate those 
 terrible alternations of emotion, which seem at 
 one moment to convince us of our mortality, 
 at the next to widen and purify the soul. Scott, 
 even when writing of characters long buried, 
 seems to live among them, and to chronicle 
 their careers and endings from the standpoint 
 of life. But in ' Esmond ' Thackeray tells us 
 of the beauty of Beatrix, of the sympathy of 
 Lady Castlewood, of the roystering pleasures 
 of Captain Westbury and Dick Steele, as he 
 would speak to us of things done and " rounded 
 with a sleep." He does not look at death as 
 a state outside of life, but looks at life itself ab 
 extra, and appreciates to the full the irony, that 
 the Esmond who is telling us his sensations in 
 the little graveyard at Ealing had been dead a 
 hundred years. But with all this he was com- 
 pletely out of sympathy with those modern 
 ideas that would, by a kind of hopeless paradox, 
 reduce life to a tiresome farce, and death to its 
 unenviable termination. His nature was far too 
 sympathetic and too human not to have felt the 
 lachryinae rerum, but it was also far too pro-
 
 124 THACKERAY: A STUDY CH. 
 
 found not to have recognized that life is a 
 mystery, and not a puzzle, and saddest when 
 it most nearly approaches the divine. That is 
 why ' Esmond ' is a book at once sorrowful and 
 helpful. It is the more reverent and the more 
 true exposition of the text he had appended to 
 'Vanity Fair' — Vanitas vanitatiini, omnia vanitas. 
 But a work of fiction, though it may effect 
 the purpose of a sermon or a philosophical 
 treatise, does so by widely different means. We 
 are not told in precise words the conclusions 
 to be drawn from the little comedy or tragedy, 
 but we are shown the play itself. And that 
 we may be sufficiently interested to draw these 
 conclusions, it is necessary that we should be 
 deceived into imagining the actors to be real 
 people, and the characters alive. In this Thack- 
 eray was never more successful than in his 
 masterpiece. Most of the characters in * Pen- 
 dennis ' live, it is true ; but not with the same 
 vigour, or with, if the expression is allowable, 
 as great a determination. Every character in 
 ' Esmond ' treats his life, whatever complexion 
 it may wear to him, with a high and undoubting 
 seriousness. The progress of Jesuitry is as im- 
 portant to Father Holt as the credit of the
 
 ni 'PENDENNIS' AND AFTER 125 
 
 victory of Wynendael to General Webb. Plea- 
 sures and wine are as real to Lord Castlevvood 
 as her religion to his wife ; and Henry Esmond 
 is not more deeply impressed with the solemnity 
 of existence than Beatrix with the pride and 
 delight of living. The last character is in many 
 respects the finest in the book, " the one incom- 
 parable woman," for so she has been called, " in 
 prose fiction " ; and " surely never lighted upon 
 the earth a more delightful vision." There is 
 no more striking proof of Thackeray's know- 
 ledge of human nature than the attraction which 
 this character has exercised, and will continue 
 to exercise over his readers. She is not by 
 any means a good woman, yet with what an 
 abundant warmth she fills the solemn pages of 
 * Esmond.' Not since her namesake bandied 
 words with Benedick has any one fluttered so 
 gaily through her imaginary and pleasurable 
 youth. She was created to take captive our 
 delight, and, as Beatrice says, "not till God make 
 men of some other metal than earth " can we 
 fail to sympathize with Esmond's passion for 
 her, or to consider no pursuit too long that 
 might be rewarded by the possession of such a 
 prize.
 
 126 THACKERAY: A STUDY CH. 
 
 Her brother Frank has abjured the Protestant 
 religion, and married a foreign countess ; and 
 this is her amazing commentary upon that 
 occasion, with Colonel Esmond as her only- 
 auditor : — 
 
 " ' I made that onslaught on the priests,' says 
 Miss Beatrix, afterwards, * in order to divert my 
 poor dear mother's anguish about Frank. Frank 
 is as vain as a girl, cousin. Talk of us girls 
 being vain, what are we to you ? It was easy 
 to see that the first woman who chose would 
 make a fool of him, or the first robe — I count 
 a priest and a woman all the same. We are 
 always caballing ; we are not answerable for the 
 fibs we tell ; we are always cajoling and coax- 
 ing, or threatening ; and we are always making 
 mischief, Colonel Esmond — mark my word for 
 that, who know the world, sir, and have to 
 make my way in it. I see as well as possible 
 how Frank's marriage hath been managed. 
 The Count, our papa-in-law, is always away at 
 the coffee-house. The Countess, our mother, 
 is always in the kitchen looking after the 
 dinner. The Countess, our sister, is at the 
 spinet. When my lord comes to say he is 
 going on the campaign, the lovely Clotilda
 
 "I 'PENDENNIS' AND AFTER 12/ 
 
 bursts into tears, and faints — so ; he catches 
 her in his arms — no, sir, keep your distance, 
 cousin, if you please — she cries on his shoulder, 
 and he says, " Oh, my divine, my adored, my 
 beloved Clotilda, are you sorry to part with 
 me ? " " Oh, my Francisco," says she, " oh my 
 lord ! " and at this very instant mamma and a 
 couple of young brothers, with moustaches and 
 long rapiers, come in from the kitchen, where 
 they have been eating bread and onions. Mark 
 my word, you will have all this woman's rela- 
 tions at Castlewood three months after she has 
 arrived there. The old count and countess, and 
 the young counts and all the little countesses 
 her sisters. Counts ! every one of these wretches 
 says he is a count. Guiscard, that stabbed Mr. 
 Harley, said he was a count ; and I believe he 
 was a barber. All Frenchmen are barbers — 
 Fiddlededee ! don't contradict me — or else 
 dancing-masters, or else priests.' And so she 
 rattled on. 
 
 " ' Who was it taught yoii to dance. Cousin 
 Beatrix } ' says the Colonel. 
 
 " She laughed out the air of a minuet, and 
 swept a low curtsey, coming up to the recover 
 with the prettiest little foot in the world pointed
 
 128 THACKERAY: A STUDY CH. 
 
 out. Her mother came in as she was in this 
 attitude ; my lady had been in her cJoset, hav- 
 ing taken poor Frank's conversion in a very 
 serious way ; the madcap girl ran up to her 
 mother, put her arms round her waist, kissed 
 her, tried to make her dance, and said : ' Don't 
 be silly, you kind little mamma, and cry about 
 Frank turning Papist. What a figure he must 
 be, with a white sheet and a candle, walking in 
 a procession barefoot ! ' And she kicked off 
 her little slippers (the wonderfulest little shoes 
 with wonderful tall red heels : Esmond pounced 
 upon one as it fell close beside him), and she 
 put on the drollest little inotie, and marched 
 up and down the room holding Esmond's cane 
 by way of taper. Serious as her mood was, 
 Lady Castlewood could not refrain from laugh- 
 ing ; and as for Esmond, he looked on with 
 that delight with which the sight of this fair 
 creature always inspired him : never had he 
 seen any woman so arch, so brilliant, and so 
 beautiful. 
 
 " Having finished her march, she put out her 
 foot for her slipper. The Colonel knelt down : 
 ' If you will be Pope, I will turn Papist,' says 
 he ; and her Holiness gave him gracious leave
 
 in 'PENDENNIS' AND AFTER 1 29 
 
 to kiss the little stockinged foot before he put 
 the slipper on, 
 
 "Mamma's feet began to pat on the floor 
 during this operation, and Beatrix, whose bright 
 eyes nothing escaped, saw that little mark of 
 impatience. She ran up and embraced her 
 mother, with her usual cry of, ' Oh, you silly 
 little mamma ; your feet are quite as pretty as 
 mine,' says she : ' they are, cousin, though she 
 hides 'em ; but the shoemaker will tell you that 
 he makes for both off the same last' 
 
 " ' You are taller than I am, dearest,' says her 
 mother, blushing over her whole sweet face — 
 'and — and it is your hand, my dear, and not 
 your foot he wants you to give him,' " 
 
 But with all her dainty caprice, and her charm- 
 ing mocks of affection, Beatrix remains worldly 
 and heartless. If her character be examined 
 with any care, she will be found to be absolutely 
 incapable of an unselfish action. Yet to become 
 the master of this charming shadow, this live 
 piece of delicate imagination, is the ambition of 
 every reader. It is true, we do not love her as 
 she is, but we long to make her subject to an 
 affection, of which, when reciprocated, we feel 
 sure she would be worthy. She is only heartless
 
 130 THACKERAY: A STUDY ^h. 
 
 because no man has touched her heart, only 
 worldly because she has never felt a great 
 emotion, only selfish because she has found it 
 so easy to conquer, — and she might have worn 
 her beauty humbly if she had known what was 
 contained in the magical issues of love. Such a 
 woman must have made a thoughtless wife to 
 Bishop Tusher, and a bad one to Baron Bernstein ; 
 but had Esmond asked and won her when he 
 came back after Lille, she would have formed 
 the true counterpart to his melancholy, and, as 
 she borrowed strength from his manhood, would 
 have lent new graces to his character. 
 
 With Rachel, Lady Castlcwood, Esmond was 
 too similarly to be excellently matched. That 
 sweet lady, as she runs through the different 
 notes of her tenderness, seems to be filled with 
 a vague kind of passion and alarm, as if she 
 were fluctuating between the attitudes of prizing 
 life too highly, and valuing it not at all. The 
 resolute Esmond, who nevertheless had won 
 at college the name of Don Dismallo, needed 
 another wife than this ; and his philosophical 
 calm must often have been rudely shaken by 
 the depths of feeling he saw revealed in Lady 
 Castlewood. He becomes almost unmanned
 
 "I 'PENDENNIS' AND AFTER 131 
 
 when he writes of her, and his mind seems to 
 have caught a dye from her nature of passionate 
 regret. She is ahvays to him his " dear, dear 
 mistress," and her well-remembered accents in- 
 expressibly affecting ; a pathetically human 
 figure, over whose memory he exhausts the 
 whole vocabulary of grief Mrs. Pendennis' love 
 for Arthur sustained and comforted her son. 
 It was so reserved and trustful, so bracing and 
 so healthy, that it must have contributed to 
 render life more simple for him, and its end 
 more gracious and acceptable. But we are 
 alarmed by the strength of a passion that, like 
 Lady Castlewood's, seems to transgress the limits 
 of mortality. There is no doubt, however, that 
 such women have existed, though no author 
 before Thackeray had applied himself to a 
 careful study of the type, and curiously enough 
 there is no kind of example of it to be found in 
 the pages of Shakespeare. But the mind that 
 could watch the career of Redmond Barry, and 
 less than ten years later conceive and delineate 
 such a character as Lady Castlewood, must 
 have ranged through almost as great a variety 
 of emotions. 
 
 Henry Esmond, the hero, has been made the
 
 132 THACKERAY: A STUDY CH. 
 
 subject of a good deal of comparatively undis- 
 criminating criticism. Tiiackeray himself, when 
 irritated with the failure of his novel, consoled 
 himself by reflecting that " after all Esmond was 
 a prig " ; and the chance phrase has been caught 
 up and repeated by most of his critics. It is of 
 course impossible to say now-a-days what mean- 
 ing may not be attached to any word in the 
 English language. The employment of terms has 
 become so loose, that it is difficult often to seize 
 upon the precise idea which a word is intended 
 to convey. Mr. Trollope was of opinion that 
 " there was that garb of melancholy over Esmond 
 which always makes a man a prig," But the 
 word, as used by our old authors, is not associ- 
 ated with any such meaning. We find it to 
 contain the notions of solemnity joined with 
 pretence, a certain pomposity, perhaps, which is 
 only half sincere. These qualities cannot be 
 said to exist in Henry Esmond. He neither 
 underrates nor over-values himself, and if he is 
 solemn, it is his sincerity that makes him so. 
 There was some pomposity inseparable from an 
 attempt to chronicle one's own good behaviour, 
 but if it was to be done, it could hardly have 
 been done with more modesty, or with a greater
 
 ni 'PENDENNIS' AND AFTER 1 33 
 
 appearance of truth. Pitt Crawley was a prig, 
 but there is no Hkeness between his character 
 and that of Henry Esmond. It is not often, of 
 course, that men intended by nature for divines 
 wear swords at their sides, or that meditative 
 students of Plato win honour on the field ; but 
 there is nothing impossible in such a conjunction. 
 We do not often meet such brave and scholarly 
 gentlemen as Esmond ; we do not often find so 
 high a courage and such powers of reflection 
 united in one person, the capacity both to 
 appreciate and to despise danger ; but the in- 
 frequency of the occurrence should not lead us 
 to misunderstand it. It is only children that 
 object to be presented with perfect characters, 
 because they have not the power to differentiate 
 between an easily assumed appearance of virtue, 
 and that excellence which is only possible to one 
 who knows the nature of good. More mature 
 criticism has the power of distinguishing between 
 two such widely different things, and it is an 
 error of judgment to suppose that the man who 
 drew Henry Esmond and Colonel Newcome 
 was in danger of confounding them. Thackeray, 
 indeed, was never misled by hypocrisy, and in 
 this at least his critical faculty was always sound.
 
 1 34 THACKERAY : A STUDY CH. 
 
 But as a critic he was not acute. He was far 
 too inclined, having decided whether a character 
 was good or bad, eitlier to praise wholly, or to 
 paint a portrait altogether black. It was not 
 that he praised the wrong things, or blamed 
 anything that was not blameworthy ; but he 
 forgot that as there is no one who has not 
 deserved blame, so there is no one who has not 
 merited praise. 
 
 In the series of lectures on the English 
 humourists, this fault is peculiarly evident. He 
 attacks Swift ; and selects for treatment in Pope 
 only those qualities which were really admirable. 
 Goldsmith's good-nature, and the coarseness of 
 Sterne, are brought out into equal relief. The 
 result is that he tells a half-truth about these 
 writers, and conveys what is in effect an untruth. 
 The lectures are not in any sense critical esti- 
 mates of their subjects ; they are rather a series 
 of cursory expositions of the leading impression 
 they had produced on Thackeray's mind. They 
 were not, however, without a good reason for 
 being written, all the necessary material lying 
 ready to his hand. In preparing to write 
 ' Esmond,' he had amassed a store of inform- 
 ation about their works and their lives, and it
 
 Ill 'PENDENNIS' AND AFTER 135 
 
 was perhaps too much to expect that he should 
 not have been awake to so lucrative a method 
 of employing it. But though they contain many 
 sentiments that give ample proof of his sympathy 
 and discernment, they were quite unworthy of 
 the position Thackeray then occupied in the 
 literary world. It is hardly possible to resist 
 smiling when one finds Prior, Gay, and Pope 
 airily disposed of in forty pages, and Swift 
 demolished in a similar number. But the in- 
 adequacy of the treatment becomes ludicrous 
 when in a lecture gravely labelled " Hogarth, 
 Smollett, and Fielding," we find the author of 
 ' Humphry Clinker ' has allotted to him no 
 more than a page and a half. Not that it was 
 easy to treat, in six lectures, of twelve consider- 
 able writers, but the selection of the subject was 
 not imposed upon the critic. And even with 
 the subject selected, many of the writers chosen 
 need not have been dealt with. Hog-arth mig^ht 
 well have been omitted, Gay and Prior have 
 little humour, while Congreve is purely a wit, 
 and Pope pre-eminently a poet. If these were 
 to be included, why not Dryden, Wycherley, 
 and Vanbrugh i* — and a catalogue that compre- 
 hended Swift might also have taken in Ben
 
 136 THACKERAY: A STUDY CH. 
 
 Jonson and Shakespeare. It was not the title, 
 however, as has been supposed, that was respon- 
 sible for this discursiveness of treatment, as 
 there are six great English humourists of the 
 eighteenth century, and only six who without a 
 stretch of fancy may be so called. Had Thack- 
 eray confined himself to Addison and Steele, 
 Sterne, Fielding, Smollett, and Goldsmith, he 
 would not only have had more space at his 
 disposal, but he would have been saved from a 
 serious error in classification. He might also, 
 perhaps, have adopted an easier and more 
 critical attitude, and would at least have been 
 spared from finding fault with Swift because he 
 had none of the urbanity that is peculiar to a 
 humourist, and from reading an exaggerated 
 kindliness into the genius of Pope. The portrait 
 of Sterne would have remained unfair, but the 
 critic who appreciated Fielding would have had 
 something more to tell us of the spirit and 
 humour of Smollett, whom he so accurately 
 characterizes as " manly, kindly, honest, and 
 irascible ; worn and battered, but still brave and 
 full of heart." The lectures, as they are, are not, 
 however, uninteresting, though they add nothing 
 to our knowledee of the authors criticized, and
 
 "I 'PENDENNIS' AND AFTER 1 37 
 
 obviously cost Thackeray so little trouble, that 
 it is not remarkable they furnish no new index 
 to his mind. They remain as a light and 
 pleasant interlude in his literary biography 
 between ' Esmond ' and ' The Newcomes.' 
 
 In this latter work, noteworthy as the last of 
 his greater efforts, there are already to be 
 detected signs of a flagging pen. He could no 
 longer be troubled to construct even the semb- 
 lance of a story, and ' The Newcomes ' is even 
 more rambling and discursive than ' The History 
 of Pendennis.' It combines, in a curious degree, 
 all his previous methods. Like ' Vanity Fair,' it 
 is a satire ; like ' Pendennis,' it is humane ; and 
 we meet once more the regretful weariness of 
 ' Esmond.' In ' Vanity Fair ' we were told that 
 the world was a poor place to live in ; in ' Pen- 
 dennis ' we were asked to look with pity on the 
 kindly race of men ; while the mystery that 
 shadows life hangs over every page of ' Esmond.' 
 All these we have in ' The Newcomes,' though 
 its author is willing to sing, with a still higher 
 courage than formerly, the canticle of Nunc 
 Dimittis.^ Life is too mournfully sweet in 
 
 ^ " But above all, believe it, the sweetest Canticle is,
 
 138 THACKERAY: A STUDY CH. 
 
 ' Esmond ' to be laid down without regret, in 
 ' Vanity Fair ' too bitter to be lived without 
 compunction, but in 'The Newcomes' the woof 
 is shot with so great an admixture of delight 
 and pain, that it is no wonder Colonel Newcome 
 says his " adsum " with a tearful acquiescence. 
 The spirit in which the book is written is most 
 nearly akin to that which animates ' Pendennis,' 
 but there life is worth living, and worth leaving, 
 because it is at once interesting and trivial. In 
 ' The Newcomes ' the same moral is drawn, 
 because in the eyes of the author it has become 
 both happy and sad. 
 
 Thackeray never wrote a book from an 
 attitude more accurate or truthful. We do not 
 always order our existence with a purpose. The 
 least worldly of us has, like Colonel Newcome, 
 his moments of worldliness ; and the least 
 spiritual, like Ethel, occasional glimpses of the 
 vanity of things. We cannot be content, either 
 always to criticize the game, or always actively 
 to engage in it. Every one fulfils in turn the 
 functions both of player and spectator. In 
 
 Nunc dimittis ; when a Man hath obtained worthy Ends 
 and Expectations." — Bacon, ' Essays ' : Of Death.
 
 "I ' PENDENNIS' AND AFTER 139 
 
 ' The Newcomes ' these truths are not made 
 palpable merely by a contrariety of characters ; 
 the tone of the book is saturated with them, and 
 every accent seems to tell of the reality and 
 unreality of things. He is describing the every- 
 day incident of the departure of a passenger 
 ship for India : — " I scarce perceived at the 
 ship's side beckoning an adieu, our dear old 
 friend, when the lady whose husband had 
 bidden me lead her away from the ship, fainted 
 in my arms. Poor soul ! Her too has fate 
 stricken. Ah, pangs of hearts torn asunder, 
 passionate regrets, cruel, cruel partings ! Shall 
 you not end one day ere many years ; when the 
 tears shall be wiped from all eyes, and there 
 shall be neither sorrow nor pain .-* " And so on, 
 and so on ; mingling the earthly and the spiritual, 
 whenever an occasion presents itself, till " Boy " 
 says Our Father. 
 
 The novel, as Mr. Trollope has truly observed, 
 is more a number of scattered pages from the 
 biography of a family, than a series of related 
 incidents. It begins by telling us all about the 
 Newcomes, who they were and how descended, 
 and having introduced the Colonel as an old 
 man, takes us back to trace his childhood and
 
 140 THACKERAY : A STUDY CH. 
 
 his youth. Thomas Newcome, an old Indian 
 colonel, has returned home with a pension, to 
 spend his declining years with his son. He is 
 anxious that the young man should follow his 
 own inclinations, and though he has set his 
 heart on seeing him married, is indifferent as 
 to what profession he may choose. His son 
 Clive falls in love with his cousin, and the father 
 strains every endeavour to forward the match, 
 but circumstances fall out awkwardly, and Clive 
 makes, at Colonel Newcomc's instigation, a hope- 
 less incsalliance. The book closes leaving Clive 
 a widower and an orphan, and wrapped up, as 
 his father before him, in his boy. All this 
 misery happens naturally enough. Had Ethel 
 Newcome not been ambitious, or the Colonel not 
 over-elated by his prosperity, none of it need 
 have happened. It is not the greatest causes 
 that in life produce the most disastrous effects. 
 
 These two personages, Colonel and Miss New- 
 come, have given the book its fame, but the 
 canvas is literally crowded with every variety of 
 men and women. Hobson Newcome is a staid 
 and ultra-respectable man of business, while Sir 
 Brian is a type of the sedate and prosperous 
 London merchant. Ridley is a sensitive and
 
 Ill 'PENDENNIS' AND AFTER 141 
 
 delicate genius, and Frederic Baynham a jovial 
 specimen of good-nature and bourgeoisie. Lord 
 Kew is as good a portrait as could be drawn of an 
 English aristocrat ; Cliveofa youth of education 
 and imaginative sensibility ; and the Comte de 
 Florae of a human and pleasure-loving foreigner. 
 The dowager Lady Kew is a woman of great 
 age, with no thoughts but those of worldly 
 advancement ; and Leonore, Madame de Florae, 
 a beautiful example of patience and resigna- 
 tion. Rosey is a poor affectionate little thing 
 bewildered by the tyranny of Mrs. Mackenzie ; 
 and Mrs. Hobson Newcome a sufficiently familiar 
 hunter of celebrities ; while Sir Barnes, the 
 hypocritical lecturer on the affections, is well 
 contrasted with the fiery and reckless Lord 
 Highgate. 
 
 Among this crowd Thackeray wanders on, 
 observing their different actions sometimes aim- 
 lessly, but never without a keen perception of 
 their meaning. There are so many of them, that 
 we only see parts of their careers ; and just as 
 acquaintance after acquaintance slips out of our 
 actual lives, and we hardly pause to ask what 
 has become of them, so these shadowy people 
 cross our vision for a moment, and are gone.
 
 142 THACKERAY : A STUDY ch. 
 
 " They were alive," says Thackeray, " and I 
 heard their voices, but five minutes since was 
 touched with their grief. And have we parted 
 with them here on a sudden, and without so 
 much as a shake of the hand ? " Ethel Newcome, 
 he condescends to hint to us, was ultimately 
 united to Clive, and it is with a thrill of 
 pleased recognition that we find them masquer- 
 ading together in the background of ' Philip.' 
 But for the most of them, he leaves the skein 
 where he dropped it, and we may spin or tangle 
 it as we will. 
 
 Clive Newcome, the nominal hero, round whose 
 career and marriage the main incidents of the 
 novel are grouped, forms an interesting addition 
 to Thackeray's commentary on the youth of the 
 nineteenth century. It is difficult not to be 
 reminded of Arthur Pendennis. Both are the 
 descendants of gentle families, moving in a 
 higher society than that of their origin ; both 
 are indolent, though they have fits of intermittent 
 industry ; both are fully alive to the influences of 
 literature and art. One has lost a mother, one a 
 father ; and Mrs. Pendennis' devotion to Arthur 
 is as intense as that of Colonel Newcome for 
 Clive. Both natures find the restraint of a
 
 Ill 'TENDENNIS' AND AFTER I43 
 
 regular profession intolerably irksome. They 
 have many of the same virtues ; both are 
 gentlemen, and they both comport themselves 
 well in trying situations. 
 
 But the difference between them is more 
 striking than the similarity. Arthur Pendennis 
 considers Mrs. Pendennis' devotion to him to 
 be little more than his due ; Clive is always 
 profoundly grateful for his father's love. 
 Arthur is capable of serious indiscretions ; he 
 proposes to make an absurd marriage with 
 Miss Costigan, and his treatment of Fanny is 
 so thoughtless as to be almost cruel. The less 
 robust Clive never deviates from the paths of 
 strict propriety. Arthur takes years to find 
 out that the one woman suited to be his mate 
 has been long waiting at his door, and he 
 finally obtains her when it appeared that he 
 had become entangled with Blanche Amory. 
 Clive never swerves from his devotion to Ethel, 
 whom he cannot obtain, and he marries another 
 not from caprice, but out of deference to his 
 father's wishes. Arthur is self-confident, and in 
 no danger of underrating his powers ; Clive 
 is diffident almost to a fault. Arthur attains 
 success ; Clive, failure. Clive shrinks at the
 
 144 THACKERAY : A STUDY CH. 
 
 first touch of misfortune ; Arthur marches 
 buoyantly on, confident that his abihty will 
 ultimately be recognized. Clive is subject to 
 fits of melancholy, and we leave him heart- 
 broken by "unmerited disaster"; Arthur never 
 becomes more than petulant with evil fate, 
 and he enjoys to the full all that the present 
 can give. None can doubt which is the more 
 loveable, or which has the finer character.- 
 
 Alas ! poor Clive. For a man who hopes to 
 succeed he commits the one fault unpardonable 
 by those who are busied with idle things. He 
 treats his life as a matter of grave importance, 
 and looks out soberly and sadly on the myriad 
 existences about him. Pendennis, more happily 
 dowered, turns his fancy to good account as a 
 journalist ; Clive falls a victim to his own 
 imagination. He, a mere mortal, laid hands 
 on the fire of the Gods, and found too late 
 that it consumed him from within. It is 
 enough to contrast the fates of Clive Newcome 
 and Arthur Pendennis to understand what 
 Thackeray thought of the way of the world, 
 and of the cruel satire of circumstances, which 
 ordain that one who has ideas above his station 
 or capacity will inevitably fall below it.
 
 "I 'PENDENNIS' AND AFTER I45 
 
 In the actual story of the Newcomes, 
 however, Thackeray feared to accumulate the 
 tragedy, and after the death of the Colonel 
 he effected in a few pages the deliverance of 
 Clive ; and we are told fairly plainly that a 
 dea ex macJiind descended in the person of 
 Ethel Newcome. This, which was no violent 
 outrage on probability, affords the desired 
 relief, though it does not render some parts of 
 the former conduct of Ethel any the more 
 comprehensible. She herself is not so dazzling 
 a creation as Beatrix, though far more gentle 
 and winning, and it is difficult to know whether 
 we ought to admire the art which has con- 
 structed for her her similar inconsistencies, or 
 wonder whether such repetitions are to be 
 found in Nature. Partly as a result of her 
 training, and partly from the influence exer- 
 cised over her by the dowager Lady Kew, she 
 is possessed with the idea of making a brilliant 
 marriage. But her intentions are complicated 
 by the affection with which Clive Newcome 
 inspires her. She becomes engaged to Lord 
 Kew, but no sooner has she attained it, than 
 she is almost angry with her triumph. She 
 adopts towards her fiance an attitude of 
 
 L
 
 146 THACKERAY : A STUDY CH. 
 
 petulant suspicion, which soon ends in the 
 rupture of the engagement. She is imme- 
 diately subjected to the reproaches of Lady 
 Kew, and being herself somewhat piqued at 
 having lost a coronet, consents to encourage a 
 particularly foolish young nobleman called the 
 Marquis of Farintosh. With him also she 
 finally breaks, having her eyes opened to the 
 danger of such alliances by the fate of her 
 sister-in-law, Lady Clara Pulleyn or Newcome. 
 As it was not possible for Thackeray to repeat 
 a third time the same situation, we are not 
 surprised to find that Clive has meanwhile been 
 married to Miss Mackenzie. 
 
 This is the main outline of her story ; but 
 she fluctuates back and forward from ambition 
 to love, and from love to ambition. If she is 
 fifty times in one mood, she is fifty times in 
 the other. She does not know her own wishes, 
 and in vain tries to rationalize her desires. If 
 Clive had not married Miss Mackenzie, it is 
 doubtful whether she still would not have 
 preferred to him a more aristocratic lover. 
 That there are many girls who would act in 
 this way is not to be denied ; and it gave 
 an added piquancy to her case that Ethel
 
 511 Tendennis' and after 147 
 
 Newcome should be so simple and so loveable. 
 But the character, when thus made interesting, 
 becomes untrue. It is not easy to suppose 
 that a girl so womanly could continue for long 
 to act in the manner described. The scene in 
 which she is introduced to the Colonel pre- 
 disposes us in her favour. It is admirably 
 calculated to awaken interest, without cloying 
 it by any detailed description of her charms. 
 " I doubt whether even the designer," says 
 Thackeray, "can make such a portrait of Miss 
 Ethel Newcome as shall satisfy her friends 
 and her own sense of justice. That blush 
 which we have indicated, he cannot render. 
 How are you to copy it with a steel point and 
 a ball of printer's ink ? That kindness which 
 lights up the Colonel's eyes ; gives an expres- 
 sion to the very wrinkles round about them ; 
 shines as a halo round his face, — what artist 
 can paint it .'* The painters of old, when they 
 portrayed sainted personages, were fain to have 
 recourse to compasses and gold-leaf — as if 
 celestial splendour could be represented by 
 Dutch metal ! As our artist cannot come up 
 to this task, the reader will be pleased to let 
 his fancy paint for itself the look of courtesy
 
 148 THACKERAY : A STUDY CH. 
 
 for a woman, admiration for a young beauty^ 
 protection for an innocent child, all of which 
 are expressed upon the Colonel's kind face, as 
 his eyes are set upon Ethel Newcome. 
 
 " ' Mamma has sent us to bid you welcome 
 to England, uncle,' says Miss Ethel, advancing, 
 and never thinking for a moment of laying 
 aside that fine blush which she brought into 
 the room, and which is her pretty symbol of 
 youth, and modesty, and beauty. 
 
 " He took a little slim white hand and laid 
 it down on his brown palm, where it looked all 
 the whiter ; he cleared the grizzled mustachio 
 from his mouth, and stooping down he kissed 
 the little white hand with a great deal of grace 
 and dignity. There was no point of resem- 
 blance, and yet a something in the girl's look, 
 voice, and movements, which caused his heart 
 to thrill, and an image out of the past to 
 rise up and salute him. The eyes which had 
 brightened his youth (and which he saw in his 
 dreams and thoughts for faithful years after- 
 wards, as though they looked at him out of 
 heaven) seemed to shine upon him after five- 
 and-thirty years. He remembered such a fair 
 bending neck and clustering hair, such a light
 
 Ill 'PENDENNIS' AND AFTER 149 
 
 foot and airy figure, such a slim hand lying in 
 
 his own and now parted from it with a gap 
 
 of ten thousand long days between." 
 
 This is a modest maid, who might well in 
 after life have been dazzled by ambition, and 
 for whom the committal of one serious flirtation 
 was quite a possibility ; but she could hardly, 
 as Thackeray would have us believe, have re- 
 mained in reality the same, and been subject to 
 recurrent attacks of a craving for an alliance 
 only capable of conferring social distinction. 
 " For her," he says in another place, " the world 
 began at night ; when she went in the train of 
 the old Countess from hotel to hotel, and danced 
 waltz after waltz with Prussian and Neapolitan 
 secretaries, with princes' officers of ordonnance — 
 with personages even more lofty very likely — for 
 the Court of the Citizen King was then in its 
 splendour ; and there must surely have been a 
 number of nimble young royal highnesses who 
 would like to dance with such a beauty as Miss 
 Newcome. The Marquis of Farintosh had a 
 share in these polite amusements. His English 
 conversation was not brilliant as yet, although 
 his French was eccentric ; but at the court 
 balls, whether he appeared in his uniform of the
 
 ISO THACKERAY: A STUDY CH. 
 
 Scotch Archers, or in his native Glenh'vat tartan, 
 there certainly was not in his own or the public 
 estimation a handsomer young nobleman in 
 Paris that season. It has been said that he 
 was greatly improved in dancing ; and, for a 
 young man of his age, his whiskers were really 
 extraordinarily large and curly. 
 
 " Miss Newcome, out of consideration for her 
 grandmother's strange antipathy to him, did not 
 inform Lady Kew that a young gentleman by 
 the name of Clive occasionally came to visit 
 the ' Hotel de Florae' " 
 
 The critic can hardly fail to observe that 
 much of Ethel Newcome's attraction consists 
 in the combination of qualities which are not 
 usually found together. 
 
 With Colonel Newcome it is different, though 
 we should be far less likely to meet with any- 
 thing approaching him in actual life. But it 
 is the strength of his qualities that is rare, not 
 their existence in one person. Generosity, mag- 
 nanimity, and gusts of noble rage belong often 
 to the same man. Though a magnanimity as 
 great as Colonel Newcome's is seldom seen, if 
 we did see it anywhere, we should almost expect 
 to find along with it the other constituents of
 
 Ill ' PENDENNIS' AND AFTER l^I 
 
 his character. Colonel Newcome is like the 
 giants in the children's books ; they are exactly- 
 like human beings, only larger. They have 
 all the features, and even wear the clothes of 
 humanity, and we are aware of a certain 
 loss in innocence and faith, when we cease 
 to believe in these reasonable monsters. So 
 well in Colonel Newcome is the resemblance 
 preserved, that we feel that even in his best 
 moments we are capable of imitating him. He 
 acts just as we should like to act, and very 
 much as we should act, if we were always 
 able to obey the higher instincts of our nature. 
 He does not pretend to be perfect ; he has little 
 of the reserve and self-control of Esmond ; and 
 he gives way more than once to passionate 
 anger and grief. But his motives never fail to 
 be generous, and the same want of calculation 
 that weakens his judgment gives freer play to 
 his heart. Henry Esmond, with a few alter- 
 ations, might have lived two thousand years 
 ago, and we catch traces in him of the stoic 
 acquiescence, and the pagan feeling for beauty, 
 which belonged to Marius the Epicurean. But 
 Colonel Newcome could hardly have flourished 
 before the beginning of our century. In
 
 152 THACKERAY: A STUDY CH. 
 
 some respects he recalls the knights of the 
 middle ages, but he has lost much of their 
 enthusiasm and certainty. He does not take 
 himself sufficiently seriously to belong to an 
 early civilization, and though as simple and 
 trustful as a child, has no idea of his indi- 
 viduality playing any considerable part in the 
 ordered scheme of things. He is a true product 
 of a later Christianity, as clear of fanaticism as 
 he is innocent of doubt. He is not troubled 
 with much philosophy, but he has enough to 
 suffer bravely and to live like an honest man, 
 and the scene at his death-bed is deservedly one 
 of the most famous in fiction. It is not only 
 that it is told with a kind of haunting pathos, 
 and a tender felicity of phrase, but its dignified 
 tragedy gives consistency and completeness to 
 the rambling incidents of the book. And just 
 as we are unable to judge of a career till it is 
 finished, it is only when we close ' The New- 
 comes ' that we clearly appreciate the accuracy 
 of its criticism of life. We are reminded of the 
 words of Mr. Stevenson : — " The sights and 
 thoughts of my youth pursue me ; and I see 
 like a vision the youth of my father, and of his 
 father, and the whole stream of lives flowing
 
 Ill 'PENDENNIS' AND AFTER 153 
 
 down with the sound of laughter and tears. 
 And I admire and bow my head before the 
 romance of destiny." 
 
 With ' The Newcomes ' off his hands, Thack- 
 eray gave up the next two years to writing 
 occasional verses and papers, and lecturing in 
 different cities. None of these occupations was 
 new. Whenever he had leisure, he was a fre- 
 quent contributor to the magazines, and he con- 
 tinually interspersed his tales with verses and 
 ballads. His claims to rank as a poet have 
 often been considered, and settled with a re- 
 markable unanimity. It is allowed on all sides 
 that the volume of his collected verses contains 
 nothing of high poetic quality, and is distin- 
 guished by none of those powers of contempla- 
 tion and directness which belong to the highest 
 poetry. But it is also admitted that his verses, 
 though never magical, are often charming, and 
 always bear the stamp of their author. The 
 tone, in general, is one of smiling melancholy, 
 as if the laughing and weeping philosophers 
 were to perform their functions at once. His 
 poems would not by themselves have secured 
 for Thackeray a high place in literature, but 
 some of them are not likely to be readily for-
 
 154 THACKERAY : A STUDY ch. 
 
 gotten. As a poet, his range was neither wide 
 nor particularly deep, but his touch is gentle 
 and true. His attitude is characteristically- 
 shown in the ' Ballad of Bouillabaise,' or in 
 
 " The story of two hundred years 
 Writ on the parchment of a drum," 
 
 but it is perhaps seen best in ' The Pen and the 
 Album.' The pen is supposed to be speaking : — 
 
 " I've helped him to pen many a line for bread, 
 To joke with sorrow aching in his head, 
 And make your laughter when his own heart bled. 
 
 " I've spoke with men of all degree and sort, 
 Peers of the land, and ladies of the Court. 
 Oh, but I've chronicled a deal of sport, 
 
 " Feasts that were ate a thousand days ago, 
 Biddings to wine that long hath ceased to flow, 
 Gay meetings with good fellows long laid low. 
 
 " Summons to bridal, banquet, burial, ball. 
 Tradesman's polite reminder of his small 
 Account due Christmas last — I've answered all." 
 
 The note is that of Omar Khayyam. But he 
 is not given over to sadness, and occasionally 
 he seems to remember that he ought to be com- 
 forted. Then a merrier mood supervenes, and 
 he can afford to break his jest about the inevit-
 
 I" 'PENDENNIS' AND AFTER 1 55 
 
 able Christmas bill. Occasionally he begins a 
 verse in the highest of spirits, but his voice is 
 apt to break. 
 
 " He, by custom patriarchal, 
 Loved to see the beaker sparkle, 
 And he thought the wine improved 
 Tasted by the lips he loved, 
 
 By the kindly lips he loved." 
 
 The added tenderness of the last line fore- 
 shadows the bitterness of regret. 
 
 Of his prose works, there is none of any im- 
 portance between ' The Rose and the Ring,' 
 published in 1855, and 'The Virginians,' which 
 did not appear till 1858. 'The Rose and the 
 Ring ' is a fairy story for children, but it does 
 not contain much that was peculiar to Thack- 
 eray, and ends, as by nature bound, with the 
 general happiness of every one. But of its kind, 
 as Mr. Lang prettily observes, " it is indispens- 
 able in every child's library, and parents should 
 be urged to purchase it at the first opportunity, 
 as without it no education is complete."^ It is 
 also interesting as throwing additional light on 
 Thackeray's character, and was the outcome of 
 the same feelings that find expression in the 
 ^ ' The Yellow Fairy Book ' : Preface.
 
 S56 THACKERAY: A STUDY CH. 
 
 concluding paragraph of ' The Newcomes.' 
 " The poet of Fableland," he says there, " re- 
 wards and punishes absolutely. He splendidly 
 deals out bags of sovereigns, which won't buy 
 anything ; belabours wicked backs with awful 
 blows, which do not hurt ; endows heroines 
 with preternatural beauty, and creates heroes 
 who, if ugly sometimes, yet possess a thousand 
 good qualities, and usually end by being im- 
 mensely rich ; makes the hero and heroine 
 happy at last, and happy ever after. Ah, happy, 
 harmless Fableland, where these things are ! 
 Friendly reader ! may you and the author meet 
 there on some future day ! He hopes so ; as 
 he yet keeps a lingering hold of your hand, 
 and bids you farewell with a kind heart." Here 
 is an author who does not fly to fairy tales for 
 relief from the harshness of the world, but who 
 sees in them, with a fine intuition, a justification 
 for its existence. 
 
 ' The Virginians,' the sequel to * Esmond,' is 
 one of the longest of Thackeray's books, and 
 the only one which it is almost impossible to 
 read as a whole. The story of ' The Newcomes ' 
 was not constructed with care, but compared 
 with that of ' The Virginians ' it is a model of
 
 in 'PENDENNIS' AND AFTER 1 57 
 
 what a plot should be. But it was necessary, 
 if the public was to be amused, to write some- 
 thing new ; and as Thackeray's invention had 
 begun to fail him, there was nothing for it but 
 to revivify, as best he could, the dry bones of a 
 former tale. For this, as there was no one in 
 * Vanity Fair ' whose fortunes were sufficiently 
 interesting, and as Mr. and Mrs. Arthur Pen- 
 dennis had begun to weary us in ' The New- 
 comes,' there was nothing left but to return to 
 the house of Castlewood, and to find there his 
 opportunity. In ' Esmond ' he had lingered 
 round its old grey walls till every stone of them 
 had become familiar, and he must have caught 
 at the idea, when it occurred to him, of peopling 
 them again with a younger generation. The 
 novel, indeed, begins with vivacity enough. 
 Henry Warrington rings the same bell his 
 grandfather had so often rung ; the fountain 
 in the courtyard plashes again ; and the momen- 
 tary appearance of Madame Bernstein adds 
 reality to the illusion. But as the novel pro- 
 ceeds, it loses its connection. We are spirited 
 across from England to America, and from 
 America to England ; people whom we had 
 looked upon as dead come suddenly to life ;.
 
 158 THACKERAY: A STUDY CH. 
 
 and of the brothers it is not clear which interests 
 us most at odd moments, or least in the end. 
 And though it was not inartistic that we should 
 catch a glimpse of Beatrix in her old age, the 
 Baroness Bernstein is far too much in evidence. 
 She is the central figure of 'The Virginians.' 
 Again and again we are invited to mark the 
 results of selfishness and caprice, and the old 
 sinner with her rouge and her cards points a 
 moral too obvious and dull. The chief effect 
 of the character is to destroy much of the 
 illusion of ' Esmond,' but uncalled-for as it is, 
 it is drawn with more care than any other in 
 the book. Henry and George, the Castlewood 
 family, are not colourless, it is true ; but they 
 have little consistency or vigour about them, 
 while Theo and Hetty are vague almost to 
 faintness. 
 
 With the historical personages, Thackeray is 
 in general more successful, and there are many 
 charming glimpses of the eighteenth-century 
 fribbles and wits. But the attempt to portray 
 the youth of George Washington is not even 
 seriously made. ' The Virginians ' is a book to 
 dip into and to glance at occasionally with 
 profit, but it is too lengthy and too purposeless
 
 in 'PENDENNLS' AND AFTER 1 59 
 
 to claim attention as a whole. It serves as a 
 good example to show how useless are great 
 faculties of wisdom and discernment, when 
 unallied with a sense of order and proportion. 
 The truth is, all good novels present to us the 
 world in miniature, and the figures, unless we 
 get some hint of a scheme behind them, interest 
 us no more than shadows on a wall. A tale 
 *' full of sound and fury, signifying nothing," 
 is precluded by its nature from giving an 
 accurate representation of life. It was not that 
 Thackeray did not know this, but his pen and 
 brain were weary, and he was becoming in- 
 capable of taking a wide view of the large 
 subjects with which he still endeavoured to 
 grapple. 
 
 In ' The Four Georges,' a series of lectures 
 delivered some time before, but not published 
 till i860, this fault is beginning to be evident, 
 all the more, perhaps, because it was a topic on 
 which he was constitutionally incapable of being 
 heard to advantage. Had he written the lectures 
 at the time when his interest in life was at its 
 keenest and freshest, he could hardly have done 
 justice to the four Georges. He never saw 
 anything in a king, except a very ordinary
 
 l60 THACKERAY: A STUDY CH. 
 
 mortal, dressed out with pomposity and conceit ; 
 but in ' The Four Georges ' he makes no attempt 
 to cope with the difficulties of his task. It was 
 natural that he should not view them as rulers, 
 but he might at least have attempted to present 
 to us a connected idea of their careers. He 
 who would turn the pages of ' The Four 
 Georges ' to learn anything of parliamentary 
 government would only lose his labour for his 
 pains ; but the reader who expected to find 
 there what manner of men they were, who were 
 so greatly responsible for modern England, 
 would commit an equally grave, though more 
 natural mistake. Unlike ' The Virginians,' the 
 lectures are interesting reading, but, like ' The 
 Virginians,' they suffer from their author's never 
 having had a clear idea of what he was 
 engaged in describing. They consist rather in 
 gossip about the habits of the four Georges 
 than in criticism of their policy, or in portraits 
 of the men. 
 
 Of the other two books of this period, remin- 
 iscent also of his earlier work, there is little to 
 be said. One, ' Lovel the Widower,' was no 
 more than a rehabilitation of a dramatic frag- 
 ment called ' The Wolves and the Lamb,' written
 
 Ill 'PENDENNIS' AND AFTER l6l 
 
 in 1854. The plot is almost identical, and in 
 the original it was so farcical and harsh, that it 
 was next door to impossible to make anything 
 of it. But what patience could effect has been 
 done, and ' Lovel the Widower ' is the best of 
 the stories that properly belong to the period of 
 ' Mrs. Perkins's Ball ' and ' The Kickleburys on 
 the Rhine.' But even then it was a poor kind 
 of achievement for the author of ' Pendennis ' 
 and ' The Newcomes.' Mrs. Prior, a pilferer 
 of sugar, and her daughter, a reformed and 
 hypocritical ballet-girl, are not pleasant people 
 to contemplate, and many of the other char- 
 acters, like Lady Baker, are sordid in their self- 
 importance and vulgarity. The kindliness of 
 his later manner, and the interest of his digres- 
 sions, were powerless to construct from these a 
 kindly or interesting story. 
 
 With his other tale, 'The Adventures of 
 Philip,' they were more successful ; and, in its 
 way, to transform Caroline Gann into the little 
 sister said much for his creative genius. But 
 the novel, which might have been good, is 
 marred all through by having to carry along 
 with it several of the melodramatic characters 
 
 from the unfortunate ' Shabby Genteel Story.' 
 
 M
 
 1 62 THACKERAY: A STUDY CH. 
 
 George Brandon was not likely to have turned 
 out better than Dr. Firmin, and the parson who 
 celebrated the mock marriage might have ended 
 his career as Mr. Tufton Hunt ; but when we 
 consider ' Philip ' by itself, these characters are 
 not to be admired. If George Brandon could 
 have existed so could Firmin, but the one is as 
 extravagant as the other, and the surroundings 
 which were natural to both were not worth 
 depicting. Even the good people catch a taint 
 from the atmosphere in which these worthies 
 move, and Arthur Pendennis and Laura have 
 so little of their old charm that we wonder why 
 they should have been dragged from their quiet 
 and cosy corner. 
 
 But the book is not without a biographical 
 interest, inasmuch as it is merely a rechauffee of 
 many earlier productions. Philip Firmin's adven- 
 tures are not altogether unlike those of Pen- 
 dennis, but he is a loud and noisy person, whose 
 literary efforts must have been astonishingly 
 bald. The Earl of Ringwood is a more violent 
 edition of the Marquis of Steyne, and the 
 publisher in the book is, what one would hardly 
 have thought possible, a caricature of Bungay 
 and Bacon. Charlotte is a mixture of Theo
 
 ni 'PENDENNIS' AND AFTER 163 
 
 Lambert and Amelia Sedley, and for Philip's 
 misadventure at the ball we have to go as far 
 back as ' The Memoirs of George Fitzboodle.' 
 In hardly any instance is the repetition an im- 
 provement, and the book, which added nothing 
 to Thackeray's reputation, contains hardly any- 
 thing that was new. It was the last of his 
 imaginative works which he was destined to 
 complete. 
 
 There remain besides, as the fruit of his 
 declining years, only the unfinished fragment 
 of ' Denis Duval,' and * The Roundabout Papers,' 
 which with their fine spirit of humanity and 
 calm, form a fitting close to his life. 
 
 " A big, fierce, weeping, hungry man," says 
 Carlyle, summing up his view of Thackeray, 
 " not a strong one ; " and the judgment, if 
 inaccurate, is sufficiently luminous to help us 
 to understand him. It has the merit, among 
 others, of suggesting that we should fix our 
 attention rather on the writer than on his writ- 
 ings, for it is Thackeray, and not the work for 
 which he was responsible, that has left so large 
 a mark upon our time. His personality is 
 always to the front, and it is not life so much as
 
 164 THACKERAY : A STUDY CH. 
 
 his view of it which we see in his novels. At 
 bottom he was more a preacher than an artist ; and 
 if we were only to look at his books separately, 
 and to judge of them as works of art, we should 
 form a wrong estimate of his probable influence. 
 In any serious attempt to ascertain his place in 
 literature, we should have to consider not only 
 his novels, but the whole character of their 
 author as it appears to us in them. But this, 
 as far as the works are concerned, is what has 
 been attempted in the foregoing pages, and 
 before proceeding to lay down anything about 
 his character as a whole, and free from the en- 
 cumbrance of being only able to touch on it in- 
 cidentally, while dealing with his tales and novels 
 in chronological succession, it will be convenient 
 to summarize what has been said. 
 
 Till the publication of ' Barry Lyndon ' he 
 wrote nothing which, by itself, has interest for 
 posterity. The Yellowplush papers and corre- 
 spondence ' Cox's Diary,' ' The Fatal Boots,' and 
 the whole series of satires and novelettes which 
 he produced at that period, were purely ephemeral. 
 A parody so long as ' Catherine,' a tale so sordid 
 as the 'Shabby Genteel Story,' a novelette so 
 ineffective as 'The Great Hoggarty Diamond,'
 
 I" 'PENDENNIS' AND AFTER 165 
 
 would by themselves have given no author 
 lasting reputation. And even ' Barry Lyndon,' 
 it must be repeated, though a remarkable 
 production, has few of the qualities of a work of 
 the first excellence. It will be read, perhaps, as 
 long as ' Jonathan Wild,' but it is not to ' Jonathan 
 Wild ' that Fielding owes his fame. ' The Book 
 of Snobs,' and the novelettes dealing with that 
 genus, chiefly appealed to the generation for 
 which they were written, and they will soon 
 cease to have any but a historical interest. Nor 
 are ' The Virginians ' and ' Philip ' likely to fare 
 any better, and nobody who was merely looking 
 for a good novel would trouble himself with 
 them. 
 
 But when we come to * Vanity Fair,' to * Pen- 
 dennis,' and * The Newcomes,' we raise a more 
 serious question. Here we have books which, 
 at the first sight, might appear to be sufficiently 
 good to stand alone. A great many qualities, 
 however, are necessary for literary immortality, 
 and in some these three novels are notoriously 
 deficient. In the first place, they extend without 
 exception to far too great a length, and though 
 they might hold the reader's interest from 
 monthly number to monthly number, when
 
 1 66 THACKERAY : A STUDY CH. 
 
 published as a whole they are only readable 
 with difficulty. In the second, ' Pendennis ' and 
 ' The Newcomes ' are constructed with so little 
 art, that we should not be surprised if the con- 
 clusion arrived with any chapter, or was never 
 reached at all ; and even in * Vanity Fair,' the 
 fall of Becky, the natural termination of the 
 book, occurs about the middle of the second 
 volume. They seem, both in plot and in method, 
 to be the work of chance, whereas in every 
 really great work of art "the ideal in all its 
 completeness governs the whole process ; and 
 there is not, from the very outset, one arbitrary 
 stroke, one note or touch, that is not instinct 
 with the power of the whole, and prophetic of 
 its fulfilment." ^ The result is, that even with all 
 their merits these defects alone would make us 
 hesitate to predict that any one of them would 
 for its own sake continue to be read, whereas 
 we would turn to ' The Scarlet Letter ' and * Old 
 Mortality,' if Scott and Hawthorne had written 
 nothing else. This happy fate, the power of for 
 ever compelling readers by its own intrinsic 
 excellence, belongs to only one of Thackeray's 
 books, ' The History of Henry Esmond.' 
 
 ^ Principal Caird : 'The Philosophy of Religion.'
 
 Ill 'PENDENNIS' AND AFTER 167 
 
 But even without it, his great works would 
 never have wanted for an audience, and it would 
 be safe to say that he will remain a classic, not 
 on account of any of them, but because of all. 
 The author of ' Pendennis ' can be studied in 
 ' The Newcomes,' and in ' Pendennis ' the author 
 of ' Vanity Fair,' and, even in his minor pro- 
 ductions, the character of Thackeray. None of 
 these works would have made its author a 
 classic, but they are each classical because they 
 were written by him. With all his faults, there 
 has been no such genius engaged in novel- 
 writing since the death of Scott, none with such 
 width of discernment, and so humane an under- 
 standing of life. He has left a very different 
 body of work, it is true ; but it will all repay 
 study, as the production of an author who had 
 much that is vital to say, not only to his own 
 generation, but to those that come after. Hard 
 as the task, from an artistic standpoint, may 
 appear, it will be readily undertaken by multi- 
 tudes as long as our civilization remains approxi- 
 mately the same. A writer who so constantly 
 " knocks directly at the door of our tears," who 
 has so great a command over our modern 
 emotions, may express himself in any form he
 
 l68 THACKERAY : A STUDY CH. 
 
 pleases, and yet not forfeit his claim to our 
 attention. In his excellences and defects he 
 remains the prose epitome of our century. 
 
 The complexity of his character has already 
 been adverted to ; and his infelicities were 
 almost as great as his successes. ' Esmond ' 
 was beyond the reach of Scott, but ' Catherine ' 
 was equally far below it. Lady Castlewood is 
 as spiritual as any of Hawthorne's creations, 
 but Becky Sharp might have been painted by 
 Hogarth ; and ' The Book of Snobs ' is occupied 
 entirely with the exterior of things. 
 
 If one might borrow terms from philosophy, 
 Thackeray was a dualist. For him there were 
 two worlds ; he was not " pure air and fire," and 
 the " dull elements of earth and water " were 
 also constituents of his being. When we read 
 Fielding, we think of nothing but the body, its 
 clothes and its affections. Man in his pages is 
 the highest of the animals, but still an animal. 
 When we read Shakespeare or Hawthorne, we 
 form no accurate idea what the different people 
 are like, we seem to know them themselves, to 
 be familiar, not with their persons, but with 
 their thoughts. So much is this so, that we are 
 not offended to see Hamlet played on two
 
 ni 'PENDENNIS' AND AFTER 169 
 
 consecutive nights by different actors, and no 
 one ever wasted a moment on computing the 
 income of Miriam or Zenobia. But for Thack- 
 eray, the exterior of the character had as much 
 attraction as the character itself. His greatest 
 tragedy, that of ' The Newcomes,' is brought 
 about by the loss of money ; and Henry 
 Esmond, who remains for us the pure idea of 
 a melancholy commentator on life, has his face 
 marred by the ravages of small-pox. 
 
 A similar attitude is noticeable in his treat- 
 ment of greater things. At one moment he 
 seems to be full of the joy of existence, at the 
 next to be reminding us that we must not value 
 it too highly ; and his transitions from the 
 material to the spiritual are almost startlingly 
 abrupt. He loved the world, yet he was always 
 preaching its vanity, and though he constantly 
 adjures us to look beyond, he accentuates, 
 rather than conceals, the bitterness of parting 
 with it. It is for this reason that he is so 
 modern, and, like Tennyson, represents both our 
 weakness and our strength. He does not speak 
 to us from the calm heights of Wordsworth, and 
 he has none of Mr. Arnold's cold decision, for his 
 character was not purely contemplative, and he
 
 I/O THACKERAY: A STUDY CH. in 
 
 was far more akin to the Hebrews than the 
 Greeks. But his voice, though it may be broken 
 with tears, is never without its note of hope and 
 consolation. 
 
 " Oh the sad old pages," he writes in one of his 
 last papers, " the dull old pages. Oh the cares, 
 the ennui, the squabbles, the repetitions, the old 
 conversations over and over again ! But now 
 and again a kind thought is recalled, and now 
 and again a dear memory. Yet a few chapters 
 more, and then the last, after which behold 
 Finis itself come to an end, and the Infinite 
 begun." 
 
 Who is there who does not recognize in the 
 writer of that passage a humanity and a rever- 
 ence that are found in conjunction only in the 
 ereatest minds ?
 
 CHAPTER IV 
 
 STYLE AND GENERAL CHARACTERISTICS 
 
 That it should be considered necessary to 
 write anything on the style of an author, on the 
 turn of his periods, or on the arrangement of 
 his sentences, is one of the curiosities of literary 
 criticism. But we live at a time in which some 
 such criticism is particularly demanded. 
 
 At first sight it appears almost too clear for 
 demonstration, that the style and the author 
 are one and the same, and that as in the art of 
 speaking in public, if a man has nothing to say 
 he will never learn to say it. But the truth 
 of this axiom has been constantly disputed, 
 and there have been periods in all countries, in 
 which it has been thought that all that was 
 necessary for excellence as a writer, was a 
 power of tormenting the language with suf- 
 ficient grace. But the quality of greatness is in
 
 172 THACKERAY: A STUDY CH. 
 
 itself peculiar, and it follows that great orators 
 and writers, when they express their ideas 
 naturally, use a form and manner not common 
 to common men. Their habits of thinking are 
 the cause of their style, and it is a fallacy that 
 would be obvious if less frequent to suppose 
 that we shall arrive at a similar result by any 
 study of the effect. 
 
 The fallacy, nevertheless, has obtained credit 
 with many considerable writers. Ever since the 
 time of Euphues, there have been found, at 
 recurrent intervals, various schools of authors, 
 professing the same objects as those who are now 
 content to be known, as if in ridicule of their 
 claims, by the barbarous appellation of" stylists." 
 The study of style by itself labours under two 
 grave disadvantages. In the first place the 
 object of the study, which is a living imitation, 
 is unattainable, and in the second it is bound to 
 produce a nerveless and affected literature. It 
 would almost seem that the students of this art 
 supposed that language was not the natural 
 vehicle of thought, and that it was as difficult 
 for a man to learn to write, as for an infant to 
 learn to speak. The truth is of course quite the 
 other way, and reading does not more easily
 
 IV GENERAL CHARACTERISTICS 1 73 
 
 make a full man, than a full man expresses his 
 thoughts. If a man has anything to say, to say 
 it is only difficult if he has confused his mind 
 and cramped his fingers, by studying how it 
 may best be done. 
 
 Towards the end of the eighteenth century, 
 when there was a singular and healthy absence 
 of writing about writing itself, there was hardly 
 an author who was not the possessor of a blame- 
 less and perspicuous style. Let any one open 
 at hazard any of the introductions to the poetical 
 translations so common then, or any volume on 
 travel or government, and he will find that 
 however inconsiderable the writer, whatever he 
 has got to say he has no difficulty in saying 
 with simplicity and force. Even Johnson, a 
 considerable offender against simplicity, was well 
 aware of its value, and selected the pages of 
 Addison as the model of English prose. It has 
 been commonly said that Johnson thought in 
 Saxon, and wrote in Latin, phraseology. But 
 this is far from a complete explanation, and the 
 elephantine tread of his earlier style is only an 
 exaggeration of the cumbrousness of his ideas, 
 and arose in great part from the necessity of 
 saying something new on social subjects that
 
 174 THACKERAY: A STUDY CH. 
 
 had been fully dealt with before. In the * Lives of 
 the Poets,' where he broke ground comparatively 
 fresh, and on which he had thought much and 
 often, his style more resembles pointed conver- 
 sation than his previous contributions to the 
 ' Rambler.' To take another instance ; Milton, it 
 has been said with obvious truth, is a great 
 master of style, and there are many passages in 
 Milton not free from the charge of straining 
 after effect ; but in the main he writes as he 
 thinks, and where the construction of the lines 
 is remarkable, the thoughts that inform them 
 are generally unique. 
 
 And this will be found to mark the difference 
 between the style of a great author, and the 
 laboured language of a " stylist." In every book 
 passages must occur where the reader's atten- 
 tion is arrested, and these will be found on 
 re-perusal to contain, either a striking thought, or 
 a series of sentences artificially arranged. The 
 one, if words be used in their proper sense, is 
 style, the other, artifice. Thackeray, as much 
 as any author since Addison or Swift, is a 
 master of style, free, simple, and easy, narrating 
 the simplest things in the simplest m.anner, 
 rising to such heights of grandeur as his mind
 
 IV GENERAL CHARACTERISTICS 1 75 
 
 was susceptible of, and moving responsive to 
 every mood of his capacious tenderness. Always 
 his servant, never his master, what he thought it 
 said with so literal an exactness as to make him 
 in one sense the most truthful of writers. If he 
 descends into caricature, he alone is responsible ; 
 if his power of discrimination is lost in abuse it 
 is not his style that has hurried him away. Of 
 such a style, so unobtrusive, so obedient, if a 
 critic were anxious to be paradoxical, he would 
 say it did not exist. But that Thackeray has 
 no style is only true in the sense in which it is 
 the highest compliment that can be paid him. 
 He has no mannerisms which he has made his 
 own, no phrases of which he cannot rid himself, 
 no tricks of arranging his particles or postponing 
 the introduction of his verbs. Even when he 
 indulges in the repetition of a word, and makes 
 Barry Lyndon speak of his " poor dear, dear 
 little boy," or Esmond of his " dear, dear mis- 
 tress," the charm consists in the absence of any 
 studied artifice, in the expression being there by 
 an accidental overflow of affection. Neither is 
 his habit of familiarly addressing the reader a 
 trick of style, it is a mannerism exceedingly 
 characteristic, and more a fault of thought than
 
 1/6 THACKERAY: A STUDY ch. 
 
 of language. Its frequent occurrence, however 
 irksome, is never unnatural. The pen talks to 
 the reader, because the author is determined to 
 treat him as a companion. 
 
 It is true, no doubt, that the critical reader 
 would recognize any long quotation from 
 Thackeray as the work of his hand, and so 
 far he has a manner of his own, but every good 
 author has as much as this. The prose of 
 Bacon, and even of Addison, is recognizable, 
 and even where a writer's range is far wider 
 than Thackeray's, there is still in every con- 
 siderable passage the imprint of his hand. 
 There is a literature about the doubtful plays of 
 Shakespeare founded on internal evidence alone. 
 Other authors who have become the devotees 
 of their style could be recognized even if the 
 sense of the passage were altered. There are 
 many passages of Mr. Stevenson's that we 
 would know to be borrowed in whatever context 
 they were found. "At the best of it," says 
 Mr. Stevenson, " there was an icy place about my 
 heart, and life seemed a black business to be 
 at all engaged in. For two souls in particular 
 my pity flowed." And again : " Of a sudden her 
 face appeared in my memory, the way I had
 
 IV GENERAL CHARACTERISTICS I// 
 
 first seen it, with the parted lips ; at that, weak- 
 ness came in my bosom and strength into my 
 legs." This is a kind of effective writing in 
 which Thackeray never indulges. Where he 
 has a plain statement to make, he makes it 
 plainly, and his unembellished narrative depends 
 on reflection and incident alone. By this means 
 occasionally he is dull, but he never wearies. 
 The attention of his readers may sometimes 
 stray, but their interest is never palled, and he 
 is saved entirely from that tendency which in 
 varying degrees is so fatal to modern prose — 
 to sacrifice even sense and dignity upon the 
 " altar of art." 
 
 Of the other portion of this chapter, of the 
 general characteristics of Thackeray, it is not 
 so easy to speak. The subject " bristles with 
 commonplace," which though not absolutely 
 correct, and consequently not safely to be 
 ignored, is based, in the main, on a fair esti- 
 mate of the author. All therefore that here 
 can be done is to go over ground, of necessity 
 familiar, and to deal with topics on which the 
 current notions contain an unusual degree of 
 truth. 
 
 The early part of Thackeray's life, after he 
 
 N
 
 1/8 THACKERAY : A STUDY CH. 
 
 had settled down to a literary career, was spent 
 amid Bohemian surroundings. A solitary man, 
 left alone with his children, he sought relaxation 
 amid a bachelor society. His university career 
 was short, and never having been a member 
 of a regular profession, his acquaintanceships 
 until a later period were mostly formed among 
 those of similar tastes and occupations. Part 
 of his life he spent in clubs, part in that large 
 district called Bohemia, and part as a solitary 
 student. The environment of a romance writer 
 is of little consequence, because his business has 
 no connection with affairs, but for a novelist 
 it is of the first importance. The author of a 
 novel of manners which professedly depicts 
 society, can hardly be said to be equipped for 
 his task unless he has seen "all sorts and 
 conditions of men," and travels as wide as those 
 of Ulysses would form no useless part of his 
 education. It is the duty of a novelist to see 
 life, and to see it whole. A partial study of a 
 restricted area has its use no doubt, but it is 
 apt to lead to mistakes that the mere student 
 would not be tempted to commit. A man by 
 nature reflective, meditating on the abyss of 
 Bohemianism which he saw around him, might
 
 IV GENERAL CHARACTERISTICS 1/9 
 
 well think Dr. Brand Firmin and his confrhes 
 possible and even likely characters ; to the man 
 of the world, as to the philosopher, they seem 
 so improbably detestable as not to be worth 
 depicting. 
 
 Thackeray's early life indeed furnished a poor 
 training for the work by which he has become a 
 classic, and it explains much that is wanting in 
 his novels, and much that ought not to have 
 been there. What he saw of Bohemia afforded 
 material for some of his least agreeable sketches, 
 and the influence of his sojourn in club-land is 
 plainly discernible in ' The Book of Snobs,' and 
 even, though there much more happily, in ' Pcn- 
 dennis.' The strange rivalry between Lady 
 Castlewood and Beatrix as objects of Esmond's 
 affection, though worked out with such charms 
 as hardly to displease, is a product of the study. 
 Theoretically there is nothing impossible in the 
 situation, and the reader is content to believe 
 that a man might be in love with both mother 
 and daughter at the same time, but that Esmond 
 should pay his addresses to the one, and ulti- 
 mately marry the other, offends those who are 
 unable to remember such an instance of raptur- 
 ous and methodical affection.
 
 l80 THACKERAY: A STUDY CH. 
 
 Some such connection there must be between 
 the circumstances of a novelist and the scenes 
 he makes familiar by the exercise of his art, but 
 in Thackeray's case the connection is unusually 
 close. He depicted what he saw, and where his 
 experience failed him he fell back upon his 
 imagination, only to return to his experience 
 when his imagination was exhausted. He had 
 no notion of supplementing the one by the other, 
 to fill up a preconcerted list of scenes and 
 characters, that it is highly improbable he ever 
 made. If it was possible to do without a plan, he 
 did without it, and if he did not happen to need 
 a character to complete a scene, he rarely troubled 
 his invention. He had seen some doubtful 
 journalists, and there are doubtful journalists 
 in plenty in his books, but he introduces us to 
 no author who is both a scholar and a gentleman. 
 In ' The Newcomes ' we fall upon a large company 
 of artists ; they are all, however, of the class 
 with whom he might have come in contact in 
 his youth. Yet he must have known that there 
 were living many celebrated painters who were 
 socially quite his equals ; nor is there any reason 
 easily discoverable why Ridley, the only artist 
 of ability mentioned in the novel, should have
 
 IV GENERAL CHARACTERISTICS l8l 
 
 been the offspring of a cook. In his novels of 
 society none of his characters seem to have even 
 a passing acquaintance with any public man of 
 respectable reputation. 
 
 In his later works the omissions are more 
 remarkable still, for by that time his society 
 was courted by many distinguished by rank, in 
 letters, or in art. Yet in ' Philip * the publisher 
 and the authors, if intended to represent a class, 
 are obvious caricature, and before he wrote 
 * The Virginians ' he must have discovered that 
 a peer is not of necessity either an idiot or a 
 sot. But so startling is his attitude towards 
 some sections of the community, that no ex- 
 amination of the circumstances of the first 
 portion of his active life will serve to explain it. 
 He almost seems to have persisted in certain 
 views less from habit than perversity. ' Esmond ' 
 could not have been written by any one who in 
 taste and sympathies was not in himself an 
 aristocrat, but if one runs over the list of his 
 noble characters not contained in that volume, 
 the names that suggest themselves are those of 
 Lord Bareacres and Lord Crabs, Lord Ring- 
 wood, and the Marquises of Steyne and Far- 
 intosh. The single exceptions that are not
 
 1 82 THACKERAY: A STUDY CH. 
 
 historical, are Lord Kew in ' The Newcomes,' and 
 the slightly-drawn characters of Lady Knights- 
 bridge in ' The Kickleburys on the Rhine/ and 
 Lady Rockminster in ' Pendennis.' 
 
 His treatment of the clergy is even more 
 extraordinary, and the explanation that a man 
 so reverent would naturally pursue any one 
 who degraded his sacred office with peculiar 
 vehemence, would serve better if Thackeray had 
 been dealing with real and not fictitious person- 
 ages. After all, it is not so much for the opinions 
 he holds that an author is responsible, as for 
 those he actively disseminates, and what an 
 opinion of the English clergy must the reader, 
 who is content to take Thackeray at his word, 
 be compelled to form ! There is a paper on 
 clerical snobs, and the degrading spectacle of 
 Mr. Tufton Hunt. There is Bishop Tusher, of 
 whom it is enough to remark that no worse 
 punishment could be found for Beatrix than to 
 marry her to him. Mr. Sampson plays a large 
 part in ' The Virginians,' and the Rev. C. J. 
 Honeyman wearies the reader of * The New- 
 comes ' with his continual whine. Dr. Portman 
 in ' Pendennis ' is too slight a sketch to be placed 
 in opposition to these, and it was not till he
 
 IV GENERAL CHARACTERISTICS 1 83 
 
 came to write ' Denis Duval ' that Thackeray 
 did tardy justice to the profession by the creation 
 of Dr. Barnard. 
 
 These are serious faults, and care is needed 
 lest undue weight should be given them ; but 
 it must at once be conceded that they afford 
 some ground for the hasty criticism, that they 
 are the product of " a club-window view of life." 
 Catch phrases, however, are apt to mislead ; 
 they owe their popularity to the attraction 
 of facile and effective exaggeration, and they 
 escape criticism the more easily as their mean- 
 ing is seldom precise. It is not perhaps unfair 
 that they should be construed with liberality, 
 and that, where ambiguous, they should be 
 understood in the most favourable sense ; but 
 such leniency tends to perpetuate their exist- 
 ence. In the present instance it is so obvious 
 that Thackeray's view of life was not that of 
 the ordinary spectator at the window of a club, 
 that the originator of the phrase must be sup- 
 posed to have meant something less violent and 
 false. The ordinary member of a club, passing 
 from his window his airy judgment on men and 
 things, is in general a superficial observer, or 
 at best, but " a surface man of theories, true
 
 184 THACKERAY: A STUDY CH. 
 
 to none." If Thackeray had a characteristic 
 that can be said to be pecuh'arly his own, it 
 was his power of seeing into the interior of a 
 heart, and his habit of analyzing and dissecting 
 the mechanism of our actions and emotions. 
 The author of the phrase under discussion 
 cannot have meant to deny this, and to say 
 that Thackeray had " a club-window view of 
 life " must be understood to mean that he saw 
 life from a club-window, and this, though subject 
 to deductions, contains a large clement of truth. 
 If we leave ' Esmond ' out of account, and put 
 on one side a variety of characters, of whom 
 Colonel Newcome, Mrs. Pendennis, Laura, and 
 Ethel are a few, it will be found to be a suffi- 
 ciently notable characteristic of his work. He 
 brought, in short, his great faculties to bear on 
 an artificially restricted area. 
 
 His omissions alone would not justify this 
 criticism, no author can be expected to deal 
 with every profession and occupation ; but if 
 he does deal with many of them, the principle 
 of selection should not be arbitrary, and those 
 dealt with should be treated with truth and 
 care. That the villain of a story should belong 
 to any particular class may be, and generally
 
 IV GENERAL CHARACTERISTICS 1 85 
 
 is, an accident, and that Arthur Dimmcsdalc ^ 
 should be a clergyman is no libel on the 
 clergy ; but Thackeray must have known that 
 his journalists, his aristocrats, and his chaplains 
 appeal to the public not more as individuals 
 than as types, not more as men who disgrace 
 the class to which they belong than as repre- 
 sentatives of others by supposition similar to 
 themselves. A novelist, moreover, who ostenta- 
 tiously offers to conduct us round Vanity Fair, 
 has no title to miss so many of its important 
 streets ; and a moralist who expects to convince 
 should furnish a fair description of a society upon 
 which he is eager to animadvert ; his auditors 
 must be assured of the authenticity of the text 
 before they can become interested in its exposi- 
 tion. That there are wicked people in the world 
 is unfortunately true, — if it were not so there 
 would be no need for a moralist, — but the pro- 
 portion wickedness bears to virtue is exaggerated 
 in Thackeray's novels quite beyond belief. 
 
 But it is not only in dealing with the pre- 
 valence of vice that his cynicism is apparent ; 
 an acute critic has pointed out that it is not 
 quite absent even when he is treating of virtue. 
 ^ In 'The Scarlet Letter.'
 
 1 86 THACKERAY : A STUDY CH. 
 
 One can imagine what a shout of joy Diogenes 
 the cynic would have raised if he had satisfied 
 himself that " he had encountered anywhere an 
 honest man doing his duty with decent con- 
 stancy," 1 and the jubilation in which Thackeray 
 indulges over the virtues of Colonel Newcome 
 and Esmond comes dangerously near conveying 
 a reproach to their species. It is true that the 
 turning-point of Esmond's career is occasioned 
 by an act of self-sacrifice seldom equalled, and 
 the magnanimity of the Colonel when assailed 
 by Mrs. Mackenzie is such as almost to be out 
 of the course of nature ; but there are many of 
 their ordinary actions which come in for an ex- 
 cessive measure of laudation, and the innuendo 
 that kindness, simplicity, and affection are no 
 part of our common lives is not to be overlooked. 
 These are the limitations which attach to 
 Thackeray as a novelist and as a moralist, and 
 the one character suffers from each of them as 
 much as the other. The duty of a novelist is 
 primarily that of an observer, but it is not 
 possible to observe without forming conclusions 
 on what has been seen. The duty of a moralist 
 
 ^ Carlyle on Savage Landor. ' Conversations with 
 ■Carlyle,' Sir Charles Gavan Duffy, K.C.M.G. 1892.
 
 IV GENERAL CHARACTERISTICS 1 87 
 
 is primarily that of a commentator, but he can- 
 not properly come to a conclusion unless he 
 has observed. It is necessary to have seen 
 everything before one can either judge or repre- 
 sent the whole. In so far as one's vision is 
 restricted one will fall short of excellence in 
 either capacity. But though this is true, and 
 the provinces of an artist and a moralist are 
 identical, they approach the common ground 
 from different directions. It is the duty of a 
 moralist to point the moral relations in the 
 world ; of an artist to show the world in moral 
 relations. The work of a great artist must be 
 moral if the world is moral ; his business is to 
 survey mankind, and to show a small piece of 
 nature, governed by the same laws which 
 regulate, and subject to the same conditions 
 which determine, a whole so vast that, without 
 his aid, few can understand it. Virtue in his 
 pages may go unrewarded, vice may flourish in 
 high places, and he may have to pay no forfeit 
 to the truth. But if his work is to be artistic, if 
 his object is not to seize violently, and detach 
 from its natural setting, any particular portion 
 of experience ; if his aim, however slight his 
 sketch, however special his subject, is to repre-
 
 l88 THACKERAY : A STUDY CH. 
 
 sent a part without prejudice to the whole ; 
 virtue and vice, when exhibited, must arouse in 
 the other actors in his tale, in the chorus in his 
 mimic world, the same sentiments which these 
 qualities invariably excite. His characters, 
 unless perfect or diabolical, and such instances 
 in nature are astonishingly few, must possess 
 the vices corresponding to their virtues, and the 
 excellences corresponding to their defects. A 
 warm-hearted man may be represented as a 
 drunkard, but not as both warm-hearted and 
 cruel ; a brave soldier as committing murder, 
 but not as the perpetrator of a petty theft. 
 Lastly, Virtue and Vice must appear in their 
 ordinary proportion. The literary artist, in this 
 sense, is the interpreter of Nature, though he is 
 no mere copyist, and his individuality is a factor 
 that properly enters into his criticism of life ; 
 but the play of his individuality must not lead 
 him to overstep the limits prescribed for his art. 
 He must neither violate probability, nor mis- 
 represent experience. 
 
 Judged by this standard 'Vanity Fair' is 
 immoral just because it is inartistic. The por- 
 trayal of the Marquis of Steyne is neither 
 immoral nor inartistic, but the account of his
 
 IV GENERAL CHARACTERISTICS 1 89 
 
 reception by the public of ' Vanity Fair ' is both. 
 Mr. Osborne could hardly, at one and the same 
 time, regret his treatment of his son, and carry 
 his resentment towards his son's faithful friend 
 so far beyond the grave. The company brought 
 together in ' Vanity Fair ' is an outrage on the 
 constitution of the world. The multitudinous 
 sermons that Thackeray preaches in the novel 
 do not save it from artistic immorality. They 
 prevent its tendency being practically vicious, 
 but by a method foreign to an artist. 
 
 This is all the truth to be extracted from the 
 discussion M. Taine has dealt with, at such 
 needless length, and from which he has derived 
 such bewildering conclusions. His famous sen- 
 tence, " The regular presence of a moral intention 
 spoils the novel," if it means more than what 
 has just been admitted, — and when taken with 
 its context it can hardly be supposed to mean 
 nothing more, — is the exact contrary of the 
 facts. A great artist is a great moralist, whether 
 consciously or not ; and it is impossible to 
 suppose that the moral effect produced by 
 Shakespeare's plays or the novels of Scott is 
 the result of simple accident. The incidents of 
 * Othello,' of Lear,' and of ' Old Mortality,' are so
 
 I90 THACKERAY : A STUDY CH. 
 
 arranged as to satisfy almost every moral senti- 
 ment which we possess. The regular presence 
 of a moral intention, as a matter of fact, saves 
 and strengthens the novel. It is only by the 
 regular presence of a moral intention that any 
 great work of art is ever produced. It is only 
 by its regular presence that the public is spared 
 the infliction of periodical disquisitions upon the 
 conduct of life. Had ' Vanity Fair ' not been, 
 in this respect, artistically a failure, its readers 
 might have been left to take care of themselves. 
 In ' Pendennis,' where the representation of the 
 world is far more artistic, and consequently far 
 more true, the constant warnings to avoid the 
 indolence of Arthur are received with the good- 
 natured laugh that they provoke. 'The New- 
 comes ' marks a further advance in the proper 
 function of the moralist in art, and ' Esmond ' 
 is as moral a work as any great artist ever 
 wrote, but it is precisely because of the moral 
 idea that pervades it that it is so great an 
 artistic success. Here the showman no longer 
 cries his sermon, and we are left at peace to 
 contemplate, as we turn its pages, the busy 
 scheme in which, at once as passive and active 
 forces, our lives arc interwoven.
 
 IV GENERAL CHARACTERISTICS 19I 
 
 Turningf from the discussion as to how far 
 Thackeray's novels suffer artistically from their 
 frequent moralizing digressions, and looking at 
 his morality itself, it is natural to ask : — What 
 is the value of this message he was so eager 
 to deliver, these lessons he was so anxious to 
 inculcate ? The question admits of no very 
 satisfactory answer. That he was dissatisfied 
 with the constitution of society is abundantly 
 evident, and if his contemporaries were as he 
 has represented them, his counsels would be of 
 good effect. But he so exaggerates the faults 
 he reprehends, he so misrepresents the classes 
 which he professes to reform, that much advice, 
 admirable in itself, vanishes in the air. No one 
 who commits the errors he specially detested 
 is likely to be made better by these sermons 
 at Cornhill. Such a man, if he happens to 
 read Thackeray's novels, is more likely to 
 think that as he is so obviously superior to his 
 type there represented, he must already be 
 nearly perfect of his kind. No gambler who 
 studies the character of Deuceace, no roue 
 who surveys the portrait of Lord Steyne, no 
 foolish youth who laughs at the foolish talk 
 of Lord Farintosh, but is able with justice to
 
 192 THACKERAY : A STUDY CH. 
 
 repeat, " How much better am I than other 
 men." The result is curious and instructive ; 
 retributive justice has overtaken a great moralist 
 and a great artist who neglected the canons 
 of his art, and it is not in these digressions of 
 which he was fond, and in which the real lover 
 of Thackeray still finds much that is delightful, 
 that the secret of his influence is to be found. 
 
 His power consists, as has been said, in his 
 exceptional knowledge of character, in his won- 
 derful mastery over the sources of emotion, and 
 in a view of existence that, with its plaintive 
 note rising from the midst of dignity and self- 
 restraint, has reflected and informed the best 
 thought of our time. Carlyle, the other censor 
 of the age, like Thackeray, was no optimist, 
 but it is curious to mark the difference in their 
 respective positions towards a problem by which 
 more than by any other they were both pro- 
 foundly stirred — Carlyle alternately storming 
 against the limitations of our mortal condition, 
 and rejecting with a furious contempt the 
 varying solutions of the riddle : Thackeray 
 going over and over again, with an exquisite 
 felicity of phrase, the line of the Roman poet — 
 
 " O curas hominum, O quantum est in rebus inane."
 
 IV GENERAL CHARACTERISTICS 1 93 
 
 yet pointing, with a benign security, to those 
 far-ofif and " shining table-lands " that rebuke, 
 from their silent distance, the fever of our 
 crowded and important life. 
 
 The world will decide which of these attitudes 
 is the more classic — the more loveable.
 
 ADDENDUM 
 
 Chronological List of Works mentioned in this Essay. 
 
 Memoirs of C. J. Yellowplush ... 
 
 Some Passages in the Life of Major 
 
 Gahagan 
 Stubbs' Calendar ; or, The Fatal Boots . . 
 Catherine : a Story, by Ikey Solomons 
 
 Esq., Junior 
 Barber Cox ; or. Cox's Diary . . . 
 Epistles to the Literati 
 The Bedford Row Conspiracy ... 
 Going to see a Man hanged 
 Captain Rook and Mr. Pigeon .. 
 An Essay on George Cruikshank 
 The Paris Sketch-Book 
 A Shabby Genteel Story 
 The Second Funeral of Napoleon 
 The Fashionable Authoress 
 The History of Samuel Titmarsh and the 
 
 Great Hoggarty Diamond ... 
 The Confessions of George Fitzboodle 
 
 ( Mr. and Mrs. Frank Berry ^ 
 Men's Wives \ The Raven swing V 
 
 V Dennis Haggarty's Wife J 
 The Irish Sketch-Book 
 Little Travels and Roadside Sketches 
 The History of the next French Revolution 
 
 1837-8 
 
 1838-9 
 1839 
 
 1839-40 
 
 1840 
 
 1840 
 
 1840 
 
 1840 
 
 1840 
 
 1840 
 
 1840 
 
 1840 
 
 1841 
 
 1841 
 
 1843 
 
 1843 
 1844 
 1844
 
 196 
 
 ADDENDUM 
 
 The Luck of Barry Lyndon 
 
 . 1844 
 
 The Legend of the Rhine 
 
 • 1845 
 
 Jeames's Diary 
 
 • 1845-6 
 
 The Journey from Cornhill to Grand Cairc 
 
 ) 1846 
 
 The Book of Snobs ... 
 
 . 1846-7 
 
 Mrs. Perkins's Ball ... 
 
 • 1847 
 
 Travels in London 
 
 ■ 1847 
 
 Punch's Prize Novelists 
 
 • 1847 
 
 Vanity Fair 
 
 1847-8 
 
 Our Street ... 
 
 1848 
 
 A Little Dinner at Timmins's ... 
 
 1848 
 
 Dr. Birch and his Young Friends 
 
 1849 
 
 Mr. Brown's Letters to a Young Man abou 
 
 
 Town ... 
 
 1849 
 
 The History of Pendennis 
 
 1849-50 
 
 The Kickleburys on the Rhine 
 
 1850 
 
 Rebecca and Rowena 
 
 1850 
 
 Henry Esmond 
 
 1852 
 
 The English Humourists 
 
 1853 
 
 The Wolves and the Lamb 
 
 1854 
 
 John Leech 
 
 1854 
 
 The Newcomes 
 
 1854-5 
 
 The Rose and the Ring 
 
 1855 
 
 The Virginians 
 
 1858-9 
 
 The Four Georges 
 
 i860 
 
 Lovel the Widower ... 
 
 i860 
 
 The Adventures of Philip on his Way 
 
 
 through the World 
 
 1861-2 
 
 Roundabout Papers ... 
 
 1860-3 
 
 Denis Duval 
 
 1863 
 
 R. Clay &■ Sons, Ld., London &■ Bungay 
 
 /
 
 
 THE LIBRARY 
 
 UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA 
 
 Santa Barbara 
 
 STACK COLLECTION 
 
 THIS BOOK IS DUE ON THE LAST DATE 
 STAMPED BELOW. 
 
 
 lw-8,'65(F6447s4)9482