'J,
 
 MODERN English writers 
 
 William Makepeace Thackeray
 
 MODERN ENGLISH WRITERS. 
 
 Crown 8uo, 216 each. 
 
 READY. 
 
 MATTHEW ARNOLD . 
 R. L. STEVENSON . 
 JOHN RUSKIN 
 ALFRED TENNYSON . 
 THOMAS HENRY HUXLEY 
 THACKERAY .... 
 
 Professor Saintsbury. 
 L. Cope Cornford. 
 Mrs Meynell. 
 Andrew Lang. 
 Edward Clodd. 
 Charles Whibley. 
 
 IN PREPARATION. 
 
 BROWNING C. H. Herford. 
 
 GEORGE ELIOT . . ._ . A. T, Quiller-Couch. 
 FROUDE John Oliver Hobbes. 
 
 WILLL\M BLACKWOOD & SONS, Edinburgh and London.
 
 William Makepeace Thackeray 
 
 BY 
 
 CHARLES WHIBLEY 
 
 WILLIAM BLACKWOOD AND SONS 
 
 EDINBURGH AND LONDON 
 
 M C M 1 1 1 
 
 All Rtghls t-ese'Teii
 
 ^ ^ TJBRARY 
 
 r H UNIVEKSri i OF CALIFORNIA 
 
 C- / O^j SAIN i'A BARBARA 
 
 PREFACE. 
 
 I DESIRE to acknowledge the debt which I 
 owe to Mrs Ritchie's admirable edition of 
 Thackeray's works. I would also record 
 my gratitude to my friend, the late W. E. 
 Henley, who read the most of the proof- 
 sheets as they passed through the press — 
 the last of unnumbered kindnesses.
 
 CONTENTS. 
 
 CHAP. PAGE 
 
 I. BIOGRAPHICAL ..... I 
 
 II. THACKERAY IN LONDON. THE TOWN AND 
 
 TASTE OF HIS TIME . . . .20 
 
 III. THE PICTURESQUE REPORTER — BARRY LYN- 
 
 DON ...... 44 
 
 IV. PUNCH AND VANITY FAIR . . . yj 
 V. PENDENNIS. THACKERAY AND THE WORLD 
 
 OF LETTERS . . . . .121 
 
 VI. LECTURES AND LECTURING. ESMOND. . l6o 
 VII. T//E NEWCOMES — A PARLIAMENTARY ELEC- 
 TION . . . . . .194 
 
 VIII. THE VIRGINIANS — THE EDITORSHIP OF THE 
 
 CORNHILL . . . . .220 
 
 IX. THE WRITER AND THE MAN . . . '243 
 
 INDEX ...... 260
 
 THACKERAY. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 BIOGRAPHICAL. 
 
 William Makepeace Thackeray was born at Calcutta 
 on July 1 8, 1811. His family, sprung from yeomen of 
 Yorkshire, was distinguished throughout the eighteenth 
 century in the learned professions, as well as in the 
 civil and military services of India. Thackerays not a 
 few had lived and died in the making of our Eastern 
 Empire.. They had done those deeds of simple heroism 
 which benefit a people, and bring their authors but little 
 fame. They had built roads, they had administered 
 justice, and more than one had fallen on the battlefield. 
 Eminent amongst them was Richmond Thackeray, Col- 
 lector at Alipur, who in 1810 married Anne Becher, 
 herself the daughter of a family famous in Bengal. 
 Five years later the Collector died, leaving a widow 
 and one son, William Makepeace, just four years old, 
 
 A
 
 2 THACKERAY. 
 
 who grew up to be the author of Vanity Fair. Like 
 Clive Newcome, WiUiam Makepeace left India a child 
 of six, and when he pictured the Colonel " tottering up 
 the steps of the ghaut," he pictured his own experience. 
 "I wrote this," he confessed, "remembering in long, 
 long distant days such a ghaut, or river-stair at Cal- 
 cutta ; and a day when down those steps, to a boat 
 which was in waiting, came two children, whose 
 mothers remained on shore. . . . We were first 
 cousins ; had been little playmates and friends from 
 the time of our birth ; and the first house in London 
 to which I was taken was that of our aunt." The 
 little playmate was his cousin, Richmond Shakespear, 
 whose death, deplored in a Rotnidabout Paper ^ took 
 place two years before his own. In those days a visit 
 to the enchained Emperor was a proper incident of 
 travel, and a vision of the Corsican ogre was one of 
 Thackeray's earliest and most vivid impressions. " Our 
 ship touched at an island on the way home," he wrote, 
 "where my black servant took me a long walk over 
 rocks and hills until we reached a garden, where we 
 saw a man walking. ' That's he,' said the black man : 
 ' that is Bonaparte ! He eats three sheep every day, 
 and all the little children he can lay hands upon.' " 
 
 He arrived in England when "she was in mourn- 
 ing for the young Princess Charlotte, the hope of 
 the Empire." Nor did he look again upon his native 
 East. But its influence never left him. If his childish 
 memory was vague and tear-bedimmed, the tradition of 
 
 a?
 
 BIOGRAPHICAL. 3 
 
 his family was strong and imperious. Moreover, the 
 chain which bound him to India was not snapped by 
 the homeward voyage. His guardian was his great- 
 uncle, Peter Moore, who at Hadley Manor lived the 
 life of a country gentleman, and lavishly spent the for- 
 tune he had so easily acquired in India. An active 
 politician, Moore devoted many years to the support of 
 the Whig party in the House of Commons, and, though 
 he should have known better, joined in the pitiful attacks 
 made upon Warren Hastings. But speculation was the 
 real business of his life, and so keenly did he pursue 
 it that he died at Abbeville an impoverished exile. 
 His influence was not unimportant, since, as we may 
 suppose, he quickened Thackeray's early impressions of 
 India, while his career was doubtless the first romance 
 in being that the boy had contemplated. At any rate, 
 India is the vague background of more than one of 
 Thackeray's novels, and Mr Jos Sedley, Colonel New- 
 come, and even Boggley WoUah and the Bundelcund 
 Banking Company, are as near to fact as to fiction. 
 
 Like many another Anglo - Indian boy, Thackeray 
 suffered ill-treatment and neglect at his first school, 
 which was hard by Miss Pinkerton's at Chiswick, and 
 which no doubt was kept in the fear of God by Dr 
 Swishtail. But in 1821 his mother returned from 
 India, the wife of Major Carmichael-Smyth, the kindest 
 of stepfathers, and a year later Thackeray was sent to 
 the Charterhouse. Here he remained six indolent 
 years, and as the place is woven into the very web of
 
 4 THACKERAY. 
 
 his novels, this time of idleness was not wasted. No 
 writer has ever been more loyal to his school than was 
 Thackeray to the Charterhouse. It appears as Grey 
 Friars or Slaughter House again and again ; the best 
 of his characters neglect the education that was there 
 provided ; and even his sympathy for Richard Steele 
 is the keener, because the Christian Hero was once 
 a gown boy at the old school. 
 
 But if the Charterhouse was a pleasant memory, 
 the memory had mellowed with time. For Thackeray 
 was not very happy at school, nor was the system of 
 Dr Russell, for a while triumphantly successful, likely 
 to inspire an intelligent or imaginative boy. He learnt 
 no Greek, he tells us, and little Latin. The famous 
 scene in Fefideiuiis, wherein Pendennis cannot construe 
 the Greek play despite the prompting of Timmins, is 
 drawn from life, and there can be no mistaking the 
 Doctor's speech. " Pendennis, sir," said h^, " your 
 idleness is incorrigible and your stupidity beyond 
 example. You are a disgrace to your school, and to 
 your family, and I have no doubt will prove so in after- 
 life to your country. . . . Miserable trifler ! A boy who 
 construes he and, instead of he but, at sixteen years of 
 age, is guilty not merely of folly, and ignorance, and 
 dulness inconceivable, but of crime, of deadly crime, of 
 filial ingratitude, which I tremble to contemplate." The 
 rhodomontade of the Doctor is confirmed by contem- 
 poraries. Dean Liddell, who " sat next " to Thackeray 
 at school, has left a sketch of him. " He never at-
 
 BIOGRAPHICAL. 5 
 
 tempted to learn the lesson," says the Dean, " never 
 exerted himself to grapple with the Horace. We spent 
 our time mostly in drawing, with such skill as we could 
 command. His handiwork was very superior to mine, 
 and his taste for comic scenes at that time exhibited 
 itself in burlesque representations of Shakespeare. I 
 remember one — Macbeth as a butcher brandishing two 
 blood-reeking knives, and Lady Macbeth as a butcher's 
 wife clapping him on the shoulder to encourage him." 
 Thus the faculty of drawing declared itself early, as 
 a few experiments remain to prove. But Dean Liddell 
 repudiates the charge that he destroyed Thackeray's 
 "opportunities of self- improvement " by doing his 
 Latin verses. 
 
 For the rest, Thackeray, the schoolboy, appears to 
 have been " pretty, gentle, and rather timid," as Ven- 
 ables, the smasher of his nose and his lifelong friend, 
 describes him. He was never flogged, and only in- 
 spected the famous flogging-block "as an amateur." 
 He had a taste for "pastry-cookery," and once consumed 
 a half-a-crown's worth, " including ginger-beer." He had 
 a still keener taste for reading, not the Latin and Greek 
 books prescribed by his masters, but The Heart of Mid- 
 Lothian by the author of Waverley, or Life in London 
 by Pierce Egan. In other words, Dumbiedikes meant 
 more to him than the Pious ^neas, and he professed a 
 far deeper sympathy with Tom and Jerry, not forgetting 
 Bob Logic, than with Ccesar crossing the Rubicon, or 
 Hannibal splitting the Alps with vinegar. More than
 
 6 THACKERAY. 
 
 penny-tarts, more than games, he loved the novels of 
 his boyhood. " I trouble you to find such novels in 
 the present day ! " he exclaims when, in his Dejuventute, 
 he glances back into the past. " O Scottish Chiefs, didn't 
 we weep over you ! O Mysteries of Udolpho, didn't I 
 and Briggs Minor draw pictures out of you ! " In 
 fact, his was the childhood proper to a writer of 
 romance, and if his career at school was undistinguished 
 either by vice or virtue, it was by no means fruitless. 
 The young Thackeray was already observant, and not 
 only did he know how to use his eyes, but he could 
 store up his experience. He, too, saw the celebrated 
 fight between Berry and Biggs ; he, too, rejoiced that at 
 the 102nd round Biggs, the bully, failed to come up to 
 time ; he, too, marvelled at the dignity of the head-boy, 
 whom he confidently believed would be Prime Minister 
 of England, and who, he was surprised to find in after- 
 life, did not top six feet. Like unnumbered others, 
 he remembered the time when the big boys wore 
 moustaches and smoked cigars, and he cherished the 
 memory — this one unique — of " old Hawkins," the cock 
 of the school, who once thrashed a bargee at Jack 
 Randall's in Slaughter House Lane. In brief, he 
 carried from the Charterhouse the true flavour of the 
 place, and if he left behind him all knowledge of the 
 classics, he was already more apt for literature than the 
 famous head-boy himself. 
 
 But he did not love the Charterhouse until he had 
 created it for himself Not even the presence of such
 
 BIOGRAPHICAL. *j 
 
 friends as Liddell, Venables, and John Leech atoned 
 for Russell's savagery. The Doctor's eye was always 
 upon him, whom he denounced for "an idle, shuf- 
 fling, profligate boy," and in the last letter written from 
 school the boy desires nothing so much as a release 
 from his bondage. " There are but three hundred and 
 seventy in the school," he wrote ; " I wish there were 
 only three hundred and sixty-nine." So in 1828 he said 
 a joyous good-bye to the Doctor, to Biggs and Berry and 
 all the rest, and prepared himself with his stepfather's 
 help to enter the University of Cambridge. Trinity 
 was his college, and William Whewell was his tutor, and 
 while he loved his college, he cherished neither sym- 
 pathy nor respect for the great man who wrote The 
 Plurality of Worlds. Crump, in llie Snob Papers, the 
 Grand Llama who would not permit an undergraduate 
 to sit down in his presence, owes something to that 
 Master of Trinity whom Sir Francis Doyle called " God's 
 greatest work," and whom Thackeray attacked with a 
 violence that was neither humorous nor just. More- 
 over, his brief sojourn at Cambridge — he stayed but 
 four terms — was undistinguished. It has been told a 
 dozen times how he was a bye-term man and took a 
 fourth class in his May, but these details are of no 
 importance : it is enough to remember that he belonged 
 to as brilliant a set as has rarely illuminated either 
 university, and that at Trinity he made his first ex- 
 periments in literature. 
 
 The friend of Tennyson, FitzGerald, Monckton
 
 8 THACKERAY. 
 
 Milnes, and Kinglake — to say nothing of John Allen, 
 Brookfield, and Kemble — was not likely to refrain his 
 hand from the English language, and Thackeray's ambi- 
 tion was assured. It is characteristic that his first step 
 was in the direction of university journalism, and he 
 enhanced the vapid humour of The Snob ^ with a few 
 specimens of verse and prose. Timbudoo, the parody 
 of a prize poem, is his, and he ingenuously records 
 how proud he was to hear it praised by those who 
 knew not its authorship. It is not a sparkling travesty ; 
 indeed it is chiefly memorable because the subject, 
 given out for the Chancellor's Medal, suggested a set 
 of verses to Tennyson in which the master's genius 
 is already revealed. Thackeray's, also, were the reflec- 
 tions of Dorothea Julia Ramsbottom, while he claimed 
 with a proper pride the simple advertisement : ^^ Sidney 
 Sussex College. — Wanted a few Freshmen ; please apply 
 at the Buttery." 
 
 Once he had seen himself in print, Thackeray did 
 
 ^ " The Snob, a Literary Journal, not conducted by members of the 
 University," was published l^y W. II. Smith of Rose Crescent in 1829. 
 Eleven numbers appeared, of which the first was dated April 9. 
 Lettsom and Brookfield are reputed to have been its editors. 
 In addition to the contributions mentioned above, Thackeray wrote 
 a set of verses "To Genevieve," and is said to have written the 
 whole of No. 8, with the editor's help, in five hours. Much ingenu- 
 ity has been spent by bibliographers in detecting Thackeray's hand 
 here or there. But the ingenuity is wasted, since the humour of 
 The Sfiob does not even hold the promise of better things. It should 
 be noted that "snob" in the cant of 1829 meant a townsman, and 
 that the little journal was not the herald of The Snob Papers.
 
 BIOGRAPHICAL. 9 
 
 not pause, and he claimed an active share in The 
 Gonms}nan^ which followed The Snob. There is nothing 
 sparkling in its eighteen numbers, and the wonder is 
 that it survived two terms. Meanwhile more serious 
 projects engrossed him, and he destined a paper upon 
 The Revolt of Islam for The Chinicera, a journal which 
 never made its appearance. But with that zest of life 
 which always distinguished him, he had other than 
 literary interests. In his second year, we are told, he 
 plunged into the many extravagances which presently 
 involved Pendennis in ruin, and, like Pendennis, he 
 profited enormously. Duns, no doubt, followed the 
 purveyors of little dinners up his chastened staircase, 
 and if he took his fate less tragically than Arthur Pen- 
 dennis, he, too, suffered remorse and embarrassment. 
 But the compensations were obvious. The friendships 
 which he made ended only with his life, and he must 
 
 ^ Of The Go'vnsDian seventeen numbers were published, the fust 
 on November 5, 1829, the last on February 25, 1830. A note in 
 Edward FitzGerald's copy of The Go-vnsman suggested that the 
 contributions signed 9 were from the hand of Thackeray. But the 
 matter was put beyond doubt by Mr C. P. Johnson, who, writing in 
 The Athei!c£u/n,AY>n\ 30, 18S7, pointed out that the MS. of one of 
 these contributions, a set of rhymes entitled " I'd be a Tadpole," 
 existed in Mr Sabin's possession, written and signed by Thackeray. 
 All those, therefore, which are signed & may confidently be ascribed 
 to Thackeray, and it is highly probable that he wrote others as well. 
 Anthony Trollope, for instance, is doubtless right in giving him 
 credit for the general dedication: "To all Proctors, past, present, 
 and future, . . . whose taste it is our privilege to follow, whose 
 virtue it is our duty to imitate, whose presence it is our interest to 
 avoid." But the discussion is rather curious than profitable.
 
 10 THACKERAY. 
 
 have been noble, indeed, who was the friend of Alfred 
 Tennyson and of Edward FitzGerald. Moreover, Cam- 
 bridge taught him the literary use of the university, as the 
 Charterhouse had taught him the literary use of a public 
 school. In a few chapters of Pendoinis he sketched 
 the life of an undergraduate, which has eluded all his 
 rivals save only Cuthbert Bede. He sketched it, more- 
 over, in the true spirit of boyish extravagance, which 
 he felt at Cambridge, and preserved even in the larger 
 world of London ; and if Trinity and the rustling 
 gown of Mr Whewell had taught him nothing more than 
 this, he would not have contemplated them in vain. 
 
 For Thackeray, while he had neglected scholarship, 
 had already learnt the more valuable lessons of life 
 and travel — lessons not one of which he forgot when 
 he sat him down to the composition of fiction. Paris 
 had always been familiar to him, and no sooner had 
 he made up his mind to leave Cambridge than he set 
 out — in 1830 — for Germany. He visited Weimar, the 
 quietude of whose tiny Court he celebrated when he 
 drew his sketch of Pumpernickel and its society ; and 
 there he gave himself up to the study of German 
 literature and to the worship of Goethe. Already his 
 head was full of literary schemes. He would translate 
 the German ballads into English, he would write a 
 treatise upon German manners : in brief, he adopted 
 and dismissed the innumerable projects which cloud 
 the brain of ambitious youth. But, what is more im- 
 portant, he made his first entry into "society," and he
 
 BIOGRAPHICAL. II 
 
 saw Goethe. In Fraser^s Magazine of January 1840 
 there are some Recollections of Germany which may 
 be ascribed to him, and in which are set forth the 
 perturbation of a young student who confronts the 
 pontiff of letters for the first time. But a letter, ad- 
 dressed to G. H. Lewes, presents a better picture, and 
 proves that a quarter of a century had not dimmed 
 the youthful impression. 
 
 " Five-and-twenty years ago," thus he wrote in 1855, 
 "at least a score of young English lads used to live 
 at Weimar for study, or sport, or society : all of which 
 were to be had in the friendly little Saxon capital. The 
 Grand Duke and Duchess received us with the kindliest 
 hospitality. The Court was splendid, but most pleasant 
 and homely. We were invited in our turn to dinners, 
 balls, and assemblies there. Such young men as had 
 a right appeared in uniforms, diplomatic and military. 
 Some, I remember, invented gorgeous clothing : the 
 kind old Hof-Marschall of those days. Monsieur de 
 Spiegel (who had two of the most lovely daughters eyes 
 ever looked on), being in nowise difficult as to the 
 admission of these young Englanders." So Thackeray 
 spent his days in the study of literature and in a pleas- 
 ant hero-worship. He purchased Schiller's sword, and 
 he saw Goethe. " Vidi tantum," said he ; " I saw 
 him but three times." But the image was ineffaceable. 
 " Of course I remember well," again Thackeray speaks, 
 "the perturbation of spirit with which, as a lad of 
 nineteen, I received the long-expected intimation that
 
 12 THACKERAY. 
 
 the Herr Geheimrath would see me on such a morning. 
 This notable audience took place in a little ante- 
 chamber of his private apartments, covered all round 
 with antique casts and bas-reliefs. He was habited 
 in a long grey or drab redingote, with a white neckcloth 
 and a red ribbon in his buttonhole. He kept his 
 hands behind his back, as in Rauch's statuette. His 
 complexion was very bright, clear, and rosy. His eyes 
 extraordinarily dark, piercing, and brilliant. I felt quite 
 afraid before them, and recollect comparing them to 
 the eyes of the hero of a certain romance called 
 ATelmoth the JFa/idefer." But Thackeray was relieved 
 to find that the great man spoke French with not a 
 good accent, was emboldened to send him Fraser's 
 Magazine, and heard with pride that he had deigned 
 to look at some of his drawings. The meeting is a 
 link in the unbroken chain of literary tradition, and it 
 is not surprising that Thackeray should have guarded 
 a proud memory of the poet who lit the torch of roman- 
 ticism, then — in 1830 — dazzling the eyes of Europe. 
 
 Meanwhile he was intent upon a profession. Though 
 only twenty he reflected that at that age his father had 
 seen five years' service, and the inaction irked him. 
 Accordingly he chose the law, and read for a while 
 in the chambers of Mr Taprell, a well-known convey- 
 ancer. But the study of deeds did not long engross 
 him. The few months which he spent in London 
 were devoted to the companionship of his friends and 
 to the practice of caricature. He smoked pipes with
 
 BIOGRAPHICAL. 1 3 
 
 FitzGerald and Tennyson, he frequented the theatres 
 with John Kenible, and under the auspices of Charles 
 Buller he presently got his first insight into Radical 
 politics. Indeed he gave his help in canvassing Liskeard 
 for his friend, who sat on the Liberal side of the first 
 reformed Parliament, and so well did the Cornish 
 electors remember him that they would have elected 
 him many years afterwards as their representative. But 
 he tired of politics as speedily as of law, and went off 
 to Paris to study painting and French literature. And 
 then came the opportunity of journalism. He deserted 
 the atelier of Gros (or another) for the office of The 
 National Standard, and henceforth, save for a brief 
 interval, he followed the trade of letters. 
 
 No writer has suffered more bitterly than Thackeray 
 from the indiscreet zeal of admirers. Nothing that he 
 ever wrote has seemed to the bibliographers too trivial for 
 preservation. To " spot " his contributions to Frasers 
 and other magazines has become a kind of parlour 
 game for the cultured, and since his death many pieces 
 have been unearthed which he no doubt was happy to 
 forget. The injustice of this practice is obvious. 
 Thackeray had abundant time in which to collect the 
 work by which he chose to be remembered, and no 
 good purpose is served by the pious ingenuity of those 
 who bind up into books the experiments in journalism 
 overlooked by himself The excellence of Vanity Fair 
 imparts no quality to a set of articles contributed 
 fifteen years previously to a dead newspaper. How-
 
 14 THACKERAY. 
 
 ever, it is now idle to ignore his juvc/u'lia, and thougli 
 they throw little light upon his maturer works, as editors 
 are wont to pretend, it may be said that he emerges 
 from a trying ordeal far better than would the most of 
 men. Literature was in his blood ; he was born with a 
 style which was neither involved nor extravagant ; his 
 apprenticeship to the other arts was an interlude ; and 
 at an age when most are wrestling with the stubborn- 
 ness of our English tongue, he was already proprietor 
 and editor of a newspaper. 
 
 Whatever we may think of the venture, we can have 
 no doubt of Thackeray's courage and enterprise. To 
 own and to edit a newspaper is always a desperate 
 hazard, more easily faced, it is true, with the half- 
 conscious recklessness of youth than with the settled 
 calm of maturer years. Now, Thackeray was no more 
 than twenty - one when he purchased and managed 
 The National Standard, a paper which had survived 
 eighteen numbers without distinction. Its editor had 
 been Mr F. W. M. Bayley, and Thackeray noted the 
 transference of responsibility with an expected quip. 
 "We have got rid of the old Bailey," said he, "and 
 changed the governor." The change availed him as 
 Uttle as his energy. He not only edited the paper 
 — he wrote for it, he illustrated it, he supplied it with 
 foreign correspondence. Neither his drawings nor his 
 articles do him much credit. They are youthful chiefly 
 in their immaturity. No doubt they appealed pleasantly 
 to the taste of the time at which they were written.
 
 BIOGRAPHICAL. 1 5 
 
 The Romantic movement in France had encouraged 
 a love of whatever was strange or supernatural, and 
 we find Thackeray cauglit up, against his wont, in 
 the humour of the moment. Now he is found trans- 
 lating Hoffman and The Afahabaraia, or sketching the 
 Charruas Indians at the inspiration of the ingenious 
 Janin. Now he essays a story of his own, and in 
 The Devil's JVager, afterwards adapted for The Paris 
 Sketch Book, proves that he, commonly untouched by 
 movements, felt at least a side-wind of romanticism. 
 But all in vain. 
 
 The National Standard was " hauled down," to 
 use his own phrase, after it had floated but a few 
 months in the breeze, and Thackeray, thrown back 
 upon painting, worked in the studios of Brine and 
 Gros, or copied the Old Masters industriously in the 
 Louvre. Meantime he continued to make experiments 
 in literature, found his way to the office of Fraser's 
 Magazine, and was buying experience at not too high 
 a rate. His own experience was doubtless that of 
 Mr Batchelor in Lovel the Widower. That unfortun- 
 ate gentleman, it will be remembered, purchased The 
 Museum from his friend Honeyman, who " was in 
 dreadful straits for money," and a "queer wine -mer- 
 chant and bill-discounter" named Sherrick. Thack- 
 eray, like Batchelor, "gave himself airs as editor" — 
 that is certain. He, too, "proposed to educate the 
 public taste, to diffuse morality and sound literature 
 throughout the nation," But his fortune was not yet
 
 1 6 THACKERAY. 
 
 exhausted ; the gutters of Fleet Street still yawned ; and 
 what had been saved from The National Standard was 
 presently engulfed by the hapless Constitutional. 
 
 While Thackeray had squandered a pavt of his patri- 
 mony, his stepfather, Major Carmichael - Smyth, had 
 made unlucky investments, and father and son, whose 
 equal friendship suggests the tie which bound Clive 
 Newcome to the Colonel, collaborated in founding 
 a Radical paper. Such heavy artillery as Grote and 
 Molesworth came to their aid, and the banner under 
 which they fought bore the proud title of The Constitu- 
 tional. Thackeray was appointed correspondent in 
 Paris, where for some six months he discharged his 
 duties in the proper spirit of Radicalism. No doubt 
 he was influenced by his journal ; no doubt the 
 consciousness that the austere Grote had his eye 
 upon him encouraged him to dulness. But the truth 
 is that Thackeray's letters to The Constitutional are 
 particularly grave. They express the commonplaces 
 of his party. The misdemeanours of Louis Philippe 
 are sternly admonished, and the easy escape of Louis 
 Napoleon after the descent upon Strassburg naturally 
 suggests that there is one law for the rich and another 
 for the poor. Yet The Constitutional proves clearly 
 enough that Thackeray was a competent journalist. 
 His work may not be absolutely intelligent ; it is never- 
 theless remarkable that a man of twenty-five should 
 write with so stern a repression of himself. The letters 
 have very litile fancy ; their style is of the tamest ;
 
 BIOGRAPHICAL. 17 
 
 and though Thackeray knew the temper of the Parisians 
 well enough, though he foresaw the downfall of the 
 Orleans family, his gift of prophecy is not brilliant. 
 But he had the trick of leader-writing, and had he 
 not been a humourist, he might have made the 
 columns of The Times reverberate with its own kind 
 of thunder. 
 
 The downfall of The Constitutional rendered Thackeray 
 penniless. The rupees gathered in India were all dis- 
 sipated in journalism and gambling. While Fleet Street 
 had swallowed much, the card-table had also claimed 
 its share. The fate of Mr Dawkins, who lost his fortune 
 to the ingenious Mr Deuceace, had been Thackeray's 
 own. " I have not seen that man," he told Sir Theo- 
 dore Martin of a gambler at Spa, "since he drove me 
 down in his cabriolet to my banker's in the City, where 
 I sold out my patrimony and handed it over to him." 
 But not only had he lost his patrimony ; he had in- 
 curred an added responsibility, having married Miss 
 Creagh Shawe, a lady of Doneraile, at the British Em- 
 bassy in Paris; so that in 1837, when he returned to 
 London and the magazines, he was no better off than 
 other adventurers who work for their bread. Indeed, 
 as he told Mrs Brookfield, he once wrote with Longue- 
 ville Jones in GalignariVs Messenger for ten francs a-day, 
 and he installed himself in Great Coram Street without 
 a very clear prospect of success. 
 
 But temperament and experience were in his favour. 
 He was far better equipped for the craft of letters than 
 
 B
 
 1 8 THACKERAY. 
 
 the most of his contemporaries. He knew something of 
 the great world which Hes beyond Cambridge and 
 London ; he had studied the Hfe of foreign cities ; and 
 he had sojourned in no place which had not contributed 
 something to the material of his art. Being no recluse, 
 he had always mixed freely with his fellows : he was as 
 familiar with such haunts as the Cider Cellars and the 
 Coal Hole as with the stolid mansions of Bloomsbury or 
 the more elegant palaces of Belgravia. The fact that at 
 five-and-twenty he had got rid of a comfortable fortune 
 proves that he faced life with a certain recklessness, and 
 his intelligence was warrant enough that the money had 
 not been squandered in vain. Nor was his temperament 
 less happy than his education. Energy, courage, and 
 good spirits were his. In the letters of FitzGerald you 
 get a glimpse of him, pleasure-loving, humorous, and 
 alert. Now he is pouring contempt upon the works 
 of Raphael, now he is poking fun at Spedding's vener- 
 able forehead, which he and FitzGerald " found some- 
 how or other in all things, just peering out of all things." 
 Thackeray saw it in a milestone. " He also drew the 
 forehead rising with a sober light over Mont Blanc, 
 and reflected in the Lake of Geneva." And his char- 
 acter, joyous and confident, was not hidden from those 
 who saw him. It shines boldly in his aspect, as it is 
 revealed by Maclise in his drawing of the Fraserians. A 
 big burly man he was — Carlyle a few years later described 
 him as " a half-monstrous Cornish giant " — with a mass
 
 BIOGRAPHICAL. 1 9 
 
 of hair kempt or unkempt in the romantic fashion, a high- 
 stock about his neck, and an eyeglass stuck insolently 
 in his eye. Old for his years in looks as in experience, 
 he held his own with such captains of the press as 
 Lockhart and Maginn, and was ready to engage in the 
 violent warfare of letters with as fine a spirit as any of 
 them.
 
 20 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 THACKERAY IN LONDON. THE TOWN AND TASTE 
 OF HIS TIINIE. 
 
 When Thackeray came to seek his fortune in London, 
 Queen Victoria had just ascended the throne, but the 
 view of Hfe generally known as Early Victorian was 
 already fashionable. The excesses of the Dandies had 
 suffered the natural reaction : elegance was replaced by 
 a certain coarseness, of which an exaggerated senti- 
 mentality was a necessary part. Elegance is apt to be 
 heartless, while coarseness finds an excuse in a noisy 
 appeal to the more obvious emotions, and the emotions 
 of 1837 were neither subtle nor restrained. It was an 
 age, in fact, which saw D'Orsay disputing the sovereignty 
 of Red Herrings, and which found a satisfaction in 
 unctuously deploring that nobleman's lapses from the 
 path of virtue. Commercial prosperity, moreover, had 
 diffused whatever culture the epoch might boast, and 
 the culture had become all the thinner for the diffu- 
 sion. Wealth, divorced from manners and intelligence, 
 marked the rise to power of the great middle class,
 
 THACKERAY IN LONDON. 21 
 
 while railways ^ drove the country still farther on the 
 road to democracy. An increase in the number of 
 clubs proves that a desire of social success was gen- 
 eral, and assuredly the chronicler of snobs found his 
 material ready to his hand. For the vast fortunes 
 acquired by industry threatened to overshadow the 
 eminence of birth or talent, and the Young England 
 movement, which startled England some seven years 
 later, was but a protest of the upper and lower classes 
 against the domination of the prosperous and arrogant 
 class which came between them. 
 
 The popular amusements suffered a like decay. 
 Eccentricity and exoticism seemed of higher account 
 than beauty and good sense. The Back Kitchen and 
 the Cave of Harmony, to give them Thackeray's own 
 titles, were the most eagerly frequented haunts of the 
 day, and though of their kind they were excellent, they 
 did not illustrate the virtue of elegance and refinement. 
 But their sudden rise to popularity is an interesting chap- 
 ter in the history of manners, and no writer has pictured 
 them more vividly than Thackeray. They were, like 
 their age, strange mixtures of blackguardism and senti- 
 ment. Heartrending allusions to angels alternated in 
 
 ^ Charles Greville describes how, on July i8, 1837, he entered a 
 train for the first time. He records that " the first sensation is a 
 slight degree of nervousness, and a feeling of being run away with, 
 but a sense of security soon supervenes, and the velocity is delight- 
 ful." He also tells us, with what to-day appears ingenuousness, 
 that an engineer was turned off by the company for going at the 
 rate of forty-five miles an hour.
 
 22 THACKERAY. 
 
 their songs with such pieces of brutal reaHsm as Sam 
 Hall or TJie Body-Snafc/ier. The celebrated Hodgen, 
 who sang this blood-curdHng masterpiece to Pendennis 
 and Warrington in the Back Kitchen, appeared "sitting 
 on a coffin, with a flask of gin before him, with a 
 spade, and a candle stuck in a skull." The very glasses 
 quivered on the table as with terror, and no other singer 
 had a chance against the Snatcher. 
 
 The haunts themselves were appropriate to their 
 entertainment. They were commonly long rooms, run- 
 ning along the first floor of public-houses, and while 
 the chairman smiled blandly at the end of a long table, 
 and flourished a portentous cigar, his customers supped 
 or sipped their brandy-and-water. For many years there 
 were no regular singers; visitors "obliged" as complais- 
 antly as did Colonel Newcome before his ears were 
 shocked by ribaldry, and the few artists engaged were 
 content with three or four shillings a-week, with a screw 
 of tobacco thrown in. Now and again, however, a star 
 arose above the horizon, a star such as the famous John 
 W. Sharp,^ who in Thackeray's day shone brilliantly 
 
 ^ John W. Sharp was for long the King of the Concert- Room, 
 and Thackeray must have known him well. He made his first 
 appearance at Evans's in 1839, and attracted crowds thither for 
 some seven years. He shared a lodging at Hampstead with Labern, 
 a rascal who knew better than any of his contemporaries how to write 
 a popular song, and after the manner of their kind they travelled 
 the same road to the devil. During an interlude John W. Sharp 
 managed the Lord Nelson Music Hall in Euston Square, where he 
 sang the Corsican Brothers and Paul Pry in character. He died in 
 1856, and was by far the most accomplished and engaging of his class.
 
 IN LONDON. 23 
 
 upon the Cave of Harmony. Jim Crow, as he sang 
 it after the American Rice, is still a splendid memory, 
 and one is not surprised that the chairman's announce- 
 ment, " I claim your attention for a comic song from 
 Mr Sharp," was greeted with immense applause. But, 
 like Mr Hodgen, John W. Sharp retired presently to 
 Vauxhall Gardens ; and so long as the great Labern 
 was sober enough to write his songs, he triumphed 
 over all audiences with a daring mixture of savagery 
 and pathos, which is as intimately characteristic of his 
 age as the early romances of Sir Edward Bulwer. 
 
 The literary world differed little enough from the 
 world of society : for all its noble sentiments, it was 
 marked by bad taste and lack of restraint. The reputa- 
 tion of Scott had got its second wind, so to say, but the 
 other great men were either forgotten or ill-considered. 
 Coleridge and Lamb belonged to the previous genera- 
 tion, and Dickens was only just rising above the 
 horizon. Sketches by Boz had heralded a new talent, 
 and Pickwick was already on the road to immortality. 
 Indeed, Thackeray, as he confessed many years after- 
 wards at a dinner of the Royal Academy, had carried 
 a bundle of sketches up to Furnivall's Inn after Sey- 
 mour's suicide, and had applied to the youthful Dickens 
 for the post of illustrator. But the year of Victoria's 
 accession to the throne held very little of hope or 
 promise. Literature had become less an art than a 
 fashionable pastime. Lord Byron had shown the 
 world that a title was not incompatible with genius,
 
 24 THACKERAV. 
 
 and many a sprig of nobility thought that the cer- 
 tainty of genius resided in his birth. That amusing 
 humbug, Don Telesforo de Trueba y Cosio, had startled 
 the town with The Jncogm'/o, or Sins and Peccadillos, 
 while Lord Mulgrave hoped that his title might atone 
 for such stuff as Matilda and The Cotitrast. Sir 
 Egerton Brydges had proved that mechanical industry 
 might turn out sonnets, or achieve epics, while Sir 
 Edward Bulwer was eloquently testifying that nothing 
 was impossible to a new-made baronet. Even the 
 Dandies were incomplete if they had put no volume 
 to their credit, and it redounds to the honour of the 
 peerless D'Orsay that he did not essay literature as 
 well as the other arts. 
 
 For Lady Blessington's industry an ample excuse 
 may be found : hers was the facility of a sanguine Irish 
 brain, and in the Keepsakes and Books of Beauty she 
 crystallised the prevailing taste with an ingenious lack 
 of humour. \\\ truth, no age ever parodied itself more 
 prettily than did this one in its vapid bundles of 
 poetry and portraiture. The lady who languished in a 
 " bertha " worried the Muses with the same careless 
 effrontery as the fop who ruffled it in the coats of 
 Stultz. And if perchance an author might boast no 
 title, there were nobles enough among the characters of 
 a popular novel to fill the House of Lords or pack the 
 country houses of England. In Miss Landon's Ethel 
 Churchill — to take a casual instance — the reader is 
 introduced to Lord Wharton, to Lady Mary ^\^ortley
 
 IN LONDON. 25 
 
 Montagu, to Alexander Pope himself, and it was Eihel 
 Churchill which Thackeray himself approved with more 
 than half his heart in the savage columns of Fraser's. 
 
 But mixed up with the popular gentility was a keen 
 enjoyment of "low life." The coarseness in manners 
 which, I have said, is the natural companion of senti- 
 mentality, was equally matched by a coarseness in litera- 
 ture. Pelham is not content to be a "gentleman"; he 
 must also patter the flash ; and while the hero masquer- 
 aded as a cracksman, so the cracksman seemed a hero 
 to the sentimental novelist. " The rufifian cly thee 
 Guinea Pig, for stashing the lush " is as intimately a 
 part of Bulwer's work as such examples of hysteria as, 
 " O that woman's love ! how strong it is in its weakness ! 
 how beautiful in its guilt ! " But Ainsworth played the 
 game with more fancy, and with a better success than 
 Bulwer. For Ainsworth's highwaymen are all marvels 
 of sensibility ; his very housebreakers crack their cribs 
 with the best of motives, and wipe away a tear of heart- 
 broken regret as they go off with the swag. 
 
 And side by side with a fiction made ridiculous by 
 false sentiment, there flourished a method of criticism 
 which knew no sentiment at all. Bulwer was nothing 
 if not genteel ; there was little gentility in Macaulay or 
 Croker, in Lockhart or Maginn. Such critics as these 
 attacked their victim with the gloves off, nor did they 
 hesitate to punish literary incompetence with a ferocity 
 which the worst vices might have inspired. Flouts 
 and gibes were better to their purpose than solid argu-
 
 26 THACKERAY. 
 
 ment, and on occasion the best of them did not shrink 
 from gross personalities. Lockhart, "the Scorpion that 
 dehghteth to sting the faces of men," had the prettiest 
 method, while Croker outdid them all, even Maginn 
 himself, in brutality. The Secretary to the Admiralty, 
 not content with charging Lady Morgan with "licen- 
 tiousness, profligacy, irreverence, blasphemy, libertinism, 
 disloyalty, and atheism," topped it all by calling her 
 "a female Methuselah." And if Maginn's savage at- 
 tack upon Grantley Berkeley were abundantly justified, 
 no one can help regretting the bad manners wherewith 
 it was conducted. 
 
 But the ferocity of the early Victorian critics is easily 
 explained. Party spirit ran high, and neither Tory 
 nor Whig could discover a speck of worth in his 
 opposite. While The Editilu/rgh was steadfast in the 
 opinion that Tories were as destitute of literary talent 
 as of moral rectitude, Blackwood's, Fraser's, and T/w 
 Quarterly were prepared to slaughter Whig poets and 
 Whig politicians in the name of patriotism, Macaulay's 
 onslaught upon Croker's Bosivell is superior in taste 
 alone to Croker's own bludgeonings, and the worst of 
 Hazlitt's excesses did not justify the monstrous contempt 
 of Maginn and his band.^ Moreover, there is another 
 
 ^ The savagery which was popular when Thackeray came to 
 London was no new thing. The critics had been straining their 
 vocabulary for more than five-and-twenty years. Maginn, writing 
 to WiUiam Blackwood in 1823, says of Hazlitt, "You have called 
 liim pimpled, affected, ignorant, a Cockney scribliler, &c., but 
 what is that to what he has said of the most brilliant men of the
 
 IN LONDON, 
 
 27 
 
 excuse for tlie insolence which prevailed. The best 
 of the critics were scholars and men of taste, who were 
 not unnaturally lashed to fury at the praises ignobly 
 lavished upon amateurs. Whenever they remembered 
 that literature and politics were not indissolubly con- 
 nected, their slashings were justified, and it may wisely 
 be pleaded in their defence that they held aloft the 
 banner of their calling. Their most heinous fault, then, 
 was a fault of manners, not of intelligence, and the 
 memory of such critics as Hazlitt and Macaulay, Lock- 
 hart and Maginn, will be secure when the names of 
 many victims whose vanity they ridiculed are lost in 
 oblivion. Had it not been for The Edinburgh who 
 would ever have heard of Montgomery ? 
 
 Such was the world of letters into which Thackeray 
 came, and his attitude from the first was an attitude 
 of protest, as, indeed, we should expect of a writer whose 
 humour and outlook, when they were not his own, were 
 borrowed from the eighteenth century. It was a strange 
 accident that enrolled him under Eraser's flag ; but 
 though he was a Whig fighting on the side of High- 
 Toryism, he remained loyal at once to himself and his 
 colleagues. His criticism was seldom coloured by his 
 environment. Maybe he praised Miss Landon, who 
 was a favourite of Maginn's, more highly than he would 
 
 age ? Hook-nosed Wellington, vulture-beaked Southey, hanging- 
 browed Croker, down-looking Jack Murray, and Mudford fat as 
 fleecy-hosiery." Here the advantage is on Hazlitt's side. But the 
 haliit of abuse had not grown weaker with time, and it culminated 
 in Frasci-s Maoazine.
 
 28 THACKERAY. 
 
 have done, had he enjoyed the freedom of another 
 magazine. It is possible that had he written elsewhere 
 he would not have detected "a hundred beautiful 
 poems" in Ethel Chunhill ; but it chimed exactly with 
 his taste and temper to demolish Buhver and Ainsworth, 
 and them he demolished with the best of spirits. 
 However, it was probably the influence of Maginn 
 which attracted Thackeray to Eraser's. He had met 
 this gay and dashing free-lance as early as 1832, so 
 that when he began gravely to write for the magazines 
 the acquaintance was already of some years' standing. 
 At the outset he was charmed, like many another, 
 with the brilliant talk and enthusiastic scholarship of 
 Maginn, who taught him, he tells us, to appreciate 
 Homer, and engaged him to read a passage every 
 day. 
 
 But not only had he known Maginn ; when he 
 returned to London in 1837 he had already tried 
 his pen in the pages of Regina, as the initiate were 
 pleased to call the magazine. His contributions to 
 Eraser's have not all been identified, and perhaps it 
 is as well they should be left hidden where they 
 admirably served their turn. Yet there is little doubt 
 that Elizabeth Brownrigge : a Tale, in which the lustts 
 jtaturcE school of literature, and its prime example, 
 Eugene Aram, are burlesqued, is from Thackeray's 
 hand. It betrays his touch in matter as in manner ; 
 and since it was published, in 1832, a few months 
 after his early meeting with Maginn, it must e'en have
 
 IN LONDON. 29 
 
 been composed in a first flush of enthusiasm. A piece 
 or two followed in 1834 and 1835, and, as has been 
 said, Thackeray appears in Maclise's group of the 
 Fraserians ; but from 1837 onwards he is steadfast in 
 loyalty, and after that year Oliver Yorke had no better 
 supporter. 
 
 He wrote under many names, by this time familiar — 
 M. A. Titmarsh, Jeames Yellowplush, Fitz- Boodle, 
 Dolly Duster, and what not. He turned his facile hand 
 to anything : stories, criticism of books and pictures, 
 correspondence from Paris — he managed them all with 
 gaiety and address. The sentimental ruffian was the 
 favourite object of his attack, and it is not strange that 
 the champion of Fielding's irony should run atilt at 
 Bulwer and Ainsworth. Now he throws his criticism 
 into the shape of a story, now he lets Jeames Yellow- 
 plush wield the tomahawk for him. He was savage, 
 like his colleagues — too savage, he afterwards con- 
 fessed to Bulwer with an apology ; but it must be said 
 in his defence that time has amply justified whatever 
 savagery he displayed. Oddly enough, it was the 
 painters who found the greater offence in his criticism, 
 and they were angry without warrant.^ For never was 
 there a more amiable and misguided judge of the 
 pictorial art. Yet Thackeray had painted in the 
 studios, he had copied in the Louvre, he was inde- 
 fatigable in the illustration of what he saw. But he 
 took no more into a picture-gallery than a trick of 
 ^ See FitzGeralcCs Leilej's (1894), vol. i. p. 193.
 
 30 THACKERAY. 
 
 picturesque prose, a faculty of indiscreet appreciation, 
 much prudery, and a good heart. 
 
 The sentiment with which he examined a picture 
 was irreproachable ; the keenness wherewith he looked 
 through the paint and canvas to the purpose behind 
 it is miraculous ; " the intention of Mulready's Seven 
 Ages," says he, " is god-like." He protests, like the 
 Early Victorian that he was, against Etty's nudity : a 
 Sleeping Nymph he finds so naked " as to be unfit 
 for appearance among respectable people at an ex- 
 hibition." Alas, for the respectable people of 1838! 
 But not only does he espy the disease ; he discovers 
 a remedy : " A large curtain of fig-leaves should be 
 hung over every one of Etty's pictures, and the world 
 should pass on, content to know that there are some 
 glorious colours beneath." That is prudishness re- 
 duced to the absurd. One doubts whether even the 
 respectable Victorians would have found pleasure in 
 the knowledge that somewhere or other a mass of 
 glorious colour was covered by fig-leaves. But Etty 
 "offended propriety" as badly as David or Girodet, 
 and there was an end on't. 
 
 However, if Etty was rather too "human," the classics 
 were not human enough, and Thackeray's scorn of the 
 cold, marmoreal Greeks was eloquent even for his age. 
 The Gothic cult, encouraged by the Romantic move- 
 ment, inspired him to an excess of zeal, to an out- 
 break of sentiment, which to-day are hardly intelligible. 
 "The contemplation of such specimens of Greek art as
 
 IN LONDON. 31 
 
 we possess hath always, to tell the truth, left us in a 
 state of unpleasant wonderment and perplexity. It 
 carries corporeal beauty to a pitch of painful perfection, 
 and deifies the body and bones truly ; but, by dint of 
 sheer beauty, it leaves humanity altogether inhuman — 
 quite heartless and passionless." Thus Thackeray at a 
 moment when we " possessed " the Elgin Marbles ! 
 Mere beauty, in his view, should be fig-leaved as tightly 
 as mere colour, and the world be free to admire the 
 school which teaches that " love is the first and highest 
 element of beauty in art." Nor is this the worst ; 
 his hint to amateurs concerning pictures and their 
 merits is, " Look to have your heart touched by 
 them." So, too, he finds a picture by Eastlake "as 
 pure as a Sabbath hymn sung by the voices of 
 children," and would reserve " one of the best places 
 in the gallery " for the coldly chaste productions of 
 Ary Scheffer. With the same sentimentality of pur- 
 pose he thinks William Hunt as good as Hogarth, and 
 objects to Delacroix with the irrelevant question, 
 " What's the use of being uncomfortable ? " " Skill 
 and handling are great parts of a painter's trade, but 
 heart is the first," thus he sums up the question ; 
 " this is God's direct gift to him, and cannot be got in 
 any academy, or under any master ; " and never else- 
 where does he more clearly acknowledge the limitations 
 imposed upon him by his age. Many months passed 
 in the studios of Paris had taught him no more than a 
 jargon which Ruskin adopted as his own, and the ap-
 
 32 THACKERAY. 
 
 preciation of a certain M. Biard, whose "Slave Trade" — 
 now happily forgotten — seems to have shaken London 
 to its very foundations. But the criticism of paint- 
 ing did not long engross Thackeray, who was trying 
 his hand at the art of fiction, and who had already 
 won the praise of his friends, though the approval of 
 the people, in his own view the best judges, was with- 
 held for a weary ten years. 
 
 But if his stories did not please the people, they 
 afforded the best possible training to himself. Not 
 only did they give him the experience which he 
 lacked, but they were, so to say, sketches for his 
 larger works. The same characters, the same names, 
 the same situations were afterwards used by him with 
 more conspicuous success. A S/ui/>/>y Genteel Story 
 grew into Philip, and though the process is not always 
 so clearly visible, the stories contributed obscurely to 
 Fraser's and The Neiv Monthly were the germs of 
 the novels which won for Thackeray his fame and 
 name. But the stories are best worth studying, 
 because they prove that he was at the outset inspired 
 by the views which characterised his maturer talent. 
 A strange mixture of contemptuous irony and that 
 particular kind of sentimentalism known as Early Vic- 
 torian, he seems to snigger behind his sobs, and to 
 weep under the secure cover of contemptuous irony. 
 The worst is that he could not, either early or late, keep 
 his two methods separate, so that while his pathos does 
 not melt the wise to tears, his irony is seldom sustained
 
 IN LONDON. 33 
 
 at a perfect level. Catherine^ for instance, is excused 
 on the ground that it was written " to counteract the 
 injurious influence of some popular fictions of the day, 
 which made heroes of highwaymen and burglars, and 
 created a false sympathy for the vicious and criminal." 
 But if the excuse strikes a false note, what shall we say 
 of a writer who, in attempting an ironic presentation, 
 declares that "though we are only in the third chapter 
 of this history, we feel almost sick of the characters that 
 appear in it, and the adventures which they are called 
 upon to go through " ? 
 
 Such a confession as this produces precisely the 
 effect which Thackeray wishes to avoid. It intro- 
 duces an element of morality into a scene which is 
 only reputable if moral and immoral have changed 
 places. Fielding in Jonat/ian JVi/d lashes no other 
 character with the scorn of his disapproval than Heart- 
 free, whose behaviour is " low and pitiful," and whose 
 wretched soliloquy is properly described as " full of 
 low and base ideas, without a syllable of greatness." In 
 truth, irony can only exist in a uniform atmosphere : 
 given Fielding's definition of greatness, Jonathan Wild 
 is a masterpiece of wit. But introduce into that 
 masterpiece digressions upon right and wrong in their 
 usual acceptation, and you get a confusion of epithets, 
 an inextricable jumble of two languages. Now, this 
 
 ^ Catherine appeared in Fraser's Magazine in 1S39-40, and was 
 not published in a book until 1S69, when it was included in volume 
 22 of the Library Edition. 
 
 C
 
 34 THACKERAY. 
 
 is the too frequent fault of Thackeray's experiments 
 in irony : by suddenly changing the atmosphere of his 
 stories, he involves himself in the same charge, which 
 he brings with some justice against Bulwer and Ains- 
 worth. So often does he halt between the two methods 
 of expression, that his meaning, doubtful to himself, 
 is obscure to others. More than once he discusses 
 Catherine as though she were not an instrument of 
 irony but a living person. He confesses that the 
 story was " a mistake all through. It was not made 
 disgusting enough ; . . . the author had a sneaking 
 kindness for his heroine, and did not like to make her 
 quite worthless." 
 
 But the true ironist is impartial : he should permit 
 no hint to escape him of kindness or disgust ; he 
 should put the crimes of his hero or heroine in the 
 light of achievements ; and he should rise superior 
 to the temptation of commentary. If in one sense 
 Catheritie is not disgusting enough, in another it is too 
 disgusting. The author's intermittent partiality increases 
 the realism of the story, and that which should be 
 merely intellectual wears a semblance of morality. 
 Nor did Thackeray make the best of his material : the 
 life of Catherine Hayes, " the traitoress of Birming- 
 ham," as it is told in the bald simplicity of The New- 
 gate Calendar, grips a firmer hold upon the fancy than 
 Thackeray's satire, which is chiefly interesting as a step 
 on the road towards the excellence of Barry Ly^idon. 
 For Catherine Hayes was a very real personage, who
 
 IN LONDON. 35 
 
 murdered her weak, adoring husband with a cold- 
 blooded atrocity rare even in the eighteenth century, and 
 who was burned alive for " petty treason " in i 726. Yet 
 though the story was thus faithfully founded upon fact, 
 it was construed as a deliberate attack upon Miss 
 Catherine Hayes, the Irish singer, and the Press of 
 Ireland was fiercely indignant. In a ballad, which he 
 wrote at the time, and sent many years after to Miss 
 Procter, Thackeray celebrated the episode : — 
 
 "A Saxon who thinks that he dthraws 
 Our porthraits as loike as two pays. 
 Insulted one day without cause 
 Our innocent singer, Miss Hayes. 
 
 And though he meant somebody else 
 
 (At layst so the raycreant says, 
 Declaring- that history tells 
 
 Of another, a wicked Miss Hayes), 
 
 Yet Ireland, the free and the brave, 
 Says, what's that to do with the case ? 
 
 How dare he, the cowardly slave, 
 To mintion the name of a Hayes ? 
 
 The Freenia?! in language refined, 
 T/ie Post whom no prayer can appayse. 
 
 Lashed fiercely the wretch who maligned 
 The innocent name of a Hayes. 
 
 Accursed let his memory be, 
 
 Who dares to say aught in dispraise 
 
 Of Oireland, the land of the free, 
 
 And of beauty and janius and Hayes."
 
 36 THACKERAY. 
 
 Nor did the trouble end here. Some ten years later 
 a set of young Irishmen ^ determined that Thackeray 
 had made a deliberate attempt to ruin their distin- 
 guished countrywoman ; and in revenge they deputed 
 a young gentleman to take lodgings opposite the novel- 
 ist's house, and await an opportunity of chastising him. 
 But Thackeray carried the war into the enemy's camp : 
 he called upon the enraged Irishman, told him the 
 true history of the wicked Catherine Hayes, and sent 
 him back to Ireland without a thought of revenge in 
 his head. The anecdote is characteristic of either side, 
 and is the pleasantest incident in the career, real or 
 imagined, of Catherine Hayes. 
 
 Burlesque is bastard brother to irony, and if TJie 
 Tremefidous Adve7itnres of Major Gahagan are burlesque 
 at its maddest, the two methods are agreeably blended in 
 The Yellowplush Papers, which also first sparkled in the 
 I pages of Frasers. Now, when Jeames is a pseudonym 
 for the author, he is nothing more than an excuse for 
 bad spelling. (In his inception he was called Charles, 
 but it was as Jeames that he rose to grandeur, and should 
 be remembered). His views are the views not of a 
 flunkey, but of Thackeray himself. His Letters to the 
 Literati, for instance, throw no light upon his character, 
 they mark no point in his progress. They do but 
 
 ' This suggestion lo liorsewhip Thackeray was made after a refer- 
 ence to Catherine Hayes in Pendciinis ; but the real offence was 
 committed in the earlier story, and therefore it is most properly 
 discussed here. See Morning Chronicle, April 12, 1850, Capers 
 and Anc/iovies, a piece of controversy in Thackeray's best manner.
 
 IN LONDON. 37 
 
 assail the " Honrabble Barnet " in terms of deeper 
 contempt than Thackeray would have used, had he 
 written in his own name and with his own pen. We 
 may therefore dismiss all those essays in which the 
 name of Yellowplush is usurped, and consider only 
 such pages as throw the light of autobiography upon 
 the ingenious flunkey. 
 
 Jeames, indeed, is an engaging figure, and no sooner 
 does he step upon the stage than he wins our sym- 
 pathy. For he, too, is painted in the colours of 
 irony, and owes something of his character to the 
 Dean of St Patrick's. It has been said that he was 
 drawn, as he appeared in Buckley Square, after Mr 
 Foster, the gentleman who for many years contributed 
 the Fashionable Intelligence to The Morning Post. 
 But this is incredible : from the first day that he en- 
 countered Mr Altamont, he has the makings of a 
 genuine flunkey, whom you could not match outside 
 the famous Directions to Servants. At the outset he 
 adopted the right attitude of snobbery towards his 
 own kind — " them poor disrepattable creatures " he 
 loftily calls them. No sooner does he take service 
 with Mr Deuceace than he reveals a sound know- 
 ledge of his craft. " When you carry up a dish of 
 meat," — thus the footman is enjoined by Swift, — "dip 
 your fingers in the sauce, or lick it with your tongue, 
 to try whether it be good, and fit for your master's 
 table." And Jeames had already turned this philosophy 
 into practice. " There wasn't a bottle of wine," says he,
 
 38 THACKERAY. 
 
 " that we didn't get a glass out of, nor a pound of 
 sugar that we didn't have some lumps of it." " We had 
 keys to all the cubbards — we pipped into all the 
 letters that kem and went — we pored over all the bill- 
 files — we'd the best pickens out of the dinners, the 
 livvers of the fowls, the forcemit balls out of the soup, 
 the egs from the sallit." All this they had as their 
 rights, for "a suvvant's purquisits is as sacred as the 
 laws of Hengland." 
 
 But if Jeames knew his rights, he knew also his 
 master's character. The Honrabble Halgernon was 
 a gambler and a swindler — that his servant saw ; but 
 he recognised that rank and birth can warrant the 
 last enormity. Yellowplush, then, is already a true 
 footman in Miss Shuin's Hitslni/id, that story of a 
 taboo, which may best be described as a modern 
 Cupid and PsycJu\ and he is a still finer expert in J/r 
 Deuceace's Amours. But it is not until he signs him- 
 self Fitz James de la Pluche ^ that he does perfect justice 
 to his talents. At last he was in the situation which 
 the author was best pleased to depict. He was rising 
 from one world to another, he was deserting the servants'- 
 hall for the drawing-room, and exchanging the fidelity 
 
 ^ The earlier series of Yclloioplush Papers was printed in Eraser'' s 
 Magazine in 1837-38, and republished in the Comic Tales and 
 Sketches of 1841. The Diary of C. Jeames de la Pluche did not 
 appear in Punch until 1845-46, and having been published by 
 Appleton of New York in 1853, first found its way into a volume, 
 on this side the Atlantic, in the Library Edition of 1869. But 
 since the later is a development of the earlier work, they are con- 
 sidered together in this place.
 
 IN LONDON. 39 
 
 of Mary Ann for the sly contempt of Lady Angelina. 
 He had become as fierce a gambler as Mr Deuceace 
 himself; but it was not the cards that tempted him — 
 it was the railroads of England ; and he played with 
 such brilliant luck that before long he was " a landed 
 propriator — a Deppaty Leftnant — a Cap ting." Under 
 the auspices of his friend, Lord Bareacres, he is pre- 
 sented at Court, wearing upon his handsome brow the 
 Halbert 'At — " an 'at which is dear to the memory of 
 hevery Brittn ; an 'at which was invented by my Feald 
 Marshle, and adord Prins," However, the fall in 
 railway-stock is too much for the heroic de la Pluche : 
 with a note of warning against time-bargains, he retires 
 from the business of speculation, and settles down with 
 the still faithful Mary Hann at the " Wheel of Fortune 
 'Otel." His name is simple Jeames Plush once more, 
 and he comes off better than most upstarts. But his 
 humour grows with the years, and proves that Thackeray 
 was a more highly accomplished master of his material 
 in 1845 than when he first came upon the town. 
 
 But the sentimental stories which he contributed in 
 these early days to the magazines are yet more closely 
 characteristic of his talent, yet more loudly prophetic 
 of what he was presently to achieve. In A Shabby 
 Genteel Story ^ the snob, as he saw him, is already 
 triumphant. Already he can exclaim with rapture, " O, 
 free and happy Britons, what a miserable, truckling, 
 
 ^ This story was published in Frascrs Magazine in 1840, and re- 
 printed in the Miscellanies of 1855-57.
 
 40 THACKERAY. 
 
 cringing race ye are ! " Already he is eloquent in 
 denunciation of the tuft-hunter, the lick-spittle, the 
 sneak, " the man of a decent middle rank, who affects 
 to despise it, and herds only with persons of the 
 fashion." The author's suspicion of snobbishness is too 
 alert, as it was in the aftertime ; his censure of the 
 harmless vanity displayed by foolish men and women 
 is too savage ; the pretensions of. Mrs Gann are treated 
 with too heavy a hand. But in A S//a/>/>y Genteel Story 
 we see the beginning of a talent, exercised in the direc- 
 tion which it would always take, and misapplied with 
 a wilfulness which was constant. Between A Shabby 
 Genteel Stcny and Philip are many works worthily 
 accomplished ; yet a comparison of the two proves 
 that what Thackeray was in 1840 that he remained in 
 1 86 1. His style had gained an immeasurable ease; 
 his view of life was more settled, if no less sentimental. 
 But the same drama still attracted him : he was still 
 happiest in the contemplation of the petty problems 
 which agitate the minds of snobs, and so profound was 
 his consistency that he closed his career with the same 
 gospel wherewith twenty years before he had com- 
 menced it. 
 
 A better story both in style and composition is 77/1? 
 History of Samuel Titniarsh and the Great Hoggarty 
 Diamond} Here, at any rate, is a })romise of the best 
 
 ' The Great Hogi^ariy Diaiiioud made its first appearance in 
 Erasers Magazine in 1S41, and was published as a booli eight 
 years later.
 
 IN LONDON. 41 
 
 that was to come ; here, at last, is something besides 
 gaiety of heart and a sense of social contrast. Of 
 course the social contrast is still the essence of the 
 story, but the humour and pathos, which particularly 
 distinguished Thackeray, are agreeably blended, and 
 there is undoubtedly a freshness in the telling that 
 should have pleased the jaded taste of the time. 
 However, the positive achievement of Thackeray's 
 early experiments in fiction is not great ; the most of 
 them might well have been forgotten, and forgotten 
 they would have been, had not a tiresome fashion 
 of curiosity necessitated, as I have said, the patient 
 collection of the odds and ends contributed to the 
 magazines. But though at the moment they brought 
 their author no fame and little profit, they were not 
 written in vain. Even had they been lost, they would 
 still have served their purpose in sharpening the tools 
 which he would presently use with greater ease and 
 skill. 
 
 Above all, they show that Thackeray was not piping 
 to the tune of the time. Andrea Fitch, in A Shabby 
 Genteel Story, is a true child of 1830, Spanish cloak, 
 fragrant Oronoko and all ; there are traces of French 
 influence in his contributions to The National Standard ; 
 but for the rest Thackeray cared as little for the Roman- 
 tic Movement as for the performances of Bulwer and 
 Ainsworth. As Dickens went back to the life of an 
 earlier age, to our English lanes and English inns, so 
 Thackeray sought inspiration in an earlier literature, and
 
 42 THACKERAY. 
 
 is far more closely related to Goldsmith and Fielding 
 than to his fantastic contemporaries. He seems to 
 have come straight out of the eighteenth century, and 
 to have blotted from his sight the pearls of fancy with 
 which his contemporaries adorned their works. It is 
 not wonderful, therefore, that he did not command 
 popularity. A generation which delighted in titled 
 authors and ruffianly heroes took small pleasure in 
 the sentimental simplicity of TIic Great Hoggarty 
 Diamond, nor are you surprised that the publishers 
 of the magazine in which it appeared demanded of 
 its author a speedy termination. But, for all that, 
 Thackeray was not discouraged. His buoyant temper 
 could easily support the disdain of the people, 
 especially as his friends were eager in appreciation. 
 The chastened approval of FitzGerald, given to few, 
 was surely enough to justify high hopes of the future, 
 especially since Tennyson and Carlyle agreed with Fitz- 
 Gerald. Sterling, no doubt, overdid his praise, when 
 he wondered whether I^elding or Goldsmith had done 
 better than The Great Hoggarty Diamo/id ; but at 
 least he had noted Thackeray's inspiration, and saw 
 in which direction his friend's talent should develop. 
 So the year 1841 found Thackeray with an empty 
 pocket, yet rich in the applause of his friends and in 
 the qualified approval of magazine-editors. But a blow 
 had fallen upon him, which literary success could not 
 soften. His wife, to whom he had been married but 
 a few short years, fell suddenly ill, and though Thack-
 
 IN LONDON. 43 
 
 eray hoped for a recovery until 1844, she did not leave 
 the maison de saute to which she had been entrusted, 
 and was never restored to health. That Thackeray 
 never ceased to mourn his broken life is certain. 
 "Though my marriage was a wreck," he wrote long 
 afterwards, " I would do it over again, for behold love 
 is the crown and completion of all earthly good." Nor 
 was his wife's illness the only sorrow which beset him. 
 An infant daughter had died in the year before, an 
 event to which there is a touching reference in The 
 Great Hoggarty Diamond, while poverty intensified the 
 melancholy of a reserved and sensitive man. Thus 
 Thackeray's period of experiment ended in sorrow 
 and ill-success, for which he would have been the last 
 to claim a general sympathy. So far as one can tell 
 from the scanty references in FitzGerald's Letters and 
 elsewhere, he was resolute to hide his troubles from 
 his friends, and he sought in work and travel the 
 surest solace of all. Those near to him knew the 
 courage with which he bore the assaults of adverse 
 fortune ; but as he says himself, " such things are 
 sacred and secret," and a stranger "has no business 
 to place them on paper for all the world to read."
 
 44 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 THE PICTURESQUE REPORTER BARRY LYNDON. 
 
 We are nowadays so intimately acquainted with the 
 picturesque reporter, that we can hardly believe in 
 a time when he was not. He is the favourite of the 
 daily press, the one serious rival to the popular novelist. 
 He may be discovered, notebook in hand, wherever 
 steamboat or railroad can carry him. Now he is 
 greedily intent upon information ; now his aim is to 
 capture such random reflections as grow, like wild- 
 flowers, in the hedgerow. But whether it be thought 
 or fact which engage his mind, the result is most often 
 both trivial and transitory. He has seldom the' tact 
 or the leisure to see, and he is perforce content with 
 hasty generalisations. He mistakes that which happens 
 once for an invariable circumstance, and an impolite 
 porter is enough to involve in a common charge a 
 whole nation. So that while the literature of "tourism" 
 is ever increasing, it cannot inflate our breasts with 
 pride. But when Thackeray published his Paris Sketch
 
 THE PICTURESQUE REPORTER. 45 
 
 Book^ in 1840, it was happily rare. True, the fashion 
 had been set in the dechne of the eighteenth century 
 by the nascent romanticism of Gray. True, two men 
 of conspicuous talent had cast a curious eye upon 
 France twenty years before the Revolution. Sterne 
 had crossed the Channel, that he might embroider his 
 own sentimentality upon the fringe of what was then a 
 foreign country ; while Smollett had journeyed to Nice, 
 that he might find health for himself, and might at his 
 leisure record the habits and customs of his neighbours. 
 After Sterne and Smollett came Arthur Young, that 
 
 ^ The Sketch Book is a medley of fiction, politics, and criticism, 
 which had, with few exceptions, already seen the light in The 
 National Standard, in Fraso's Magazine, and elsewhere. Most 
 of the stories betray their origin. A Caution to Travellers, for 
 instance, describes the sorrows of an Englishman, who falls among 
 thieves in a Parisian gambling hell, and describes these sorrows 
 in terms which have been familiar ever since the publication in 
 1777 of La Qiiinzaine Angloise h Paris, on VArt de s''y miner en 
 pen de terns. To this " ouvrage posthume du docteur Stearne" 
 Thackeray owes at least one scene in his story, unless we admit 
 that such scenes have been the common property of fiction since the 
 flood. In Little Poinsinet, again, Thackeray has drawn in ex- 
 travagant colours a poor poet, who once enjoyed a certain celebrity, 
 and who having fallen into abject poverty, drowned himself. 
 Casanova came across him more than once in his pilgrimage 
 through life, saved him from a watery grave in the Tiber, merely 
 that a few years later the Guadalquivir might engulf him. In 
 Casanova's phrase Poinsinet was "un tout petit jeune homme, laid, 
 plein de feu, plaisant, et qui avait du talent pour le scene." 
 Thackeray sets him in another light, which was doubtless tradi- 
 tional. As for Thackeray's Cartouche, he belongs less to history 
 than to fancy and the chap-books. But he is a lively vagabond all 
 the same.
 
 46 THACKERAY. 
 
 austere farmer who would have planted Chambord with 
 turnips, whose thoughts were so easily diverted from 
 the palaces of the great to drill-ploughs and harrows, 
 and who, nevertheless, foresaw the coming reign of 
 terror, which had been suspected by none save himself 
 and Lord Chesterfield. But Thackeray did not need 
 to go back to the eighteenth century for an example. 
 Charles Dickens, his great contemporary, had already 
 shown, in Skefckes by Boz^ what sympathy and imagina- 
 tion might discover in the familiar haunts of one's own 
 city. But, for all that, when Thackeray set out to 
 paint for his countrymen the character and aspect of 
 Paris, he was essaying, in the guise of a picturesque 
 reporter, a kind of writing as yet unstaled by sanguine 
 ignorance and the exigence of a daily paper. 
 
 From several points of view Thackeray seemed well 
 equipped for the task. He was the master of an easy 
 style, more familiar than correct, more boisterous than 
 energetic. But such as it was, it fitted the picturesque 
 reporter like a glove. High spirits were his constant 
 companions, even when judgment deserted him for a 
 while, and he carried his readers in and out the theatres, 
 picture-galleries, and gardens of Paris with unfailing 
 vivacity. Moreover, if his understanding was often be- 
 fogged, he possessed an intricate knowledge of his sub- 
 ject ; the French capital had been his second home ; 
 its life and literature had been familiar to him from his 
 boyhood ; he had lived there not merely as an opulent 
 tourist, or as a light-hearted student in its schools of art.
 
 THE PICTURESQUE REPORTER. 47 
 
 but as a poor stranger writing for a living. He had, 
 therefore, every opportunity of expeUing prejudice, and 
 of combating that hasty generalisation which is the 
 bane of the picturesque reporter. 
 
 Best of all, after Cambridge, he came to a Paris 
 quick with " movements," alert with genius and gaiety. 
 The victorious Romaniiques were in full possession of 
 the citadel ; Hugo and Dumas were making an easy 
 conquest of the playhouses, while Balzac was creating 
 his country anew in the Comedie Humaine. Had he 
 chosen, Thackeray might have read the works of 
 Stendhal and Michelet, of Merimee and George Sand, 
 of Musset and Gautier, hot from the press. It was, 
 too, the heyday of the grisetie, when she and her long- 
 haired companion danced and chatted and laughed with 
 a zest and extravagance unknown to our chastened 
 epoch. Fantasy and wit were in the air ; a thousand 
 Lucien de Rubempres were entering Paris at every 
 gate, and dreaming their dreams of poetry and triumph 
 under the trees of the Luxembourg, or listening to 
 the tempting voice of Lousteau and his kin beneath 
 the shadows of its gracious palace. And the joy of 
 life taught Thackeray to appreciate at least the one 
 charm of France which cannot grow old. " I never 
 landed at Calais pier," says he, "without feeling that 
 a load of sorrow was left on the other side the water ; " 
 in brief, the sparkling air of France, the sense of 
 holiday, the feeling of a vivid intelligence abroad, the 
 consciousness that the people are gayer than ourselves,
 
 48 THACKERAY. 
 
 that, whether right or wrong, their thoughts are quicker 
 and more whimsical — all this Thackeray suggests in 
 spite of himself. 
 
 Even when the fetes of July fill his austere soul 
 with contempt, he owns that the sight is brilliant, 
 happy, and beautiful. " If you want to see the 
 French people to the greatest advantage," he writes, 
 " you should go to a festival like this, where their 
 manners and innocent gaiety show a very pleasing 
 contrast to the coarse and vulgar hilarity which the 
 same class exhibit in our own country at Epsom race- 
 course, for instance, or Greenwich Fair." Again, he 
 frankly acknowledges the delight which the French 
 take in comely surroundings, in the beauty of restaur- 
 ants, even in the proper adornment of a dirty, in- 
 odorous wine-shop. He is enthusiastic when he sees a 
 crowd of mechanics, endiina/iches, gazing with intelligent 
 interest at the treasures of the Louvre ; he freely owns 
 that the French possess, what we do not, an abstract 
 appreciation of art. Even when he parades his own 
 sentimental method of criticism, he still reflects that 
 Paris is a paradise of painters, and that the happy 
 student who starves an sixihiie may wander all the 
 day long in the resplendent palace of kings and 
 emperors. So far his sympathy takes him ; but an 
 inborn Philistinism peeps out all the same, and he 
 woefully misreads the character of our neighbours. 
 
 He expects in the French the same political intelli- 
 gence which he finds in the English. He laughs
 
 THE PICTURESQUE REPORTER. 49 
 
 furiously at the fetes of July, because the revolution, 
 which they celebrate, is in his eye a failure. He 
 solemnly reproves the "Sancho-like gravity and naivete" 
 wherewith they applaud the achievements of Louis 
 Philippe, whom he finds a contemptible monarch. 
 But he forgets, in this heavy-handed reproof, that the 
 Parisians are children of fancy, changeable and whim- 
 sical ; children, too, who know the rules of logic, and 
 who gladly proceed from false premisses to a logical, if 
 a false, conclusion. For such vagaries as these he finds 
 no censure too severe. The monarchy, says he, is a 
 sham, liberty is a sham, the people is a political sham. 
 
 So he belabours monarch and people with a strange 
 lack of humour and sympathy. Heine, his great 
 contemporary, who was sitting in the same stalls, 
 reading the same newspapers, witnessing the same 
 festivals and processions, saw the truth with a far 
 keener eye than did Thackeray. He knew that the 
 French are comedians by nature, ready to take service 
 under any manager, and to do their best for him 
 whether he be Charles X. or Louis Philippe. In their 
 view "the play's the thing," and politics are but a 
 single scene in the drama of life. Fafiein et circenses 
 they love with a constant heart, and the circus is yet 
 more to their mind than the bread. But Thackeray 
 would demand of them political wisdom as well ; he 
 would ask them, when they were enjoying fireworks 
 and the fresh air, if their enjoyment Avere justified by 
 the political situation. And they would reply, properly 
 
 D
 
 50 THACKERAY. 
 
 enough, that a pageant needed no excuse, and that 
 a summer holiday was its own justification. 
 
 Even The Second Funeral of Napoleon} Thackeray's 
 liveliest essay in reporting, might have been touched 
 with a lighter hand. True, nothing could have been 
 more ridiculous than the behaviour of the Due da 
 Joinville, who, at the mere rumour of war with England, 
 threw his comfortable furniture overboard, turned his 
 yacht into a man-of-war, and exacted an oath from 
 every man of his crew that he would die rather than 
 give up the bones of the dead Emperor to the hated 
 English. The hated English had entertained the Due 
 de Joinville with all the honours ; they had intrusted 
 the sacred coffin to his keeping, having previously 
 carried it to the sea upon their own shoulders. But 
 no sooner was his precious freight on board than the 
 Due de Joinville wished to play another part — the 
 part of the soldier who would die but not surrender. 
 Though an attack was out of the question, the hero 
 would not be foiled of his applause, and seriously to 
 
 ^ The Second Funeral of Napoleon was published in 1 84 1. 
 Thackeray, with Monckton Milnes for companion, witnessed the 
 ceremony performed at the Invalides, and wrote his account post- 
 haste. The work, in fact, was "compiled in four days, the ballad 
 being added as an afterthought." The ballad — "The Chronicles 
 of the Drum " — is the best of its kind that Thackeray ever wrote. 
 The little book had a certain success. Writing to W. H. Thompson 
 in 1841, Edward FitzGerald asked : "Have you read Thackeray's 
 little book — the second Funeral of Napoleon ? If not, pray do ; 
 and buy it, and ask others to buy it ; as each copy sold puts 7^'^d. 
 in T.'s pocket, which is very empty just now, I take it,"
 
 THE PICTURESQUE REPORTER. 5 I 
 
 reprove him for his folly is to misunderstand both the 
 hero and his temperament. Convinced that England 
 was greedy to reclaim what it had freely given up, the 
 hero armed the hand which yesterday he had held out in 
 friendship. Once more the Frenchman's premisses were 
 false and Itis logic sound ; and once more Thackeray 
 considered the situation with excessive gravity. 
 
 He somewhere blames the English for not loving art 
 for art's sake, and constantly incurs his own reproach. 
 His artistic sympathy, in fact, was always imperfect, his 
 point of view always utilitarian or philanthropic. His 
 criticism of French literature, for instance, is less intelli- 
 gent even than his criticism of French politics. He 
 feels so little sympathy with the drama and romance 
 of France that he never thinks of either apart from its 
 subject and its moral effect. The drama of Victor 
 Hugo and M. Dumas he finds " profoundly immoral and 
 absurd " ; he therefore prefers the drama of the common 
 people, which " is absurd, if you will, but good and 
 right-hearted." After he has seen " the most of the 
 grand dramas which have been produced at Paris for 
 the last half-dozen years," he declares that " a man may 
 take leave to be heartily ashamed of the manner in 
 which he has spent his time." By a still worse con- 
 fusion of ideas he deems it wrong " to enjoy a cool 
 supper at the Cafe Anglais " after the horrors of the 
 play, and thus he implicates not only the actors but the 
 audience in the crimes committed upon the pictured 
 scene.
 
 52 THACKERAY. 
 
 It is not remarkable, therefore, that he approaches 
 the hterature of the Romantic age without discrimina- 
 tion. As I have said, he might, if he would, have read 
 the masterpieces of Balzac, Dumas, Hugo, Stendhal, 
 and the rest hot from the press. Yet he mentions 
 none of the masters save in dispraise. In the mellower 
 age, which produced The Roundabout Papers, he had 
 learned to love the great Alexander, liut in the days of 
 The Paris Sketch Book he shuddered that he could not 
 read Balzac or Dumas "without the risk of lighting 
 upon horrors." And whom did he admire ? Why, 
 Monsieur de Bernard, to be sure, " who is more re- 
 markable than any other French author for writing like 
 a gentleman : there is ease, grace, and ton in his style, 
 which cannot be discovered in Balzac, or Soulie, or 
 Dumas." So he prefers M. de Bernard's Gerfaut, and, 
 still worse, M. Rey baud's ineffable Jerome Patiirot} to 
 the masterpieces of the Comcdie Humaine, and at last 
 you begin to think that he is laughing in his sleeve. 
 
 But he is not laughing at all : he is expressing the 
 opinion of a gentlemanly Philistine, who esteems ton 
 higher than truth, and who revolts against Balzac's 
 candid insight. Indeed, any stick is good enough for 
 Balzac's back, and if that eminent novelist had not 
 put forth a long, dull, and pompous letter in Peytel's 
 
 ^ Jeroi/te Patitrot inspires Tliackeiay with the following reflection : 
 " As for De Balzac, he is not fit for the salou. In point of gentility, 
 Dumas is about as genteel as a courier ; and Frederic Soulie as 
 elegant as a hiiissicr." "These are hard words," as the author 
 says, and they are not ironical.
 
 THE PICTURESQUE REPORTER. 53 
 
 favour, a victim of judicial murder would assuredly 
 have escaped the gallows. But time has fought, with 
 all its weapons, against the critic. Nobody will ever 
 read again MM. Reybaud and de Viel-Castel. But 
 Honore de Balzac is immortal, as Shakespeare is 
 immortal, for he wrote the truth not only of France 
 but of mankind. 
 
 Yet had Thackeray's point of view not been rigidly 
 fixed, had he taken less note of literature and the drama, 
 he might have composed a just picture of French life 
 and thought. The permanence of some of his criticisms 
 is warrant of its truth. Well as he knew Paris, he con- 
 fessed that only a partial knowledge was possible. 
 " Intimacy there is none," said he ; " we see but the 
 outside of the people." And much of the outside 
 was then, as now, hostility to England. Thackeray 
 himself had no illusions. " Don't let us endeavour 
 to disguise it — they hate us. Not all the protestations 
 of friendship, not all the wisdom of Palmerston, not 
 all the diplomacy of our distinguished plenipotentiary, 
 Mr Henry Lytton Bulwer, can make it, in our time 
 at least, permanent and cordial." To - day, as in 
 Thackeray's time, " men get a character for patriotism 
 in France merely for hating England," and the hatred 
 is so old that we need not trouble to explain it, nor to 
 set it down to the criminality of this party or that. 
 Indeed, when Thackeray discusses the ever-interesting 
 problem of French and English, he is both wise and 
 fair, even if he arrive at no conclusion. At what
 
 54 TIIACKKRAY. 
 
 conclusion could he arrive ? Our differences are 
 emphasised by our propinquity, and perhaps France 
 consults her own temper best in choosing alliances 
 at a distance. Little as she knows of England, she 
 knows less of Russia, and happily mistakes her ignorance 
 for sympathy. But he who would understand France, 
 must put out of his mind all thought of his own country, 
 and this task Thackeray found impossible. He judged 
 Paris rather by her divergencies from his standard than 
 by qualities of her own, and even where his intelligence 
 was sound, his sympathy was at fiiult. He had the 
 humour to smile, but not the charity to condone. Yet 
 The Paris Sketch Book was not written in vain. Its 
 true result may be seen in his novels ; and had he 
 not sojourned in France, he could not have drawn the 
 engaging de Florae, as true a Frenchman as ever was 
 portrayed by English hand. 
 
 The Paris Sketch Book was the deliberate result of a 
 long sojourn and many studies ; its companion. The 
 Irish Sketch Book (1843), was composed on a different 
 plan. It is, in fact, a set of impressions gathered in a 
 single voyage, and therefore differs not at all from what 
 we should call to-day "special correspondence." In 
 1842, when he undertook the trip, Thackeray needed 
 such relief as the rapidly shifting scenes of a journey 
 might bring. The placid course of his life had been 
 most rudely interrupted, and with a silent courage that 
 was characteristic, he sought in Ireland both change 
 and "copy." At first FitzGerald promised companion-
 
 THE PICTURESQUE REPORTER. 55 
 
 ship, but his energy failed him, and Thackeray set 
 out alone. "There's that poor fellow Thackeray gone 
 off to Ireland," wrote FitzGerald ; "and what a lazy 
 beast I am for not going with him." But FitzGerald 
 praised the book when it was published, and declared 
 that it was "all true." And true no doubt it was, 
 though it was a truth not acceptable to all Irishmen. 
 
 It gives to the reader a vivid impression of some- 
 thing seen and noted on the spot. The writer de- 
 scribes with equal zest the landscape and the people ; 
 nothing comes amiss to his eager mind, whether it 
 be Irish politics or hot lobster. He is as keenly 
 interested in the practical use of guano as in the curric- 
 ulum of Templemoyle School. He sentimentalises, 
 after his fashion, over the poverty of the Widow 
 Fagan. " How much goodness and generosity — how 
 much purity, fine feeling — nay, happiness" — says he 
 in one of his favourite apostrophes, " may dwell among 
 the poor whom we have just been looking at ! Here, 
 thank God, is an instance of this happy and cheerful 
 poverty : and it is good to look, when we can, at the 
 heart that beats under the threadbare coat, as well as 
 the tattered old garment itself." Nowadays we take 
 these qualities on trust ; and rightly make no moral 
 distinctions between rich and poor. But the exclama- 
 tory passage just quoted is eminently characteristic of 
 its author, who unto the end of his career delighted 
 somewhat naively in the obvious emotions. 
 
 On the other hand, the odd little chap-books, pub-
 
 56 THACKERAY. 
 
 lished in Dublin, wliich described after their own 
 primitive manner the adventures of many an intrepid 
 horse-thief, and the tragedy of many a hard-fought 
 field, aroused his interest at once. Mr James Freeny 
 is an excuse for one of his most agreeable essays, and 
 that reckless highwayman, no doubt, provided a hint 
 at least for Barry Lyndon. He is presented in ironical 
 style, without a word of excuse or reprobation, and he 
 pleasantly interrupts the prevailing sentiment. Briefly, 
 Thackeray, like many another traveller, found Ireland 
 a bundle of contrasts : generosity and squalor, misery 
 and lightheartedness, sport and rebellion, were to his 
 vision inextricably mixed. He frankly avowed the 
 difficulty of a conclusion. " To have an opinion about 
 Ireland," says he, " one must begin by getting at the 
 truth : and where is it to be had in the country ? Or 
 rather there are two truths, the Catholic truth and the 
 Protestant truth. The two parties do not see things 
 with the same eyes." None the less he was on the 
 side of the Irish, though he never tired of ridiculing 
 them, and he composed an attack upon the English 
 government of Ireland by way of preface, w^iich he 
 was persuaded to suppress. Doubtless, had he lived 
 to-day, he would have been a Home Ruler, as Sir 
 Leslie Stephen says, but his opinion shifted with time 
 and circumstance, and it would be idle to define it. 
 The Sketch Book, however, was not the best result of 
 his journey to Ireland ; that must be sought in Barry 
 Lyndon, and the admirable Irishmen, such as Captain
 
 THE PICTURESQUE REPORTER. 57 
 
 Costigan, encountered in his novels. On the other 
 hand, it had an immediate effect : it was the first 
 book which gave Thackeray a definite place in the 
 world of letters ; it was dedicated to Lever ; and it 
 drew a word of congratulation from the great Dickens 
 himself. 
 
 His next journey was farther afield, and might in 
 those days (1844) have seemed almost adventurous. 
 The offer of a passage on board a P. &: O. boat per- 
 suaded him to realise an ancient project, and go to the 
 East. Before starting he arranged to write a book of 
 his travels for ;^2oo, he took with him the half-finished 
 manuscript of Barry Lyndon, and let few weeks pass 
 without sending something to Punch. But, despite 
 these manifold interruptions, his real purpose was the 
 composition of his Notes of a Journey from Cornhill 
 to Cairo, which, when they were published in 1846, 
 proved the best that their author had yet achieved. 
 The book is admirably picturesque in style, and 
 it contains passages of description which Thackeray 
 never excelled. For all his love of painting, literature 
 was in his blood, and if the ateliers of Paris had 
 quickened his vision, the skill of putting what he 
 saw into words was inborn. Yet here, too, are many 
 traces of that sentimental Radicalism which its author 
 never conquered. He looks upon Athens with a sternly 
 practical eye, and, unmindful of its associations, merely 
 notes that " its shabbiness beats Ireland, and that is a 
 strong word." Not even Cobden himself surpassed
 
 58 THACKERAY. 
 
 that contemptuous summary, and it is characteristic of 
 Thackeray's invincible optimism. In his eyes there 
 was no time like the present, and a contemplation of 
 Rhodes made him ask, " When shall we have a real 
 account of these times and heroes — no good-natured 
 pageant, like those of the Scott romances, but a real 
 authentic story, to instruct and frighten honest people 
 of the present day, and make them thankful that 
 the grocer governs the world now in place of the 
 baron ? " 
 
 So he congratulates himself that he learned no Greek 
 at school ; so he swears he would prefer two hundred a- 
 year in Fleet Street to the kingdom of the Greeks ; so 
 he echoes the common gag that Byron did not write 
 from his heart. And then, the more profoundly to over- 
 whelm you with regret, he will sketch you a sunny land- 
 scape, in which " every fig-tree is gilded and bright, as 
 if it were an Hesperian orchard," or he will recall a 
 boyish memory of The Arabian Nights^ and he will do 
 all this with so fine a spirit, that you wonder how the 
 shadow of sentiment and reform ever fell across his 
 buoyant, pleasure -loving nature. But he gives the 
 explanation himself: Smyrna, says he, "rebuked all 
 mutinous Cockneys into silence." A mutinous Cockney 
 — that is what he was in one aspect, and his mutinous 
 Cockneyism made him as blind to the elegant triviality 
 of life as to Athens and its splendid memories. 
 
 But mutinous Cockney though he was on occasion, 
 he possessed one gift, too rarely used, which should
 
 BARRY LYNDON. 59 
 
 have corrected his error — the gift of irony. On his way 
 to the East he finished with much tribulation his first 
 complete essay in the art of fiction — llie Luck of Barry 
 Ly/idofi, a piece of ironic presentation, which has not 
 since been surpassed. He had already tried his hand 
 at irony and with ill-success, for Catherme is but irony 
 touched by a sentimental regret ; and though he never 
 relinquished this method of satire, in his later novels 
 it is so thick overlaid with pathos as to be hardly 
 recognisable. But in Barry Lyndon the irony is sus- 
 tained with a consistency rare in Thackeray, who found 
 in Jonathan Wild the best model, and wrote in frank 
 competition with his master. 
 
 Now, irony is neither popular nor easily understood. 
 It is commonly supposed to be the easy trick of 
 writing good when you mean bad. Johnson could find 
 no better instance of it for his dictionary than " Boling- 
 broke was a holy man," and he showed for once that 
 his hatred for a great statesman was stronger than 
 his love of truth. The author of The Courtier was far 
 more wisely inspired, and explains what he rightly calls 
 "a handsome kind of raillery" with perfect lucidity 
 and the happiest examples. " There is likewise a 
 handsome kind of raillery," says he, " which consists 
 in a certain dissimulation, when we speak one thing 
 and mean another : I don't say the quite contrary, as 
 if we were to call a dwarf giant or a negro white, or 
 a very ugly a very beautiful person, because the con- 
 trariety is too manifest, but when in a grave and serious 
 
 1*
 
 60 THACKERAY. 
 
 tone we express that to which inwardly we express no 
 regard or assent." 
 
 The ingenious Castighone guards his definition, which 
 Johnson does not, and of course Castighone is in the 
 right of it. For irony is something far subtler than 
 an interchange of opposites : it is a delicate masking 
 of the truth, a method of presenting a fact with the 
 greater force, because you set it upside down. But 
 the figure has been so variously employed that it is 
 wiser to give instances than to attempt a definition, 
 and it will be seen that, by whomsoever affected, its 
 essence is a hinted concealment of the truth. It is 
 the ignorance of QEdipus the king, for instance, which 
 touches the masterpiece of Sophocles with irony. The 
 audience knows, as the king does not, that CEdipus' 
 determination to discover the criminal who pollutes the 
 State will recoil upon himself, and there is not a line of 
 his utterance that is not double-edged. That is to say, 
 the poet takes his public into a confidence from which 
 his characters are excluded. The Socratic irony, on the 
 other hand, is a lack of knowledge assumed by the 
 omniscient, the more easily to entrap his opponents ; 
 and though it differs from the irony of Sophocles, it is 
 true to the essential opposition of word and sense. 
 
 Yet the spirit as well as the word must be opposed 
 to the sense if irony is to achieve its purpose. When 
 Voltaire insists in the face of unparalleled disaster that 
 all is for the best in the best of all possible worlds, he is 
 preaching a sermon against the folly of optimism, and
 
 BARRY LYNDON. 6 1 
 
 this he achieves not by a mere transposition of opposite 
 words, but by changing the whole spirit of his romance. 
 When Fielding set out to write The History of Jonathan 
 JFi/d the Great — the masterpiece which profoundly 
 influenced Thackeray — he neither sang a p^ean to 
 thievery, nor sought to demonstrate the sacredness of 
 property. He merely drew the portrait of a "great" 
 man, and let vice and virtue change places. After 
 the same fashion, Thackeray let his hero, as arrant a 
 scamp as ever cheated at cards or showed the white 
 feather, tell his story in his own terms ; and so fine a 
 colour does Barry put upon the meanest of his actions, 
 that while the reader detects his villainy in every line, 
 he himself preserves a splendid unconsciousness. It is 
 true, as we shall presently see, that the irony is false 
 in many details, that the sentiment of everyday life is 
 frequently and inappositely heard. But the blemishes 
 of Barry Lyndon are not essential like the blemishes 
 of Catherine, whose meaning is confused throughout 
 by the intervention of the author's disapproval. The 
 reader and the narrator — Barry in his own person — 
 preserve each his own point of view, and the hero only 
 speaks with the voice of commonplace conviction, when 
 the author nods. Thus, for the most part, the terms 
 of life's equation are changed, and the equation is 
 solved in accordance with the rules of an imaginary 
 algebra. In other words, Thackeray recognised that 
 the language of irony is a language apart, in which 
 thought, to be understood, must be freely and con-
 
 62 THACKERAY. 
 
 sistently translated ; and though that kind of humour, 
 which was the clear expression of his temperament, 
 flashes intermittently in all his works, it burns nowhere 
 else with so steady a flame as in Barry Lyndon. 
 
 Bariy Lyndon was for the moment a palpable failure ; 
 it passed unnoticed through Frasers A/ai^azine in 1844, 
 and its author never found it worth while to print it 
 as a book. America, with a better judgment, pirated 
 it in 1852, and it made a tardy appearance on our 
 side the Atlantic in a posthumous edition. But the 
 generation which delighted in the sentimental scandals 
 of Harrison Ainswortli would have nothing to say to 
 Barry Lyndon, a rascal drawn with spirit, and touched 
 with a rarely failing irony. The meaning was not 
 obvious ; therefore the book was despised by the 
 people. Why should we care about a criminal whom 
 we would not ask to dinner ? That is the criticism 
 commonly deemed adequate for Barry Lyndon, and it 
 is not worth while to insist upon its absurdity. The 
 most primitive reader should see that here is no ques- 
 tion of right or wrong ; that an appeal is made not to 
 the moral sense but to the intellect ; and that he who 
 condemns Barry Lyndon on a false ground, shows 
 that he has misunderstood it. However, Thackeray 
 was doubtless neither disturbed nor surprised at the 
 reception of his work, for he, too, must have realised 
 that irony is the boomerang of literature, which in- 
 variably returns home upon him who wields it. 
 
 In Barry Lyndon, then, Thackeray has sketched with
 
 BARRY LYNDON, 63 
 
 incomparable spirit and agility the career of a braggart 
 Irisliman, a rascal who deserts from the army, who 
 habitually cheats at cards, who blackmails men, and who 
 bullies women. Of course it is part of the game that the 
 hero should not recognise the semblance of a crime 
 in his own chequered career, and a splendid satis- 
 faction gives a zest to his lightest actions. His family 
 (in his eyes) is " the noblest of the island, and perhaps 
 of the universal world " ; he would assume the Irish 
 crown over his coat - of - arms, " but that there are so 
 many silly pretenders to that distinction, and render it 
 common." The pretenders, however, were not always 
 a check upon his pride, and when after his marriage 
 he set out to visit his estates in Devonshire, the Irish 
 crown and the ancient coat of the Barrys were painted 
 on the panels of his chariots " beside the Countess's 
 coronet and the noble cognisance of the noble family of 
 Lyndon." At the outset of his career Barry, like many 
 another hero, met neither success nor appreciation. The 
 stage upon which he was asked to play was far too 
 small for his genius, and to do him justice, he soon 
 left the humble cottage of his mother — Barryville 
 it was called, with a proper magnificence — for the larger 
 world of adventure and chicanery. So, in the proper 
 spirit of the eighteenth century he is sent riding across 
 Ireland, on whose highroad he encounters not only 
 the celebrated one-eyed Captain Freeny, but the fair 
 lady in distress, the false companion of every true 
 knigfht.
 
 64 THACKERAY. 
 
 Forced to enlist by fear of an iniquitous law, he 
 changes clothes with a milksop ofificer, and proudly 
 deserts his colours ; but once again — the last time for 
 many years — good fortune deserts him, and he is 
 kidnapped by a beggarly German and forced to become 
 a private in Billow's regiment. To this epoch in his 
 life he always looked back with pardonable displeasure. 
 Like a true aristocrat, he " never had a taste for any- 
 thing but genteel company, and hated all descriptions 
 of low life." How, then, could he tolerate the squalor 
 and discomfort which necessarily disgraced the kid- 
 napped private in a regiment of ruffians ? Of course he 
 made the best of a miserable position. He kept invio- 
 late that pride of birth which never deserted him, and 
 he did not soil his hands with vulgar toil. When the 
 stress of war was relaxed, " many of our men," says he, 
 " got leave to work in trades ; but I had been brought 
 up to none : and besides, my honour forbade me." But, 
 at least, he could serve Captain van Potzdorff as con- 
 fidential servant without putting a blot upon the 
 scutcheon of the Irish kings ; and when once he was 
 promoted to be a spy, his self-respect was assured. 
 At this time he was animated by a kind of optimism, 
 which was hardly worthy so great a man. " My maxim 
 is to bear all," he wrote, "to put up with water if you 
 cannot get burgundy, and if you have no velvet to be 
 content with frieze. But burgundy and velvet are the 
 best, l>ic)t cnfcndu, and the man is a fool if he will not 
 secure the best when the scramble is open." The real
 
 BARRY LYNDON. 65 
 
 Barry speaks in the last sentence ; the shallow optimism 
 which would put up with water in any case was the 
 mere boast of youth. 
 
 Set by a lucky accident to spy upon his gifted uncle, 
 le Chevalier de Balibari, the hero at last found the 
 career best suited to his genius. Henceforth the 
 faro table supplied his extravagant wants ; henceforth 
 uncle and nephew took that place in the world for 
 which their skill and their graces eminently fitted them. 
 Nor could they have found a better arena for their 
 deeds of daring than the Duchy of X., for the Duchy 
 was not a Tom Tiddler's ground where any fool could 
 pick up gold. Gold there was to be had ; but skill and 
 resolution were necessary to its acquisition. " None 
 but men of courage and genius," says Barry with 
 pardonable pride, " could live and prosper in a society 
 where every one was bold and clever ; and here my 
 uncle and I held our own — ay, and more than our 
 own." The luck of the tables may change for a night, 
 but persistence is the secret of success ; and the two 
 Irishmen won not only wealth but influence as well, by 
 the subtle acceptance of promissory notes. 
 
 Meanwhile the ingenious Barry was busy with another 
 project. "I had determined," he says, "as is proper 
 with gentlemen (it is only your low people who marry for 
 mere affection), to consolidate my fortunes by marriage." 
 And perhaps his uncle's brain never conceived a bolder 
 scheme than Barry's marriage with the Countess Ida. 
 That it came to naught, and was followed by the tragic 
 
 £
 
 66 THACKERAY. 
 
 murder of a princess, was not their fault.^ They knew 
 not the spies that were arrayed against them ; they 
 did not fathom the villainy of the police-minister, nor 
 the ultimate cowardice of Magny, the victim through 
 whose embarrassment their triumph was to come. 
 But fail they did, and failure drove them once more 
 to be wanderers upon the face of Europe, wanderers 
 with a sound knowledge of life and a devout worship 
 of the goddess Opportunity. 
 
 The second adventure of " the Tipperary Alcibiades," 
 as Sir Charles Lyndon - insolently called the ingenious 
 Barry, was more successful. On the death of that 
 baronet, Barry forced the wealthiest widow in the three 
 kingdoms to marry him, and thus attained the climax 
 of his life. The rest of the narrative is but a record 
 of decay : how he squandered the lady's fortune, 
 how he lost his son, the young Viscount of Castle 
 Lyndon, how, sunk in debt, he was put away into 
 the Fleet prison, where his aged mother soothed 
 his declining years ■ — all this is the natural Nemesis 
 of superb fortune. But while he was at his best he 
 challenges Jonathan Wild himself, and his theory of 
 
 ^ Thackeray, as Mrs Ritchie tells us, took the episode of Duke 
 Victor and his Duchess from a book entitled L'£m/'zre, cut dix ans 
 sous Napoleon, par un Chambellan : Paris, 1836. In this book the 
 story is told of the first king of Wurtemberg, who killed his wife for 
 adultery. 
 
 '•* Sir Charles Lyndon is drawn after Charles Hanbury Williams, 
 a great wit in a witty age, a diplomatist and man of the world, 
 whose fate was hapless as Lyndon's own.
 
 BARRY LYNDON. 6/ 
 
 greatness would not have shamed the great thief- 
 catcher himself. 
 
 Aided, no doubt, by the wit and intelligence of his 
 uncle, he formulated his views in what may be termed 
 a philosophy of conduct. He saw very early in his 
 journey through the world that no man can be great 
 who is not boastful. " I own," said he, " that I 
 am disposed to brag of my birth and other acquire- 
 ments ; for I have always found that if a man does 
 not give himself a good word his friends will not do 
 it for him," and truly Barry Lyndon never conceals 
 his worth under a cloak of modesty. Without ceasing 
 he praises his courage, his beauty, his strength, his 
 equal skill with cards or sword, and the splendour of 
 his equipages. When he is in good luck, his story is a 
 paean of praise to his own prowess. And if we may 
 believe him, the fair sex outdid the hero himself in 
 admiration. It was his agreeable way to make love to 
 all women, "of whatever age or degree of beauty," and 
 who was there in Europe to resist his fascination ? 
 " I need not mention my successes among the fairer 
 portion of the creation," said he, in a passage which 
 his creator has freely adapted from the Meiuoires of 
 Casanova. " One of the most accomplished, the tallest, 
 the most athletic, and the handsomest gentleman of 
 Europe as I was then, a young fellow of my figure could 
 not fail of having advantages, which a person of my 
 spirit knew very well how to use. But upon these sub- 
 jects I am dumb. Charming Schuvaloff, black-eyed
 
 68 THACKERAY. 
 
 Sczotarska, dark Valdez, tender Hegenheim, brilliant 
 Langeac ! — ye gentle hearts that knew how to beat in 
 old times for the warm young Irish gentleman, where are 
 ye now ? . . , Oh ! to see the Valdez once more, as on 
 that day I met her first driving in state with her eight 
 mules and her retinue of gentlemen by the side of 
 yellow Manganares ! Oh, for another drive with Hegen- 
 heim in the gilded sledge over the Saxon snow ! False 
 as Schuvaloff was, 'twas better to be jilted by her than 
 to be adored by any other woman. I can't think of 
 any one of them without tenderness. I have ringlets 
 of all their hair in my poor little museum of recol- 
 lections." 
 
 So he treated them with the savagery that became 
 a man while he was with them, and when they were 
 vanished, he treasured the trinkets of their love with 
 a sensibility that the Chevalier de Seingalt himself, the 
 Irishman's great exemplar, might have envied. But 
 love after all was an interlude (or a series of inter- 
 ludes) in a chevaleresque^ industrious career. The real 
 business of Barry's life, as of Casanova's, was gambling, 
 and he was far too noble to cast a slur on the brilliant 
 pursuit to which he owed his greatness. In truth, his 
 rhapsody on gaming does equal honour to his head and 
 his heart. He was not the man to make excuses, or to 
 cry pardon where no pardon was sought. When he com- 
 posed his celebrated defence of play he was speaking of 
 the good old times before "the cowardice of the French 
 aristocracy," to use his own expression, " brought ruin
 
 BARRY LYNDON. 69 
 
 and discredit upon our order." With a justified indigna- 
 tion he declares that " they cry fie now upon men en- 
 gaged in play ; but I should like to know how much 
 more honourable their modes of livelihood are than 
 ours. The broker of the Exchange, who bulls and 
 bears, and buys and sells, and dabbles with lying loans, 
 and trades on State secrets, what is he but a gamester? 
 The merchant who deals in teas and tallow, is he any 
 better? His bales of dirty indigo are his dice, his cards 
 come up every year instead of every ten minutes, and 
 the sea is his green table. ... I say that play was 
 an institution of chivalry : it has been wrecked along 
 with other privileges of men of birth. When Seingalt 
 engaged a man for six-and-thirty hours ^ without leaving 
 the table, do you think he showed no courage? . . . 
 When, at Toeplitz, the Duke of Courland brought four- 
 teen lacqueys, each with four bags of florins, and chal- 
 lenged our bank to play against the sealed bags, what 
 did we ask ? ' Sir,' said we, ' we have but eighty 
 thousand florins in the bank, or two hundred thousand 
 at three months. If your Highness's bags do not con- 
 tain more than eighty thousand, we will meet you.' 
 And we did, and after eleven hours' play, in which our 
 bank was at one time reduced to two hundred and three 
 ducats, we won seventeen thousand florins of him. Is 
 this not something like boldness? does this profession 
 not require skill, and perseverance, and bravery ? Four 
 
 ^ Casanova de Seingalt played for forty-two hours without a 
 break, if one may beheve his own story.
 
 70 THACKERAY. 
 
 crowned heads looked on at the game, and an Imperial 
 princess, when I turned up the ace of hearts and made 
 Paroli, burst into tears. No man on the European 
 continent held a higher position than Redmond Barry 
 then, and when the Duke of Courland lost he was 
 pleased to say that we had won nobly ; and so we had, 
 and spent nobly what we won." 
 
 Nor must it be supposed that Barry advocated the 
 employment of foul means. He had a theoretic 
 contempt for all common practices. " It is only the 
 clumsy fool who c/icafs" he said — " wlio resorts to 
 the vulgar expedients of cogged dice and cut cards. 
 Play grandly, honourably," this was his exhortation. 
 " Be not cast down at losing ; but, above all, be not 
 eager at winning, as mean souls are." Such was 
 Barry Lyndon's philosophy, and what gamester ever 
 formulated a better one ? So good is it, that it is 
 Casanova's own ; and when Barry, a confirmed cheat, 
 condemns cheating, he is but anticipating that hero's 
 famous method of "correcting" fortune. But great 
 as Barry was, his uncle, the Chevalier, had elements 
 of grandeur which the nephew could not comprehend. 
 In style and intellect he was incomparably the superior. 
 He, in fact, was the gamester doubled by the diplo- 
 matist — be - starred and be - ribboned as only the 
 servants of courts are be -ribboned and be -starred. 
 Even in gaming mere profit was not his sole end, 
 and he never forgot that true grandeur lies also in 
 method. This the nephew, eager for wealth, could
 
 BARRY LYNDON. >J\ 
 
 not wholly appreciate. " My uncle," said he, " (I 
 speak with great respect of him) was too much of a 
 devotee, and too much of a martinet at play, ever 
 to win greatly ; " and forthwith he chid him for lack 
 of daring, but he does not see that his uncle's dignity 
 and worldly wisdom were worth more to them than 
 many a stolen coup. So the Chevalier finished his 
 career as he began it, torn between beauty and the 
 Church. Now a monastery claims him, now he suc- 
 cumbs to the fascinations of a ballet-dancer. But in 
 all things he is discreet and a gentleman, nor could 
 Thackeray have devised a more suitable refuge for 
 his declining years than the Irish College, which lies 
 apart under the shadow of the Pantheon, and which 
 fitted his demure dignity as justly as Barry's roystering 
 spirit was punished by the Fleet. 
 
 In Barry Lyndon Thackeray found a task which 
 suited his talent ; and being happy in his task, he per- 
 formed it with a spirit and success which he did not 
 often surpass. For Barry is his best experiment in 
 irony, sustained for the most part with a proper sense 
 of his model and his intention. But it would not 
 have been written by Thackeray, if it had not lapsed 
 now and again from its lofty ideal. The author can- 
 not completely exclude himself and his opinions from 
 the drama. The sentimentalist, whom we know so 
 well, is often looking over the shoulder of the ironist, 
 and interrupting the conduct of the story with com- 
 ment or apology. When Barry drops a tear of sym-
 
 72 
 
 THACKERAY. 
 
 pathy over the misery of his mother, we know that 
 he merely echoes the author of his being. Such a 
 son as Barry showed himself would be indifferent 
 whether his mother starved or not ; and when he tells 
 you that "many a time the poor soul left him to go 
 and break her heart in her own room alone," he 
 alienates your sympathy without winning your belief. 
 That is a specimen of false pathos. On the other 
 hand, the emotion which he betrays on meeting his 
 uncle for the first time is natural and sincere. The 
 old ruffian, with his apricot - coloured velvet and his 
 noble manners, appeared irresistible. As Barry de- 
 clared, "he burst into tears" — why he knew not; 
 yet the tears are easily explained : he had met one 
 of his own kin splendidly apparelled, and he knew that 
 his fortune was made. But at other times we find 
 this notable swashbuckler babbling of flowers, or re- 
 calling his infancy with a sigh, and we can only regard 
 those backslidings into sensibility as a serious blemish. 
 
 The blemish is the more surprising, because Thackeray 
 derived his portrait of Barry from the best sources, and 
 painted it after the best model. As I have said, from 
 beginning to end he kept his eye upon Jonathan Wild, 
 and he could not have found a better inspiration ; 
 while the eighteenth century, that golden age of beaus 
 and bucks, supplied him with abundant material. The 
 true original of Barry was, no doubt, Andrew Robinson 
 Stoney, bully and fortune-hunter, and my Lady Lyndon 
 is a very fair presentment of the Countess of Strathmore,
 
 BARRY LYNDON. y ^ 
 
 the daughter and heiress of George Bowes. Stoney, of 
 course, had a more brilliant career than the hero of 
 Thackeray's romance, for not only did he marry and ill- 
 treat Miss Newton, a fortune of ^^30,000 ; but after her 
 death he brought off the grand coup, and captured the 
 wealthiest blue-stocking of her time. The Countess, 
 again, outshone, if she resembled. Lady Lyndon : she, 
 too, dipped her finger in the ink-pot, she wrote Con- 
 fesswns} she patronised men of learning and talent, 
 and during her widowhood her house was "fairly de- 
 nominated a Temple of Folly." She, too, had watched 
 the death of one husband without breaking her heart, 
 and met more than her match at a second venture. As 
 for Stoney, who, after marriage, assumed the name of 
 Bowes, he lacked (says his biographer) both moral 
 principle and physical courage, and Barry hung not an 
 inch behind him. A chap-book describes the marriage 
 in terms which fit Barry and his spouse to a hair. 
 " Here then were joined in holy wedlock," to quote the 
 popular account, " two such as for the honour of nature 
 are seldom to be seen. The one had broken the heart 
 of a former wife, the other had not lengthened the days of 
 a former husband ; in a battle royal of a main of cocks, 
 the two surviving ones contend for existence, and thus 
 are these two pitted as if by positive destruction." 
 
 ' The CoiifLSsiotts of the Comiless of S.ialinnore (1793), wrung 
 from her by her brutal husband, are a document which it would be 
 difficult to match in the records of the world. They prove con- 
 clusively that Stoney surpassed Barry himself in cowardice and 
 cynicism.
 
 74 THACKERAY. 
 
 Even in the smallest details the similarity of truth 
 and fiction is evident : the young Lord Glamis, for 
 instance, like Viscount Bullingdon, fled from his brutal 
 step-father, and came back after many years to claim 
 his inheritance. But while Stoney Bowes sat for the 
 portrait, there are others who suggested a touch here 
 or there. It has been said that Casanova was for 
 something in the picture, and though it is certain 
 that Thackeray borrowed much from the incomparable 
 Me/noircs, especially from the scenes at the green table, 
 little of the Chevalier de Seingalt's true character is 
 revealed in the vulgar braggart that was Barry Lyndon. 
 For Casanova, despite his faults, was a man of intelli- 
 gence and knowledge. The Prince de Ligne, who 
 wrote with authority, gave him credit for delicacy and 
 honour ; he was so deeply tinctured with learning 
 that he bored his friends with quotations from Homer 
 and Horace ; he was always grateful, unless his pride 
 were hurt ; and his character, complex and discon- 
 certing, remains a puzzle of biography. In any case, 
 he is plainly remote from Barry Lyndon, whom he 
 could have met nowhere else than over the cards. 
 
 Tiger Roche,^ on the other hand, gave Thackeray 
 many a useful hint, and not even Barry could outdo 
 this Irishman in blackguardly conduct. For not only 
 had the Tiger, an artist in profitable matrimony, 
 
 ^ An account of Tiger Roche is printed in Ireland Sixty Years 
 Since, and he is the hero of several chap-books which Thackeray 
 may have picked up during his journey in Ireland.
 
 BARRY LYNDON. 75 
 
 robbed several unsuspecting ladies of their fortunes ; he 
 had bullied and beaten men all the world over. He 
 won his name in America, where, being charged with 
 robbery by an officer who declined to meet him, he 
 sprang at him like a " tiger," and "tore away a mouthful 
 of flesh," which he declared was " the sweetest morsel 
 he had ever tasted." But he most closely resembles 
 Barry Lyndon in his sudden alternations of courage 
 and cowardice. At one moment brave as a tiger, at 
 another he skulked like a whipped cur ; and Thackeray 
 has used one passage in his life to excellent purpose. 
 It will be remembered that when Barry Lyndon lay in 
 the Fleet Prison, his pluck deserted him. A small man 
 was "always jeering him, and making game of him," and 
 when he asked him to fight, Barry hadn't the courage. 
 This episode is frankly borrowed from the life of Tiger 
 Roche, whose spirit so pitifully broke down in the Fleet 
 that he submitted to any insult. " On one occasion," 
 says his biographer, " he had a trifling dispute with a 
 fellow-prisoner, who kicked him, and struck him a blow 
 in the face. There was a time when his fiery spirit 
 would not have been satisfied but with the blood of the 
 offender. He now only turned aside and cried like a 
 child. It happened that his countryman, Buck English, 
 seizing a stick, flogged him in a savage manner : Roche 
 made no attempt to retaliate or resist, but crouched 
 under the punishment." Yet no sooner was he out 
 of prison than his spirit and bravery returned ; he 
 cheerfully faced the point of the stoutest antagonist ;
 
 ^6 THACKERAY. 
 
 and then once more he showed the white feather, and 
 pitifully quailed before the insult of a bully. In 
 picturesqueness Roche has the advantage, but it is 
 plain to see what he contributed to the making of 
 Barry Lyndon, who, however, is none the worse as a 
 portrait because more than one ruffian sat for it. 
 
 In the early 'Forties sentiment was stronger than intelli- 
 gence. The story, which should have made Thackeray 
 famous, passed unnoticed through a magazine. Not 
 even the admirable episode of the German Duchy, 
 sketched with a technical mastery and a knowledge 
 of life which Thackeray seldom surpassed, availed 
 to find him readers. But meantime journalism was 
 giving him the reputation that literature could not give, 
 and, like many another man of letters, he was being 
 loudly acclaimed for work unworthy his talent.
 
 17 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 PUNCH AND VANITY FAIR. 
 
 Writing to Frederick Tennyson in 1842, Edward Fitz- 
 Gerald, a Cassandra of criticism, said : "Tell Thackeray 
 not to go to Punch yet." Artistically the advice was 
 sound. A comic paper, were it possible, would be like 
 a dinner of sauces, such as an accomplished cook would 
 not consent to prepare. No man can be funny either 
 to order or at all times, and wit is so precious a gift 
 that it should flash upon us unexpectedly. Pufich, 
 moreover, was already pontifical, though but a year 
 old. It had already taken its place among British 
 institutions, and despite its profession of wit and 
 humour, it was (and is) portentously serious. The 
 mahogany-tree became sacred as soon as it was carved, 
 and it is not surprising to any one who turns over its 
 pages that its jubilee was celebrated by a religious 
 service. But to Thackeray it was not so much a 
 field for artistic expression as a means of livelihood. 
 For some ten years he served it loyally, and con- 
 tributed to its columns a vast deal of workmanlike
 
 78 THACKERAY. 
 
 journalism. There the matter might have ended ; a 
 few memorable pages might have been rescued from 
 oblivion, and the rest buried, as journalism should 
 always be buried, in the columns where first it saw 
 the light. 
 
 But the demon of curiosity pursued Thackeray from 
 Fraser's to Puticli, so that it is our own fault if we 
 do not know every line and scratch which he sent to 
 our only comic paper. The archceologist has devoted 
 infinite research to the discovery of the unimportant. 
 He has told us how many " cartoons " were the fruit 
 of Thackeray's suggestion, how many " social cuts " 
 Thackeray's ingenuity designed. He has traced, with 
 indisputable authority, the hand of Thackeray through 
 many a weary volume. He tells us how often his 
 victim calls himself " Muff," how often he prefers to 
 be known as "Spec." Not a paragraph escapes him, 
 and while his energy is laudable, it is less than fair 
 to the novelist's memory. A writer is not at his best 
 in a note written with the printer's devil at the door, 
 and his personal view is very soon merged in the 
 general policy of a journal. 
 
 It is not, therefore, in his casual contributions to 
 Punch that we may hope to surprise the real Thackeray. 
 We may marvel at the versatility of interest which en- 
 abled him to turn from France to Ireland, from foolscap 
 to the drawing-block. But if he alone wielded both pen 
 and pencil, his colleagues rivalled him in the variety 
 of subjects which they were ready to treat at a moment's
 
 PUNCH AND VANITY FAIR. 79 
 
 notice. In politics he reveals himself a thorough-paced 
 Liberal, a Home Ruler, at first from conviction, and 
 presently because he "loved a quiet life," an admirer 
 of Cobden, and, as became the author of The Book 
 of Sfiobs, a contemner of courts and their parasites. 
 Most of the windmills at which he tilted long since 
 lost their sails. To-day nobody cares about Jenkins, 
 under which name Thackeray guyed Foster of The 
 Morning Post, or the Poet Bunn, or James Silk 
 Buckingham. And after these the common objects 
 of his scorn were Prince Albert and his hat, Joinville 
 and the French ; but when they were ridiculed by 
 others he felt a resentment, which was partly justified, 
 for, however strongly he felt, his hand was never so 
 heavy as Douglas Jerrold's. 
 
 The most of his contributions to Fu?ich, then, are 
 the merest journey-work. The Legend of Jazvbrahiiu 
 Heraudee, wherewith he made his debut in 1842, is 
 no better than Aliss Tickletobf s Lectures upon English 
 History, a desperate attempt to be funny, which was 
 discouraged by the editor. The Fat Contributor is just 
 as little to one's mind, and it was not until Thackeray 
 resuscitated his old friend Jeames that he did himself 
 justice. The hunt for railway shares gave the incom- 
 parable de la Pluche an admirable chance to express 
 his views upon finance and society ; but it was with 
 The Book of Snobs that Thackeray first found a new 
 talent and hit the public taste. The time of its 
 appearance was propitious. In 1846 the wave of
 
 8o THACKERAY, 
 
 revolution which broke over Europe two years later 
 was already gathering force and volume. Democracy, 
 if not fashionable, was popular. There were thousands 
 of Britons eager to see the follies and vulgarities of 
 the great world exposed ; and they took the same 
 delight in The Book of S/iobs as our democrats of 
 to-day take in the gossip of " society " papers. Old 
 as the vice is now, it was not new in 1846; but 
 Thackeray stamped it with an official name, which, 
 like the quality it denotes, is imperishable.^ 
 
 The origin of the word is lost in obscurity. It was 
 not Thackeray's own invention ; indeed it is not un- 
 commonly found in the works of Dickens, Lever, and 
 others ; nor was it always used in its familiar sense. 
 In the Cambridge of the early nineteenth century it 
 was a contemptuous term put upon the townsmen by 
 the members of the university; and since it makes its 
 first appearance in the Gradus ad Cantai'rigiam of 
 
 ^ Snobbishness is doubtless as old as the world, and you may 
 track it in any period you will. In 1802, says The Times, "a 
 scandalous intrusion was practised by persons employed by some of 
 the morning papers, to take down the names of persons of fashion 
 as they got out of their carriages to visit their friends." One of these 
 gentry, surprised in the servants' hall of the Diletlante Theatre, in 
 Tottenham Street, was, we are told, "sent to the watch-house." 
 To-day he would be far more kindly treated, and he (or she) would 
 assuredly drive to the theatre in a brougham. But so far has 
 snobbishness been carried in our day, that the press shows a 
 naive surprise if august personages can speak or walk. Not long 
 since it was gravely asserted that a certain princess, having made a 
 small purchase in a shop, defrayed the cost out of her own purse. 
 Out of whose purse, save her own, should she have defrayed it?
 
 PUNCH AND VANITY FAIR. 8 1 
 
 1824/ being alisent from the earlier edition (1803), 
 its introduction may be approximately fixed. Thack- 
 eray, the undergraduate, knew the name well, since it 
 was borne by the little journal for which he wrote at 
 Cambridge ; but there is all the difference in the world 
 between a "townsman" as opposed to a "gownsman" 
 and the superfine gentry of The Book of Snobs. Prob- 
 ably the general sense, which still survives, is also the 
 older, the narrowed use of the word at Cambridge being 
 a mere piece of local exclusiveness. At any rate, De 
 Quincey employs the word to the same purpose as 
 Th.ackeray in 1822,^ which proves that it belonged 
 not to a university, but to the world. But certainty 
 is impossible, nor does Thackeray help us to pierce 
 the mystery, " Not above five-and-twenty years since," 
 he writes, "a name, an expressive monosyllable, arose 
 to designate the race." Maybe he is thinking of De 
 Quincey, maybe of his own undergraduate journal. The 
 effect in either case is the same : he leaves us with a 
 word which the philologists cannot explain, and which 
 the hardiest lexicographer would hesitate to define.^ 
 
 1 " Snob. A term applied indiscriminately to all who have not 
 the honour of being members of the University." 
 
 ^ See The Opium- Eater (edition 1862, p. 120): "Those base 
 snobs who would put up with a vile Brummagem substitute," For 
 this quotation I am indebted to the courtesy of Dr J. A. H. Murray. 
 
 ^ The last step in the word's development is the strangest of all. 
 The French took hold of it, and not knowing its meaning, bent it to 
 their will, so that in the Paris of to-day it means the top of the 
 fashion, and the word has acquired a sense precisely opposite to 
 that which it connoted in the Gradiis ad Cantabriiriain of 1824. 
 
 F
 
 82 THACKERAY. 
 
 So much for the word; now for the quahty. "We 
 cannot say what it is," wrote Thackeray, " any more 
 than we can define wit, or humour, or humbug ; but we 
 knoiv what it is." Nevertheless he attempted a defini- 
 tion himself, which does not enlighten us. " He who 
 vieaiily admires niean t/iiiigs is a snob — perhaps that is a 
 safe definition of the character." If it were, then The 
 Book of Snobs need not have been written, for a single 
 page would be sufficient to convince the most hardened 
 sinner. Nor does Thackeray live up to his definition 
 through a single page. The things which the most of 
 his snobs admire are not mean, unless rank, intelligence, 
 and achievement are all mean. But the truth is, 
 Thackeray had " an eye for a snob " ; he tracked Snobs 
 through history, "as certain little dogs in Hampshire 
 hunt out truffles." Wherever there was a man, he saw a 
 snob ; if the man were of high rank, he overvalued him- 
 self; if he were of low rank, he overvalued others. 
 Lady Bareacres is a snob, because she spends more 
 than she can afford ; Lady Scraper is a snob, because 
 she prefers a mutton - chop eaten in splendour to a 
 whole saddle consumed in Brixton ; Sir Walter Raleigh 
 was a snob, because, being a loyal courtier, he spread 
 his cloak before the feet of his sovereign. 
 
 But from beginning to end Thackeray's bias is evident. 
 He inclines so far to the side of the people that he 
 blames the kings of this world for the adulation heaped 
 upon them by fools. If sovereignty be anything better 
 than a disgrace, then Louis XIV. was a great king, since
 
 PUNCH AND VANITY FAIR. 83 
 
 no man ever so well understood the pageantry of a 
 throne. Yet to Thackeray "old squaretoes " was a 
 snob, who depended wholly upon his wig. He considers 
 the army with the same prejudiced eye, and writes like 
 a war-correspondent lately returned from the front : the 
 red-jackets are "great-whiskered warriors, who have 
 faced all dangers of climate and battle " ; the officers 
 who perform " the idiotic services " of command are 
 " vacuous, good - natured, gentlemanlike, rickety little 
 lieutenants." Rag and Famish, again, are in no sense 
 snobs ; cads they may be ; but to include such raffs 
 as these and Lord Byron in one category, is to con- 
 fuse not merely words but qualities. 
 
 At the university he is no more happy than in the 
 army. He is indignant because in his day noblemen 
 were granted degrees upon easy terms. But here was 
 no snobbishness ; it was merely part of an ancient 
 system, which could be attacked, and has been abol- 
 ished, on its merits. The sizar at Cambridge, the ser- 
 vitor at Oxford, suffered an evident hardship ; yet let it 
 be remembered that philanthropy, not snobbishness, was 
 the first cause of their position, and that similar hard- 
 ships will be inevitable until we are all equally rich, or 
 equally poor, by Act of Parliament. And then, as if to 
 show the insecurity of his argument, he condemns 
 Crump, the Master of Saint Pjoniface, for whom, no 
 doubt, we may read Whewell, because " he being a 
 beggar, has managed to get upon horseback." Would 
 he have kept him, we wonder, at an eternal charity
 
 84 THACKERAY. 
 
 school, or would he have forced him to carry to the 
 Master's Lodge an air of affected humility? It is, in- 
 deed, a touch of true snobbishness to twit the success- 
 ful scholar with his humble origin, and Thackeray's 
 argument is marred by a manifest contradiction, He 
 who attempts to rise is a snob; he who deigns to descend 
 is a snob ; and if equality is our only salvation, it is by 
 the author's reasoning plainly unattainable. 
 
 With much of Thackeray's satire it is easy to sym- 
 pathise. All honest men hate tuft-hunting as they hate 
 an assumption of gentility. We none of us can find 
 words strong enough to condemn the 'Court Circular,' 
 which, while it treats the exalted in rank as superhuman, 
 invites the lower middle class to spatter their familiar 
 conversation with great names. But Thackeray does 
 not stay his hand at legitimate denunciation. He 
 worries his point, until he himself becomes the mouth- 
 piece of mean thoughts. He seems to be haunted by a 
 species of self-consciousness ; he is surprised that he is 
 where he is ; he knows that somebody is above or below 
 him ; but he cannot take his place in the world (or any- 
 body else's place) for granted. He quite rightly holds 
 a society " which sets up to be polite, and ignores Arts 
 and Letters, to be a snobbish Society." But Arts and 
 Letters have always got the recognition they desire from 
 a Society which, by Thackeray's own argument, has no 
 right to encourage them. 
 
 In truth, there is a touch of wounded pride in every 
 page of this Book of Stiobs^ which Thackeray should
 
 PUNCH AND VANITY FAIR. 85 
 
 never have betrayed. At the very time at which he 
 was scarifying the Snob, he was dining where he could, 
 and moving with a proper pleasure "in the inner circle." 
 A year later he takes a genuine and justified delight 
 in riding with dukes and duchesses at Spa. Like all 
 other men, he preferred good company to bad, and who 
 would blame him ? Yet he cannot view the situation 
 with a simple eye. When the young Disraeli fluttered 
 into the highest society he professed a frank joy in 
 his success. When he dined at a distinguished peer's, 
 " the only commoner in the room," he was con- 
 scious of a triumph, and a man of sense must surely 
 confess Disraeli's attitude at once more honest and more 
 dignified. How, then, shall we harmonise Thackeray's 
 practice and theory? It would be hard, indeed, had 
 not Sir Leslie Stephen given us the key. " Thackeray 
 was at this time," says Sir Leslie, "an inhabitant of 
 Bohemia, and enjoyed the humours and unconven- 
 tional ways of the region. But he was a native of 
 his own Tyburnia, forced into Bohemia by distress, 
 and there meeting many men of the Bludyer type who 
 were his inferiors in refinement and cultivation." Truly, 
 there is no easier method of falsifying facts than to live 
 with one's inferiors. No doubt Thackeray seemed a 
 snob to the Bohemians of his acquaintance, who re- 
 sented his superiority with a jealous rage ; no doubt, 
 also, it was in Bohemia that he saw the folly of pretence, 
 and learned to exaggerate in his mind's eye the outward 
 shows of life.
 
 86 THACKERAY, 
 
 But it was not merely his environment wliich con- 
 fused liis vision. TIic S)ioh Papers betray a lack of 
 humour, an inability to look at things in their right 
 proportion, which it is not easy to condone. Thackeray 
 was persuaded that all things are barbarous which are 
 not of practical utility. He agreed with Cobden, he 
 said, that Courts are barbarous, that " beef-eaters are 
 barbarous.'' He hated tradition, and denounced in 
 set terms " the brutal, unchristian, blundering Feudal 
 system." But to denounce is not to abolish. As we 
 are born of the past, so we cannot, by a mere act of 
 will, rid ourselves of our ancestry and its influence. 
 The Feudal system may be all that a hostile fancy 
 paints it, but it shaped the world we live in, the only 
 world we shall ever live in. Nor would Thackeray's 
 argument be sound, unless he re-created the huinan 
 race, and let it fight out its battles /// vacuo. 
 
 But there is another reason why 'J'hackeray was 
 prone to detect his favourite vices in everybody, — he 
 was strangely interested in the trivialities of life. The 
 philosopher who could not endure the " bounce " of 
 Dumas nor the brutality of M. de Balzac, liked to 
 reflect that Major Ponto's hollands was gin, that Sack- 
 ville Maine was ruined at the " Sarcophagus," that 
 Timmins' dinner was not yet paid for. True, these 
 lesser evils are part of the tragedy of life, but they 
 are not all its tragedy ; and it is Thackeray's weakness 
 sometimes to have mistaken the part for the whole. 
 Once taken hold of by this dominant idea, he could
 
 PUNCH AND VANITY FAIR. 8/ 
 
 not shake off the obsession ; he continued until the 
 end beUeving that every man he met was a snob, 
 and forgot that if snobbishness be the common factor 
 of humanity, it would be as well to strike it out and 
 make an end of it. 
 
 But if The Book of Snobs is based upon a confusion 
 of thought, it none the less has conspicuous merits. 
 The style, though now and again forced to a witticism, 
 is often as lucid and supple as Thackeray's best ; the 
 sketches of character scattered up and down the book 
 are admirably fresh and truthful, nor does the fact that 
 he afterwards drew them on a larger scale impair their 
 interest and veracity. As I have said, Thackeray made 
 no scruple of repeating himself, and The Book of Snobs, 
 no less than The Sketch Books, contains the raw material 
 of much fiction. Cinqbars and Glenlivat, my Lady 
 Carabas and the Honourable Sir George Tufto, were 
 already alive in the pages of Fujich, and the years did 
 no more than add to their natural growth. But The 
 Book of Snobs touched the popular fancy, and made 
 Thackeray famous. It achieved more than this : it 
 profoundly influenced its author. Thackeray once 
 told Motley that " the Snob Papers were those of his 
 writings he liked the least," and we can easily believe 
 it. None the less he never shook himself free from 
 its bondage. Henceforth he was, more often than 
 not, a chronicler of snobs, and it was only when his 
 imagination carried him back to the eighteenth century 
 that he forgot the twisted standard of life he had
 
 88 THACKERAY. 
 
 himself set up. It is not uncommon, this spectacle 
 of an author enslaved by his own book ; but the slavery 
 dimmed Thackeray's outlook upon the world, and it is 
 impossible to observe without regret the complacency 
 wherewith he answered the too urgent demand of the 
 people. 
 
 To enumerate the miscellaneous prose and verse 
 which Thackeray sent to Pinich in some ten years 
 were a thankless task. Wherever he went, to Brighton 
 or to the East, he found time for a column of jocular 
 correspondence. But there are one or two works which 
 have deservedly been saved from the wreckage of 
 journalism. The Novels by Eminent Hands are the 
 best, as they were the first, of their kind — witty, per- 
 tinent, and good-natured. The Travels in London and 
 Mr Broitui's Letters to his Nephew echo in every line 
 the shrewd, middle-aged man of the world, in whose 
 pompous garb their author liked to masquerade. So he 
 wrote much and easily, and found time for the visits 
 to Paris, which were his best-loved pleasures. " He 
 is in full play and pay in London," wrote FitzGerald, 
 "writing in a dozen reviews, and a score of news- 
 papers : and while health lasts he sails before the 
 wind." And his success was due in great measure to 
 Punch. Punch, in other words, cut the string of his 
 balloon, which presently sped across the sky amid 
 trailing clouds of glory. One visible renown was a 
 silver statuette of the humpback presented him in 
 1848 by Dr John Brown and other admirers in Edin-
 
 PUNCH AND VANITY FAIR. 89 
 
 burgh. Moreover, he could at last be easily placed. 
 "Thackeray? Yes. The man on Punch;'''' and once 
 a man is " placed," fame is never long in reaching him. 
 
 Nevertheless, he felt the strain of journalism, as all 
 must feel it. No sooner did he sit down to his novel, 
 whichever it might be, than a promised article diverted 
 him, and the terms on which he lived with some 
 of his colleagues did not lessen the strain. So that 
 his resignation, in 1853, was neither unexpected nor 
 inexplicable. He wrote to his mother that " it was a 
 general scorn and sadness which made him give up 
 Piiftch,''^ and no doubt it was fatigue as well as a differ- 
 ence of policy which induced his resignation. In 1849 
 he told Mrs Brookfield that he " was getting so weary of 
 Punch that he thought he must have done with it." 
 Four years later he had done with it. " What do you 
 think I have done to-day ? " he wrote to the same friend ; 
 " I have sent in my resignation to Punch, There ap- 
 pears in next Punch an article so wicked, I think, by 
 
 poor , that upon my word I don't think I ought to 
 
 pull any longer in the same boat with such a savage 
 little Robespierre. The appearance of this incendiary 
 article put me in such a rage that I could only cool 
 myself with a ride in the park." 
 
 The article was an attack upon Louis Napoleon, 
 which Thackeray believed to be " dangerous for the 
 welfare and peace of the country." Nor was the 
 epilogue to his collaboration more agreeable than the 
 reason of his departure. Punch,, like all those who
 
 90 THACKERAY. 
 
 reserve to themselves the right of flaying others by 
 adverse criticism, has always been exquisitely sensitive 
 to the faintest reproach. A year after he had resigned, 
 Thackeray, in an article upon Leech contributed to 
 2'he Quarterly^ wrote " half a line regarding his old 
 Punch companions," to quote a letter addressed to Mr 
 Evans,^ "which was perfectly true, which I have often 
 said, but which I ought not to have written." The 
 half-line is wholly void of offence, yet Punch resented 
 it with all the fury of a delicate critic. "Fancy a 
 number of Punch" wrote Thackeray, "without Leech's 
 pictures ! What would you give for it ? The learned 
 gentlemen who write the work must feel that without, it 
 were as well left alone." Surely there is nothing for 
 offence in so moderate a statement, in which, moreover, 
 Thackeray included himself. But the offence was given, 
 and it could only be purged by a dinner of recon- 
 ciliation. However, Thackeray had loyally served the 
 journal which, in its time, had been of excellent service 
 to him, and had found an appreciative audience for the 
 novels which had been appearing month after month 
 during the past six years. 
 
 On January i, 1847, there was published in a yellow 
 wrapper, now famous, the first number of Vanity Fair. 
 Until the fifth number, we are told, the story aroused 
 little interest, and the publishers, in the prudence of 
 their souls, were half persuaded to suppress it. Then 
 
 ^ The letter is printed at length in Mr Spielmann's History 0/ 
 Puncli.
 
 PUNCH AND VANITY FAIR. 9I 
 
 suddenly a trivial circumstance — the appearance, 'tis 
 said, of Mrs Perkinses Ball — aroused the popular curi- 
 osity, and all the world was chattering of Vanity Fair. 
 Thus it is that books are commonly found good or bad 
 by accident, and owe what is called " success " to any 
 other element than iheir own merit. But Vanity Fair 
 was doubly fortunate : deliberate criticism echoed the 
 people's voice, and before the story was half finished 
 it had been reviewed — with outspoken appreciation — 
 by Abraham Hayward in The Edinburgh. To-day the 
 heavy artillery of the quarterlies can neither kill a foe 
 nor save a friend ; but fifty years ago opinions were 
 not framed and broken in a night, and, incredible 
 though it seem, an article by Hayward helped to 
 decide the fate of the book. 
 
 Thackeray, then, was happy in the reception of 
 Vanity Fair, and the passing years have confirmed the 
 instant verdict. Indeed, stubborn as is the mind of 
 man, it would have been surprising if the book had 
 not touched the taste of the town. For it was fresh 
 both in matter and manner. It owed nothing to con- 
 temporaneous foppery ; it was as remote from Bulwer 
 as from Ainsworth. As in his shorter stories, so in 
 Vanity Fair, Thackeray forgot the rivals who environ ed 
 him, and went back for inspiration to the t rue English 
 novel of Fielding. He called the book "a novel 
 
 without a h ero " ; he might have called it a nove l 
 without a plan. He confesses himself that the moral 
 crept in of itself, and that he "wasn't going to write
 
 92 THACKERAY. 
 
 in this way when he began." In other words, the 
 story grew as it chose, from month to month, and 
 dragged its author after it. And this explains its failure 
 to stop when it should. The logical end of the book 
 is Rawdon Crawley's appointment to the Governorship 
 of Coventry Island, and the rcgathering of the threads 
 — over 150 pages — is a wanton and tedious operation. 
 
 So far as its construction goes, Vanity Fair is a 
 novel of adventure, ot adventure in society, where 
 hearts and banks are broken more easily than heads 
 or dynasties! and despi te his own declaration that he 
 wanted to make " a set of people li ving without God 
 in the world," the book has not a plan or motive in^ 
 
 the sense that Balzac and the moderns have under- 
 stood It ' For Thackeray, although he might, an he 
 chose, have studied the Comcdie Humaine^ remained 
 old-fashioned to the end, and let his personages wander 
 up and down as they listed, content if only he could 
 now and again slip in a sentiment, or castigate a 
 favourite vice on his own account. But the charge 
 commonly brought against Va/iify Fair that it is heart- 
 less and cynical cannot be sustained for a moment. 
 A n ovel^_pf_ mami er s^ do e s not exhaust th e whole of 
 human life, a nd Thackeray had a perfect right to 
 choose such puppets for his shows as aroused his 
 
 keenest interest.^ No r is the book me rely a novel 
 
 of manners ; it is a satire as well. The author does 
 not ask his readers to profess sympathy with his ruf- 
 fians. He demands no more than an appreciation
 
 PUNCH AND VANITY FAIR. 93 
 
 of a witty presentment and of deft draughtsmanship. 
 If he had suppressed the sentiment, which ever rose 
 up in his heart, Vanity Fair might have been as 
 un-moral as The Way of the World, and what a 
 masterpiece it would have been ! Even Amelia, a very 
 Niobe of tears, is drawn with a cold contempt, and I 
 am not certain that she is not as savage a piece of 
 satire as Becky herself. 
 
 But Thackeray, though he loved to masquerade as 
 a man of the world, could not help looking even at 
 his own creations with an eye of pity or dislike. 
 He plays the same part in his books as is played in 
 Greek tragedy by a chorus of tiresome elders, and it 
 
 is this constant intrusi on which gives certain pass ages 
 in Vanity Fair a rakish, almost a battered, air. The 
 reader would never dream of taking such persons as 
 Rawdon and his Aunt seriously, were he not told to 
 do so by the author of their being. The reader, had 
 he been allowed, would have been content with an 
 artistic appreciation. But, says Thackeray, " as we 
 bring our characters forward, I will ask leave, as a 
 man and a brother, not only to introduce them, but 
 occasionally to step down from the platform and talk 
 about them ; if they are good and kindly, to love them, 
 and shake them by the hand." And that is what he is 
 too often — a man and a brother ; he forgets the im- 
 partiality of the artist, and goes about babbling with his 
 own puppets. 
 
 These excesses of sentiment are plain for all to see.
 
 94 
 
 THACKERAY. 
 
 They interrupt the progress of the story with irritating 
 frequency. They i)ut a needless accent upon what is 
 called the " cynicism " of Thackeray, and confuse the 
 very simple method of the book. " Picture to yourself, 
 oh fair young reader," exclaims the author of Miss 
 Crawley, " a worldly, selfish, graceless, thankless, 
 religionless old woman, writhing in pain and fear, and 
 without her wig. Picture her to yourself, and ere you 
 be old, learn to love and pray." The reference to the 
 wig betrays an animus which should never disturb a 
 novelist's serenity, and Miss Crawley is otherwise so 
 well drawn that she- might safely be left to point her 
 own moral. So on another page he remind^_iLs,_wkli 
 his eye u pon the obvious, that " the himtlp^ aad 
 
 triumph, an d laughter, an d gnirty \ i uhirh Vanity T^^'"' ". 
 exh ibits in pub lic do n ot__n]ways_^uu: sue the perform er 
 into p rivate life." And from this point Qil_yiew— he 
 defines the p urpose — o£ — his — romance . "This, dear 
 friends and companions," so he writes in his most 
 intimate style, " is jr i^' an TJaJ ile object tn w nlk with 
 you through the Fair, ^ to examine the shops and the 
 shows there ; and that we should all come home after 
 the flare, and the noise, and the gaiety, and be perfectly 
 miserable in private." But why should we be miserable 
 — in private or public — about that in which our interest 
 is, or should be, purely artistic ? 
 
 However, he is so closely set upon disquisition 
 that he cannot refrain the hand of sentiment even from 
 the character of Rawdon Crawley, whose rough, amiable
 
 PUNCH AND VANITY FAIR., 95 
 
 brutality might have been pictured without a flaw. 
 When the guardsman, who shot Captain Marker, 
 visits Queen's Crawley with his Rebecca, even he, 
 under the auspices of Thackeray, is somewhat abashed. 
 "What recollections of boyhood and innocence might 
 have been flitting across his brain?" asks the novelist. 
 " What pangs of dim remorse and doubt and shame ? " 
 If elsewhere the excellent Rawdon is drawn with justice, 
 no pangs of remorse or shame would have flitted across 
 his brain, and the character is weakened by each at- 
 tempt made by the author's sentimentality to weaken 
 that " spirit of oneness " which should animate it. We 
 resent the interpolation of moral comment, even when 
 Amelia is the moralist's excuse. " By heavens ! it is 
 pitiful," exclaims Thackeray, " the bootless love of 
 women for children in Vanity Fair." What is all this 
 but a confession of weakness. A story which needs 
 annotation fails of its main purpose, and the reader 
 may justly feel irritated who is not left to form his 
 own conclusions. 
 
 It is especially in satire that sermonising has no place, 
 for satire is of itself a method of reproof. Though 
 Aristophanes at times laid aside the lash for the lyre, he 
 knew the limits of his genre too well to lapse into moral 
 discourses. But Thackeray acts the sheep-dog to his 
 own characters. He plays propriety before them, very 
 much as Miss Briggs ensured the public respectability of 
 Becky Sharp. And when he is angry with them, he 
 scolds them with almost a shrewish tongue. But,
 
 g6 THACKERAY. 
 
 despite this concession to his own and the popular 
 taste, Thackeray — with Vanity Fair — well deserved the 
 place which he won in the literature of his age. Its 
 ^\^\^^e.c.\\\\a.r\\( simijle _nnd straightf orward, ., was free 
 both from rhetoric and ornament. It suppressed all the 
 tricks of the novelist, and threw what discredit it could 
 upon fine writing. At the same time, it was variou s 
 e nou ^g jh to express the diverse persons and changin g 
 ^emotions which a re th e material of the book. Th e 
 charact ers are as distinguished as the style. Sel dom 
 in the history of Engl ish romance had a more gent eel 
 
 company hppn^gntJTPrprj^fQcrpfhpr^ nn(i ^pvpn^^whpri it^ 
 
 is disreputable, it is still the best of bad company. 
 ^-Muieuvel', it is diaiitcteiistic of the authoFthat for all 
 his moralisings he is most sincerely interested in his 
 blackguards. He cares so little himself for Amelia ^ 
 that he cannot expect to awake an appreciation in his 
 readers ; while Dobbin, for all his nobility, is purposely 
 awkward where he is not ridiculous. 
 
 But Becky Sharp, always the central figure of the 
 book, is drawn with a firmer hand and brighter colours. 
 You must travel far indeed before you find so good a 
 portrait of the incarnate minx. When she is off the stage 
 
 1 There is little doubt tlint Thackeray despised Amelia. When 
 Vanity Fair was being published, "he used to talk about it " to 
 Liddell and his wife, "and what he should do with the persons." 
 Mrs Liddell said one day : " Oh, Mr Thackeray, you must let 
 Dobbin marry Amelia." "Well," he replied, "he shall, and 
 when he has got her, he will not find her worth having." See 
 Dean Liddell's Life, p. 8.
 
 PUNCH AND VANITY -FAIR. 
 
 97 
 
 the action languishes ; the squalor of Queen's Crawley, 
 the grimness of Gaunt House, hold our attention merely 
 as they affect the true heroine of the book. When 
 first she appears, flinging the " dixonary " out of the 
 window, the true note of her character is struck, and 
 never once does it ring false. " She was small and 
 slight in person," thus she is described ; " pale, sandy- 
 haired, and with eyes habitually cast down : when they 
 looked up, they were very large, odd, and attractive," 
 They had already done execution upon the curate, 
 and they were ready to vanquish fat Jos Sedley, or 
 a whole wilderness of Crawleys. In truth, there was 
 scarce a member of that aristocratic family which did 
 not instantly succumb to her artillery. In less than a 
 year she had won the Baronet's confidence ; she was 
 a trouvaille in the eyes of Miss Crawley ; the Captain 
 was wild about her; and even Mrs Bute was never 
 happy out of her sight. Her airs and graces, delicately 
 touched by French influence, were irresistible, and 
 " when she was agitated, and alluded to her maternal 
 relative, she spoke with ever so slight a foreign ac- 
 cent, which gave a great charm to her clear, ringing 
 voice." 
 
 Thus with success she assumed a certainty of manner 
 which, though natural to her, was unsuspected by her 
 early friends. When first she encountered George 
 Osborne, after a sojourn in Hampshire, she bullied him 
 in fine style. " But, oh ! Mr Osborne, what a difference 
 eighteen months' experience makes ! eighteen months 
 
 G
 
 98 THACKERAY. 
 
 spent, pardon me for saying so, with gentlemen." How 
 admirably, too, she comports herself in the first strong 
 situation of the book, when she is forced to confess her 
 marriage to Sir Pitt ! " I can't be your wife, sir," says 
 she, with exquisite humility ; " let me — let me be your 
 daughter." And when she is married, and exiled from 
 the world of the Crawleys, with what skill does she 
 manage the sharper's victims, with what address does 
 she present Mrs Crawley's husband to society ! Then, 
 again, the campaign which she conducts at Brussels — 
 that little campaign within a great one — is as triumphant 
 as the Duke's. She manages friends and foes with 
 equal success and effrontery ; the famous ball is her 
 peculiar victory ; she insults Amelia, while she captures 
 the heart of the cad, Amelia's husband ; and, best of 
 all, she repels the interested advances of Lady Bare- 
 acres, with an insolence which enchants you, though 
 it prove her lack of breeding. 
 
 Like all the great, she is without scruple and without 
 pity. She robs Briggs as cheerfully as she ruins Raggles, 
 and she permits no consideration of kindness or loyalty 
 to interrupt her intrigue. In brief, she is rare among 
 the creations of Thackeray because she is uniform and 
 homogeneous. Even Rawdon feels the twinges of re- 
 morse, but Becky knows no remorse save failure. When 
 she attends Sir Pitt's funeral at Queen's Crawley, she lets 
 her mind wander back to the past in a spirit of gratula- 
 tion. " I have passed beyond it, because I have brains," 
 thought she, "and almost all the rest of the world are
 
 PUNCH AND VANITY FAIR. 99 
 
 fools." Brilliant as is her conquest of the Marquis, she 
 reveals the adventuress yet more splendidly in her 
 victory over Sir Pitt the younger. " You remain a 
 baronet," says she to him. " No, Sir Pitt Crawley, I 
 know you better. I know your talents and ambition. 
 You fancy you hide them both : but you can conceal 
 neither from me. I showed Lord Steyne your pamphlet 
 on Malt." So the trap is laid in sight of the bird, 
 baited with praise and approached by vanity. But Becky 
 never falls below her opportunity: her entry into Gaunt 
 House is superb ; and the moment of her greatest 
 triumph, when she sits at the grand exclusive table with 
 his Royal Highness, and is served on gold plate, is 
 worth the years of intrigue which had achieved it. 
 There is a certain attraction even in her degringolade, 
 and though one wishes she had not tried to fascinate 
 Lord Steyne anew, she shows a fine spirit of gaiety 
 and courage in the sombre atmosphere of Pumper- 
 nickel. " She was at home with everybody in the 
 place — pedlars, punters, tumblers, students, and all." 
 Though her adversaries were meaner, and the stakes 
 lower, she was still playing the same game of life 
 which she played against the Marquis of Steyne, and, 
 after her fashion, she was a winner to the end. 
 
 Such is the central figure of Vanity Fair, and some 
 others, though they do but enhance Rebecca's splendour, 
 are drawn with an equally sure hand. Thro ughout the 
 hs^^ ther<^ is n s ense of life touched by caricatu re, 
 which has kept it fresh in an age of changed morals
 
 lOO THACKERAY. 
 
 and dif ferent taste. Above all, Thackeray shows him- 
 self an adept in bringing his characters on the scene, 
 and in setting forth their dominant traits in half- 
 a-dozen lines. At Rawdon Crawley's first appear- 
 ance, the reader has an intimate acquaintance with 
 that deboshed dragoon. " A perfect and celebrated 
 'blood,' or dandy about town, was this young officer. 
 Boxing, rat-hunting, the fives' court,^ and four-in-hand 
 were the fashion of the British aristocracy ; and he was 
 an adept in all these noble sciences. And though he 
 belonged to the Household troops, who, as it was their 
 duty to rally round the Prince Regent, had not shown 
 their valour in foreign service yet, Rawdon Crawley had 
 already (a propos of play, of which he was immoderately 
 fond) fought three bloody duels, in which he gave ample 
 proofs of his contempt for death." This passage puts 
 you on terms with the hero at once, and your acquaint- 
 ance is cemented by Becky's own comment: "Well, he 
 is a very large young dandy. He is six feet high, and 
 speaks with a great voice, and swears a great deal ; 
 
 ^ The Fives' Court does not mean the home of the innocent sport 
 pursued by Cavanagh. It was the haunt of the Fancy, and there 
 the prize-fighters had their tournaments. The following lines de- 
 scribe its character eloquently enough : — 
 
 " I've left the Fives' Court rush — the flash — the rally; 
 'I'he noise of ' Go it, Jack' — the stop — the blow — 
 The shout — the chattering hit — the check — the sally." 
 
 They are to be found in Peter Corcoran's The Fancy (1820), the 
 work of J. H. Reynolds, the friend of Keats. Jack, it may be 
 noted in passing, is Randall, the Nonpareil, the hero "good with 
 both hands, and only ten stone four."
 
 PUNCH AND VANITY FAIR. lOI 
 
 and orders about the servants, who all adore him 
 nevertheless." 
 
 Such was the Samson whose locks his Becky sheared, 
 and his gradual submission is the one pathetic epi- 
 sode of the book. He is not very wise. His single 
 talent is for gaming, and though his constant success 
 suggested a charge of foul play, the charge was never 
 justified. At the beginning of a game he would 
 play carelessly, but his style was transformed by loss, 
 and he always got up from the table a winner. 
 At billiards he pursued the same tactics. " Like a 
 great general," says Thackeray, "his genius used to rise 
 with the danger, and when the luck had been un- 
 favourable to him for a whole game, and the bets were 
 consequently against him, he would with consummate 
 skill and boldness make some prodigious hits which 
 would restore the battle, and come in a victor at the 
 end, to the astonishment of everybody — of everybody, 
 that is, who was a stranger to his play." Becky, in 
 fact, was the one adversary to whom he succumbed, 
 and it was his simple devotion that undid him. At 
 first he believed in her affection with a childlike faith, 
 but, as she gradually deserted him, he was driven to a 
 more equal alliance with his son. Nor did he recover 
 his senses until he was trapped to the sponging-house, 
 in which crisis of his fate he bore himself as a soldier 
 and a gentleman. Rawdon Crawley, in brief, is not 
 merely sympathetic, he is also true to life. Now, this 
 is the more striking, since Vanity Fair is compose^ in
 
 102 THACKERAY. 
 
 varying planes oLxa#k,aLurts The elder Sir Pitt and 
 Do bbin, for instance, do not inhabit the same w orld, 
 while the atmosphere which Peggy O'Dowd breathes is 
 not the same as enwraps the Lady Jane. In other 
 words, burlesque and realism jostl e up and d ow" thp 
 book, and it i ^not always easy to interpret the author's 
 meanin g. But Rawdon, despite certain extravagances 
 of diction and manner, is more of a man than the 
 most of those whom he encounters, and he finds no 
 worthy rival outside the works of Thackeray. Com- 
 pare him to Sir Mulberry Hawk or the bucks of 
 Bulwer, and in a moment you will realise his superi- 
 ority. And though many a writer has tried his hand 
 since at the delineation of the British dandy, frozen 
 in Lord Dundreary to a type, Rawdon Crawley holds 
 his own after fifty years. 
 
 With the same ease Thackeray presents his other 
 characters. No sooner does old Sir Pitt shoulder 
 Becky's trunk than we know him for what he is. 
 The author, indeed, saves his baronet from improba- 
 bility by introducing him to a note of extravagant 
 caricature ; and after his supper with Mrs Tinker 
 nothing that he does or says can surprise us. But 
 that is due rather to Thackeray's skill than to the 
 old man's verisimilitude. If we may believe Charles 
 Kingsley, Sir Pitt is "almost the only exact portrait 
 in the book " ; and yet you will match him more 
 nearly in the Restoration comedy than in modern 
 Hampshire. He might well have sat upon the bench
 
 PUNCH AND VANITY FAIR. I03 
 
 with Sir John Brute. " Who do you call a drunken 
 fellow, you slut you ? " asks Sir John of his wife ; 
 " I'm a man of quality ; the King has made me a 
 knight."^ Is not that boast composed in precisely 
 the same spirit as Sir Pitt's introduction to Becky ? 
 " He, he ! /'m Sir Pitt Crawley. Reklect you owe 
 me a pint for bringing down your luggage. He, he ! 
 Ask Tinker if I ain't." 
 
 The Rev. Bute is painted in more modest colours : 
 "A tall, stately, jolly, shovel-hatted man," was he, who 
 " had a fine voice, sang ' A southerly wind and a 
 cloudy sky,' and gave the whoop in chorus with 
 general applause. He rode to hounds in a pepper- 
 and-salt frock, and was one of the best fishermen in 
 the county." But Thackeray is at his best with the 
 Crawleys, and all save the younger Pitt, who is 
 monstrous, carry the blood of human life in their 
 veins. Miss Crawley, an admirable specimen of the 
 selfish worldling, trained to egoism by wealth and 
 Jacobin literature, never rings false eave in the com- 
 ments of her creator, while " the eager, active, black- 
 faced" Mrs Bute, "the smart, active little body who 
 wrote her husband's sermons," is a more pestilent 
 schemer than Becky herself, without Becky's wit or 
 Becky's fascination. Excellent, too, though in another 
 vein, are the Osbornes, father and son. True, the 
 British merchant is a trifle conventional ; but the 
 
 ^ See Sir John Vanbrugli's The Provoked Wife, Act iv. 
 sc. iv.
 
 I04 THACKERAY. 
 
 young soldier, who would be a gentleman, is assuredly 
 one of the best (or worst) cads in fiction. 
 
 It is, then, for a set of well-drawn characters, touched 
 one and all with caricature, that we especially value 
 Vanity Fair; yet in praising the characters we must 
 not forget the situations in which they play their part. 
 It is said that when Thackeray wrote the scene wherein 
 Rawdon Crawley surprises his wife with Lord Steyne he 
 exclaimed, " By Jove ! that's genius." And with some 
 right, since he had led up to that memorable crisis 
 with far more than his usual skill. Still better, and 
 far less showy, is the episode of ^ Vaterloo, in wh ich, 
 for the first time, Thackeray proved how well h t 
 could give a roman tic_t]irn to history. The modern 
 novelist, if he pitched upon the year 1815 for his 
 period, would make no scruple of dragging Napoleon 
 and "\^'ellingto^ upon his mimic scene. He would be 
 intrepid enough to make these heroes talk the com- 
 monest platitudes to their friends ; he would vulgarise 
 their speeches by the accent of his own suburb ; or 
 in the other extreme he would present them as the 
 dummies of a pedantic archaeologist. Thackeray's 
 method is vastly more artistic. The chapters in 
 which the drama of Waterloo is presented are domin- 
 ated by great events, but only the distant rumble of 
 the guns is heard, and the reader never gets nearer 
 to the battle-field than Brussels. In other words, 
 Thackeray does not lose hold of his own personages. 
 He has no desire to show how they affect history —
 
 PUNCH AND VANITY FAIR. I05 
 
 that is the foolish method of the historical novelist ; 
 he prefers to show how history affects them — a 
 mucH more reasonable process. When you recall 
 his description of Waterloo, it is Jos Sedley's spirited 
 escape and the poor, silly Amelia's tragedy that leap 
 to your mind. " No more firing was heard at 
 Brussels — the pursuit rolled miles away. Darkness 
 came down on the field and city : and Amelia was 
 praying for George, who was lying on his face, dead, 
 with a bullet through his heart." That gives us a 
 more vivid vision of the battle than the mock 
 heroics of a false Napoleon, and is truer, besides, 
 both to fiction and to fact. 
 
 Vanity Fair is not, broadly speaking, a roinan a 
 clef, but the ingenious have identified certain char- 
 acters, and there is no doubt that Thackeray owed 
 something of his inspiration to living men and women. 
 At the same time, it is rash to push resemblances too 
 far : as did the foolish gossip who detected Charlotte 
 Bronte in Becky Sharp, and declared that Rochester 
 was a portrait, drawn in revenge, of' Thackeray himself. 
 That is reducing a hazardous method to absurdity ; yet 
 Thackeray did not overlook his contemporaries, and 
 even Becky is said to have had her original. " One 
 morning a hansom drove up to the door," says Mrs 
 Ritchie, " and out of it there emerged the most 
 charming, dazzling little lady dressed in black, who 
 greeted my father with great affection and brilliancy, 
 and who, departing presently, gave my father a large
 
 I06 THACKERAY, 
 
 bunch of fresh violets." The " dazzHng Httle lady " 
 was supposed to be Becky, though Thackeray, of 
 course, never confessed that a model sat for his 
 heroine ; but Dobbin's amiability absolved his author 
 from reticence, and there is no doubt that John Allen, 
 Archdeacon of Salop, Thackeray's friend and con- 
 temporary at Cambridge, suggested some traits of the 
 awkward, unselfish major. These resemblances, how- 
 ever, are slight and unimportant. The Marquis of 
 Steyne and Mr Wenham, on the other hand, have 
 been generally recognised for Lord Hertford and Mr 
 Croker, and they better than any others will show how 
 Thackeray turned biography into fiction. They are 
 the more interesting, too, because they were sketched, 
 almost in competition, with the Monmouth and Rigby 
 of that master in ironic portraiture, Benjamin Disraeli, 
 whose knowledge of the men was more profound, and 
 whose touch was at once more brilliant and more 
 savage than Thackeray's. 
 
 When Coningsby was published, in 1844, Thackeray 
 reviewed it with considerable contempt in The Pictorial 
 Times. He declared that the author had " all the 
 qualities of Pitt and Byron and Burke and the great 
 Mr Widdicombe of Batty's amphitheatre." "Everybody 
 was reading the book," said he, "because everybody 
 recognises everybody's portrait." The review is mani- 
 festly unfair when we remember that very soon after- 
 wards Thackeray was trying his own hand at the 
 presentation of the Marquis of Hertford, and of the
 
 PUNCH AND VANITY FAIR. 
 
 107 
 
 gentleman whom he calls " the Right Honourable 
 John Wilson Joker." It is true that Thackeray allows 
 himself a wider latitude than his rival. Yet it is im- 
 possible to mistake the original of Steyne and Wenham, 
 and Thackeray must share the reproach, if reproach 
 be deserved, which he heaps upon Mr Disraeli. 1 Nor 
 has Thackeray the same excuse as his rival of complete 
 success. Neither the great noble nor the obsequious 
 parasite of Vanity Fair is touched with his happiest 
 hand. It is evident that he spent little care upon 
 the portraiture of Lord Steyne, who is less a man 
 than a bundle of vices and brutality. The prejudices 
 which deformed The Book of Snobs are here very 
 wide awake, and you cannot but think that in the 
 gross traits of the Marquis the author is expressing 
 his general dislike of the class to which the Marquis 
 belongs. It is not as though the drama were 
 facilitated by the ruffianly behaviour and aspect of 
 Becky's lover. A man is always more effective than 
 a monster, and Steyne's monstrosity is palliated by 
 very few touches of humanity. He is too much an 
 affair of buck - teeth and bushy whiskers. A scowl 
 
 ^ One passage in Thackeray's review niitjht be juslly referred, 
 without the change of a syllable, to Vanity Fair. " What person 
 is there," wrote the reviewer, "in town or country, from the 
 squire down to the lady's maid, who will not be anxious to. peruse 
 a work in which the secrets of high life are so exposed ? In all 
 the fashionable novels ever published there is nothing so picjuant 
 or so magnificently genteel. Every politician, too, will read with 
 avidity — the details are so personal."
 
 I08 THACKERAY. 
 
 too often "gathers over his heavy brow." His jaw 
 is so infamously underhung that you are surprised 
 his friends do not send for the police at his first 
 apparition. Yet he is represented as the friend of 
 " the most august personages," and as the daring rival 
 of Mr Fox at hazard. His moral aspect is far worse 
 even than his physical. It is his pleasant pastime to 
 bully women and children. For instance, he heartily 
 disliked Becky's boy. " When they met by mischance 
 he made sarcastic bows or remarks to the child, or 
 glared at him with savage-looking eyes." Here, indeed, 
 we are at close quarters with the ogre of the fairy story, 
 and with the best intentions in the world we can no 
 longer put faith in my Lord Steyne. 
 
 Yet worse remains. When Becky confesses to the 
 Marquis that she has ruined Briggs his comment is : 
 "Ruined her? then why don't you turn her out?" 
 Now, though many a man might have cherished this 
 amiable thought, none, with the habit of life, would 
 have given it utterance, least of all to a woman who 
 flattered a passing fancy. Absurd, also, is his be- 
 haviour at Gaunt House, whose ladies he addresses 
 in a tone which would disgrace an angry bricklayer ; 
 and at each excess the reader's faith grows weaker. 
 After all, the Marquis of Steyne is described as a 
 great noble, who has lived with princes and conducted 
 embassies ; and though the manners of the Regent's 
 Court were free enough, they were not marked by the 
 savagery, inseparable from this rufhan of eyebrows
 
 PUNCH AND VANITY FAIR. IO9 
 
 and hideous grins. In fiction you expect verisim- 
 ilitude, and a novelist is not easily credible who 
 paints you Bill Sykes and writes the Marquis of 
 Steyne beneath the portrait. 
 
 To Thackeray Steyne was but an incidental character. 
 Monmouth is the essence of Disraeli's Coni7igsby, and 
 is drawn with extraordinary diligence and insight. It 
 is not astonishing, therefore, that where Thackeray pre- 
 sented a monster, Disraeli presented a man. Steyne 
 is symbolised by a tooth. Monmouth is a grcvid 
 seigneur, with a taste for evil courses. His aspect, if 
 forbidding, is still magnificent, and his temper, while 
 autocratic, is never brutal. He evades scenes as eagerly 
 as Lord Steyne courts them, since it is more agreeable 
 to his dignity to have his own way without argument ; 
 and he never forgets his nobility, even though he 
 is inexorable in revenge or hate. His fine manners 
 fascinate the country-side, and for a selfish man his 
 good humour is remarkable. But none dare take ad- 
 vantage of his amiability. Even Coningsby finds him 
 " superb and icy " ; and it is not surprising, for he is 
 one " whose contempt for mankind was absolute, — not 
 a fluctuating sentiment, not a mournful conviction 
 ebbing and flowing with circumstances, but a fixed, 
 profound, unalterable instinct." 
 
 Monmouth, in fact, is plainly drawn from the life : 
 he has many traits, perfectly consistent with each other, 
 which mark him out from the rest of his kind. Rich 
 as he is, lofty as is his position, he exhibits a signal
 
 I lO THACKERAY. 
 
 weakness in his love of gold. The experience of a 
 worldly life has taught him that a rich man cannot 
 be bought, and that which you cannot buy becomes 
 invested in his eyes " with a kind of halo amounting 
 almost to sanctity." So bitterly heartless is he that 
 he cannot tolerate the presence of any woman more 
 than two years, and when he is struck with a fatal 
 illness at his villa at Richmond, he has no better com- 
 pany about him than Clotilde, Ermengarde, and their 
 kind. 
 
 For the rest, he is pictured as lavish, dissolute, 
 ease-loving, and tyrannical. He is not exacting, since 
 he demands of his family no more than obedience, 
 and of others no more than that they should divert 
 him. " Members of this family," says he to Con- 
 ingsby, " may think as they like, but they must act 
 as I please ; " while at the same time he tolerates 
 Villebecque and all his friends, if only they distract 
 his mind. Above all, he is determined to avoid any- 
 thing that is disagreeable ; and it is this resolve which 
 explains the power and influence of Rigby, who is 
 a loyal buffer between his lordship and the sordid 
 troubles of life. Physically, too, he is a man, not a 
 bogey, though he has a certain glance "under which 
 men always quailed." It is thus that he presents him- 
 self to his nephew : " He was in height above the 
 middle size, but somewhat portly and corpulent. His 
 countenance was strongly marked : sagacity on the 
 brow, sensuality in the mouth and jaw. His head
 
 PUNCH AND VANITY FAIR. I I I 
 
 was bald, but there were remains of the rich brown 
 locks on which he once prided himself. His large 
 deep blue eyes, madid and yet piercing, showed 
 that the secretions of his brain were apportioned, half 
 to voluptuousness, half to common - sense. But his 
 general mien was truly grand — full of a natural nobility, 
 of which no one was more sensible than himself." 
 There is a man seen and studied, no mere phantom 
 of ugliness and bad morals. 
 
 It is Monmouth's chief merit to be like a man. His 
 accurate resemblance to Lord Hertford gives him an 
 incidental interest. And no student of the early nine- 
 teenth century can deny the excellence of the portrait. 
 Yet the real Hertford was a far more amazing creature 
 than his literary portraits suggest. At first sight the con- 
 flicting testimonies seem irreconcilable. Says Greville : 
 " His life and death were equally disgusting and revolting 
 to every good and moral feeling." Says Croker : " I never 
 knew a man so fixed upon doing what he considered his 
 duty." Here are the extremes, each biassed by personal 
 and political prejudice. But Hertford's character will 
 always remain unintelligible, until its progress and decay 
 are both recognised. In his youth, under the title of 
 Yarmouth, familiarly translated as Red Herrings, he was 
 among the most brilliant of the Regent's Court, and 
 was honestly declared to be "the most good-natured 
 man alive." Gifted with a better intelligence and a 
 stronger temperament than his fellows, he more than 
 held his own, whether at cards or talk, with the
 
 112 THACKERAY. 
 
 dandies of his time. The manners of the age, no 
 doubt, were loose enough ; but Hertford was no worse 
 than Brummel, Scrope Davies, and the rest, who are not 
 held up to public shame. Even his enemies allowed 
 him a talent for gaiety, which made his parties the 
 most agreeable in London ; and at cards his supremacy 
 was incontestable : he won large sums, because he always 
 played a cool and shrewd game. He married, too 
 early for a man of pleasure, the famous Maria 
 Fagniani, and with her he inherited the ample fortune 
 bequeathed by the two bucks who claimed to be her 
 father. The marriage was unhappy, and Lady Hert- 
 ford was for many years the vialtresse en titre of 
 Marshal Junot. But it could not well have prospered; 
 since Hertford, like Monmouth, did not long endure 
 the society of any woman. 
 
 Meanwhile, for all his gaiety and his gambling, he was 
 sent to Paris and elsewhere as Envoy Extraordinary, he 
 was appointed Lord Warden of the Stannaries, he held 
 more than one office in the Household, and, though 
 he is a favourite subject for the political satirist (as 
 what Tory was not ?), he is not always held up to 
 contempt. One set of doggerel verses, indeed, picture 
 him as kicking the Regent for his infamous behaviour 
 to a lady — a piece of daring chivalry, such as is seldom 
 put down to his credit. However, in 1822 he suc- 
 ceeded to his father's wealth and influence, was given 
 the Garter, and asserted his position as a great noble 
 with all the pomp and ceremony which he could com-
 
 PUNCH AND VANITY FAIR. II3 
 
 mand. Thus far he had been guilty of no act un- 
 worthy a courtier, and so stern a morahst as Peel gave 
 him an unsolicited testimonial, of which any man 
 might be proud. " I was really pleased at Lord 
 Hertford's getting the Garter," wrote the statesman. 
 " I was pleased very disinterestedly, and for his own 
 sake merely, for I like him. He is a gentleman, and 
 not an everyday one." 
 
 But presently the love of pleasure dominated his 
 intellect. His cynical contempt for mankind was ex- 
 pressed in a basely crapulous life, which has eclipsed 
 the record of his good qualities. After the passing 
 of the Reform Bill he renounced politics, and took 
 a dislike of England ; wherefore he wandered up and 
 down France and Italy with a band of demireps and 
 parasites for his camp-followers. Like Steyne, he was 
 haunted by the fear of madness, which he had in- 
 herited along with his wealth and his titles ; nor is 
 there any doubt that the excesses of his last years 
 were the result of senile insanity.^ At the end he was 
 scarce his own master, and in the last letter addressed 
 to Croker he betrays his own helplessness. " I believe 
 we are going to change, because they say so, but I 
 don't know." There is a genuine pathos in this sur- 
 render of a once masterful man. He who had exacted 
 
 ^ "The lamentable doings of his later years," wrote Croker, 
 "were neitlier more nor less than insanity. You know, and he 
 was himself well aware, that there is hereditary madness in the 
 family. He often talked and even wrote about it to me."' 
 
 H
 
 114 TIIACKKRA.Y. 
 
 obedience from all now bowed before the fancy of the 
 last favourite that chance sent him. But he atoned 
 for this passing weakness by the ferocity of his will, 
 a monument of posthumous brutality and cynical in- 
 solence, which advertised his vices and his savagery 
 even more loudly than did the habit of his life. Yet 
 a va&t line of carriages followed his remains out of 
 London, and among them, to the great scandal of the 
 Duke of Bedford, was the carriage of Sir Robert Peel, 
 who had remained faithful in his admiration, and who 
 doubtless would have agreed with Wellington that " had 
 Hertford lived in London, instead of frittering away 
 his time in Paris, he would have become Prime 
 Minister of England." ^ Such was the original of 
 Thackeray's Steyne and Disraeli's Monmouth, and while 
 Steyne is overshadowed by Monmouth, Wenham is 
 completely eclipsed by Rigby, than whom a fiercer 
 caricature was never drawn. 
 
 Mr Wenham, the satellite, is a sketch faintly dis- 
 cerned in the background. He is neither finished with 
 care nor informed with venom. He is mean enough, 
 to be sure, but commonplace in his meanness. The 
 
 ^ See Gronow's Keviitiiscenci's (1S90), vol. ii. p. 323: "Ah," 
 added the Duke of WeUington, ' ' Lord Hertford is a man of extra- 
 ordinary talent. He deserves to be classed among those men who 
 possess transcendent abilities. What a pity it is that he does not 
 live more in England, and occupy his place in the House of Lords. 
 It was only the other day that Sir Robert Peel observed when speak- 
 ing of Hertford that he was a man of great comprehension ; not only 
 versed in the sciences, but able to animate his mass of knowledge by 
 a bright and active imagination."
 
 PUXCH AND VANITY FAIR. \l^ 
 
 portrait, in brief, has neither the force nor the rascal- 
 ity which distinguish Mr Nicholas Rigby, the villain 
 of Cotii>igsl>y, after whom rather than after nature it 
 seems to be drawn. Of course Wenham's admiration 
 for his master is liberally expressed. He declares that 
 his excellent friend, the Marquis of Steyne, is "one 
 of the most generous and kindest men in the world, 
 as he is one of the greatest." When he swears "upon 
 his honour and word as a gentleman " he " puts his 
 hand on his waistcoat with a parliamentary air," and 
 he sings his patron's praises to Rawdon Crawley "with 
 the same fluent oratory " wherewith he attempts to 
 abash the House of Commons, and with as little 
 effect. But, as the excellent Captain Macmurdo ob- 
 served, he " don't stick at a trifle," and maybe his 
 respect for the Marquis is as genuine as "one of Mrs 
 Wenham's headaches." Nevertheless, he serves his 
 master well, and he saves a scandal with an adroit- 
 ness which deceives neither Macmurdo nor his prin- 
 cipal. Indeed, had he not led the Colonel into an 
 ambush of bailiffs, his conduct, contemptible enough, 
 would not have been disgraceful. Yet the intention is 
 clear. The parliamentary manner, the facile eloquence, 
 the cheerful subservience to the best and greatest 
 of men, proclaim that Thackeray when he sketched 
 Wenham had in his mind's eye the conventional 
 portrait of John W^ilson Croker. 
 
 Rigby, on the other hand, almost defeats his creator's 
 animosity. He is so base as to be almost superhuman.
 
 Il6 THACKERAY. 
 
 He is the parasite incarnate, vilely obsequious to 
 the great man his patron, truculently offensive to 
 everybody else. He has allowed Lord Monmouth to 
 buy him body and soul, "with his clear head, his 
 indefatigable industry, his audacious tongue, and his 
 ready and unscrupulous pen ; with all his dates, all 
 his lampoons, all his private memoirs, and all his 
 political intrigues." There is no office too menial for 
 his performance, if only his master require it, and a 
 word or a dinner is enough to atone for the degra- 
 dation of the most odious service. At his lordship's 
 command he is always ready with a " slashing " article, 
 and who is so good at a slashing article as Rigby ? 
 Or he will bore a country audience with the French 
 Revolution, which is his forte^ or he will cheerfully 
 denounce as un - English all the views wherewith he 
 is not in agreement. So, incapable of dignity, strange 
 to honour, ignorant of generosity, he scales the height 
 of his ambition and becomes his patron's executor. 
 Here is his apotheosis, here is the halo placed upon 
 his head, at the expense of good feeling and inde- 
 pendence. In most transactions " there is some por- 
 tion which no one cares to accomplish, and which 
 everybody wishes to be achieved." And this is Rigby's 
 portion, which he achieves without a murmur of com- 
 plaint, and for which he is rewarded by a com- 
 fortable legacy and much scandal. 
 
 Now, the venom of this portrait lies in its half- 
 truth. Croker was as good at a " slashing article "
 
 PUNCH A^D VANITY FAIR. 11/ 
 
 as Rigby himself; he, too, was the obliging friend 
 of the great ; he, too, took the keenest delight in 
 political intrigue. But while all that Rigby accom- 
 plished is turned to his dishonour, Croker was a 
 useful public servant, a sound man of letters, and a 
 politician of keen though narrow intelligence. His 
 gift of organisation was conspicuous. He proved him- 
 self an excellent Secretary to the Admiralty ; he 
 helped to establish The Quarterly Review ;'^ and he 
 was the effective founder of the Athenaeum Club. 
 Noscitiir a sociis, and he cannot be wholly bad who is 
 the associate of Wellington, Peel, Scott, and Lockhart. 
 The great Duke, indeed, regarded Croker as his oldest 
 and closest friend, and there is no great man of that 
 age whose house and society Croker did not frequent. 
 His friendship with Hertford was of old standing, 
 and on Croker's side disinterested ; and since Hert- 
 ford was a man of cultivation as well as of pleasure, 
 
 ^ It was in The Qnarlerly that Croker did his best work, and 
 though his judgment in politics was generally sound, it was marred 
 by an habitual violence of expression. Malevolence was so deeply 
 ingrained in him, that he was unconscious of its use, and, in truth, 
 it was a fault of style rather than a depravation of thought. At the 
 same \S.m&,The Quarterly would have been better without him. Sir 
 Walter Scott, who loved the man, saw at the very outset how great 
 a danger he was to The Quarterly. Yet afler thirty years he was 
 still supplying sixty -four pages to each number, and sprinkling 
 the articles of others from the pepper-box of his abuse. Lockhart 
 resigned himself humbly to be " over-Crokered." It took the 
 courage of Elwin, a country parson, to get rid of him, and even 
 Elwin allowed that he had "fine and generous elements in his 
 nature."
 
 Il8 THACKERAY. 
 
 the friend of poels and of Ministers, his acquaintance 
 was not of itself a disgrace to any one. Moreover, 
 for many years the Secretary of the Admiralty man- 
 aged the Marciuis's estates, and took not a penny 
 for his trouble. Even the prosecution of Suisse, the 
 blackguardly valet who, with the aid of one of Hert- 
 ford's cast-off mistresses, Angeline Borel, had stolen 
 many thousands of pounds, was an act of courage. 
 Croker could not profit by the case, which inevitably 
 involved him in an ugly scandal. Yet he did not 
 shrink from an executor's duty, and has stood in the 
 pillory ever since. 
 
 He has been attacked by common consent. Nor is 
 party spite enough to explain the malevolence of his 
 critics.^ Macaulay, of course, attacked him because 
 he did not like his political views, and made no 
 attempt to hide his malice. "See whether I do not 
 dust that varlet's jacket for him in the next number 
 of Blue and Yellow," he wrote, before the Boswell 
 appeared ; " I detest him more than cold boiled veal." 
 But Disraeli was not influenced by public animosity, 
 
 ^ At least one political opponent has sung his praises. '" Croker," 
 wrote Lord Brougham, " was a most important person in Opposi- 
 tion. Nothing could exceed his ability and liis thorough knowledge 
 of his subject. . . . His talents were of a very high order, and 
 have not, I think, l)een sufficiently allowed. He was also a man 
 of great personal kindness to his friends, though a good hater of his 
 enemies, and so much devoted to his opinions that he voluntarily 
 retired from Parliament as soon as the Reform Bill passed, and he 
 never returned." In this tribute there is nothing to suggest either 
 Wenham or Rigby.
 
 PUNC// ASD VANITY FAIR. I 19 
 
 and Thackeray (maybe) did no more than follow 
 Disraeli's lead. What, then, is the cause of this fierce 
 and various hostility ? TJic Quarterly is partly to 
 blame. For many years it was the world's habit to 
 ascribe all harsh criticisms to the single pen of Croker. 
 It is an old trick, as common now as then, but as- 
 suredly it put upon Croker many an undeserved 
 affront. But The Quarterly, at its bitterest, was in- 
 sufficient to arouse the cloud of obloquy which 
 enveloped Croker. It must be confessed also that his 
 temperament was unsympathetic. He liked to have a 
 finger in everybody's pie, and he possessed a curious 
 talent for making himself indispensable to the great. 
 Not that he was subservient. In fact his independence 
 of spirit shines clearly in every page of his Memoirs. 
 But he found himself more at ease and proved him- 
 self more agreeable among his superiors than among 
 his equals, and it was this faculty more than any other 
 that rendered him unpopular. But in face of odium he 
 betrayed no resentment. When Thackeray was not 
 elected to the Athenaeum, Croker interfered in his 
 favour, and when the libel of Coningsby was pointed 
 out to him many years after its publication, he de- 
 clared that he never read novels, and heard of 
 Rigby for the first time ! 
 
 Thus, chiefly because he was contemptuous and 
 morose, Croker has been held up by two novelists 
 as the vilest of men. Thackeray's Wenham, like 
 Thackeray's Steyne, is but a partial portrait, which
 
 I20 THACKERAY. 
 
 reproduces no more than one imagined trait. It 
 suggests neither slashing articles nor political fidelity. 
 It suggests neither undigested learning nor a taste for 
 the French Revolution, and it must be confessed that 
 Rigby, like Monmouth, is far closer to the original. 
 And this enables us to contrast Disraeli's method with 
 Thackeray's. Disraeli, when he drew a character from 
 life, drew it with his eye unrelentingly fixed upon the 
 object. Thackeray, on the other hand, was content 
 with a suggestion, and declared that " he never con- 
 sciously copied anybody." Yet with Coningsby before 
 him, he cannot evade the responsibility of Steyne and 
 Wenham, though these, to be sure, are remote enough 
 to be innocuous.
 
 121 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 PENDENNIS. THACKERAY AND THE WORLD OF 
 LETTERS. 
 
 Meanwhile Thackeray had deserted Bohemia for 
 Tyburnia or its outskirts. In other words, he had 
 exchanged the lodging of a bachelor for a house in 
 Kensington, and was overjoyed at his prosperity. The 
 letters addressed about this time to Mrs Brookfield 
 reveal an exultant happiness, tempered now and again 
 by " blue devils," which is very agreeable to contem- 
 plate. No man ever took a keener pleasure in in- 
 creased wealth and growing fame than did Thackeray, 
 and he expresses his pleasure with an almost boyish 
 simplicity. He frequents the houses of the great with 
 a pride which neither Mr Pendennis nor Clive New- 
 come could surpass, and if it were not for the humour 
 of the situation, whereof he was perfectly conscious, 
 he might have afforded material for another chapter of 
 The Book of Snobs. One day he is " to dine with 
 the Dowager Duchess of Bedford, afterwards to Mrs 
 Procter's, afterwards to Lady Granville's." Another
 
 122 THACKERAY. 
 
 day it is the Duke of Devonsliire, or Sir Robert Peel, 
 or Lord Lansdowne who seeks his company. He is 
 naively delighted when he is pointed out with the 
 finger. " Lady C, beautiful, serene, stupid old lady," he 
 writes ; "she asked. Isn't that the great Mr Thackeray? 
 O ! my stars, think of that ! " So he accepted the role 
 of the great Mr Thackeray without a shred of false 
 modesty, and exclaimed in the proper phrase of the 
 time, "What a jaunty off-hand satiric rogue I am to be 
 sure, — and a gay young dog." He was so gay a young 
 dog that all houses were open to him, and his attitude 
 towards life and society is at once more amiable and 
 just than his books suggest. He is content with good 
 company of whatever sort it be, and after dining 
 sumptuously at the table of a "fortunate youth," "the 
 young men," he writes, " were clever, very frank and 
 gentlemanlike ; quite as pleasant companions as one 
 deserves to meet, and as for your humble servant, he 
 saw a chapter or two of Pendennis in some of them." 
 Nor is he blind to the advantages of his social emin- 
 ence. It even strikes him, as his daughter sorts the 
 cards in the chimney-glass, "that there are people who 
 would give their ears, or half their incomes, to go to 
 these fine places." 
 
 Abroad, as at home, he is accorded the respect due 
 to a great man. In Paris " the Embassy is wonderfully 
 civil; Lord Normanby is my dearest friend," and he 
 watches the Opera from Rothschild's box. And then 
 he escapes from his smart friends to spend an evening
 
 PENDENNIS. 123 
 
 with Jules Janin, whom once he flayed in the interest 
 of Dickens, and who now dehghts him. Janin tells 
 him that he is always entirely happy, that he had never 
 known repentance or satiety, and Thackeray sketches 
 an enchanting portrait of him, which is very far from 
 Balzac's bitter satire. He pictures him " bouncing 
 about the room, gesticulating, joking, gasconading, 
 quoting Latin, pulling out his books, which are very 
 handsome, and tossing about his curling brown hair ; 
 — a magnificent, jolly, intelligent face, such as would 
 suit Pan, I should think, a flood of humorous, rich, 
 jovial talk." In either capital he sees the best, and 
 the best of many kinds. His catholicity, in life at 
 least, is remarkable. He meets Sir Robert Peel at a 
 picture-gallery, and who do you think is the next person 
 with whom he shakes hands ? Why, Mrs Rhodes, of 
 the Back Kitchen, and perhaps he is more at his ease 
 with her than with the great Minister. Though his 
 preference for the world of fashion is frank enough, he 
 lived on terms of intimacy with many of his cotifreres. 
 Perhaps he was never quite happy with Dickens, but 
 until a foolish quarrel divided them they were familiar 
 friends, and Dickens never had a more generous admirer 
 than Thackeray. Carlyle and Macaulay, Brookfield and 
 FitzGerald, Tennyson and the Procters, were his loyal 
 associates, and once in Paris he cheerfully allows him- 
 self to be patronised by the great Harrison Ainsworth. 
 Charlotte Bronte's admiration for him is notorious. 
 He resembled Fielding, she declared, " as an eagle
 
 124 THACKERAY. 
 
 does a vulture." But this resemblance did not prevent 
 her from being in great trouble about his soul. " He 
 stirs in me both sorrow and anger," she wrote. '"Why 
 should he lead so harassing a life ? Why should his 
 mocking tongue so perversely deny the better feelings 
 of his better moods?" Of course she took him and 
 others too seriously, but Thackeray alone frightened 
 her. In his presence, she confesses, she was " fearfully 
 stupid," and on the evening when first she met him, 
 "excitement and exhaustion made savage work of her." 
 But the admiration on either side was sincere, and while 
 she dedicated Jatie Eyre to the author of Vanity Fair, 
 Thackeray repaid the compliment by writing a touching 
 and sympathetic introduction to Emma. 
 
 Happy in his friends, Thackeray was happy also in 
 his work. There was scarce a number of Vanity Fair 
 which he did not produce "with inexpressible throes." 
 But when the work was done he took a frank pleasure 
 in it. He highly approved the simplicity of his style, 
 and he never grew tired of his own characters. On one 
 occasion he re-reads The Hoggarty Diamond, and " upon 
 my word and honour," says he, " if it doesn't make you 
 cry, I shall have a mean opinion of you." About the 
 same time he is going to visit the Hotel de la Terrasse 
 at Brussels, " where Becky used to live. 1 shall pass by 
 Captain Osborne's lodging, where I recollect meeting 
 him and his little wife, who has married again, some- 
 body told me ; but it is always the way with these 
 grandes passions — Mrs Dobbins, or some such name, 
 she is now ; always an overrated woman, I thought.
 
 PENDENNIS. 125 
 
 How curious it is ! I believe perfectly in all those 
 people, and feel quite an interest in the inn in which 
 they lived." 
 
 But his novel, though it brought him fame and 
 pleasure, did not bring him wealth, and he was still 
 dependent upon journalism for a livelihood. Though 
 he had given up The Examiner in 1845, he began, in 
 the very midst of Vanity Fair^ " to blaze away in T//e 
 Chronicle again : it's an awful bribe that five guineas an 
 article." The novelist of to-day would doubtless turn 
 up his nose at the poor pittance which Thackeray 
 received for his early novels — ^50 a part, 'tis said, 
 drawings and all. And the truth is, that when he had 
 to pay a call of ^112 on an abominable Irish railway 
 he was embarrassed to find the money. Indeed, at the 
 very time that Vanity Fair was bringing him glory he 
 was called to the Bar, in the hope, no doubt, that he, 
 the eagle, might follow Fielding, the vulture, to the 
 magisterial bench. But, happily, this ambition and 
 another (of a secretaryship at the Post Office) were 
 foiled, and Thackeray remained loyal to his true and 
 only vocation. 
 
 No sooner was Vanity Fair finished than he set to 
 work upon Fendennis} It was written under different 
 
 * The first number of Pcndennis was published in Noveinbjr 
 1848. After the eleventh number (September 1849) there was a 
 gap of three months, due to the author's illness, but the publication 
 was resumed in January 1850, and in the following December the 
 last (a double) number made its appearance. The book is ap- 
 propriately dedicated to Dr John Elliotson, who tended the author 
 through his illness, and " would take no other fee than thanks."
 
 126 THACKERAY. 
 
 skies, and with varying fortune. Now, the author 
 is dehghted with liis work ; now, he finds it, " with- 
 out any manner of doubt, awfully stupid." The fear 
 of "Bradley, the printer, coming to dun him" is ever 
 before him, and once, as we know from the dedication, 
 the progress of the book was interrupted by illness. 
 But he finished it in 1S50, "very tired," as he told his 
 mother, " weary and solemn-minded." Irksome as the 
 task seemed, it brought with it compensations, for 
 Thackeray was intensely interested in his own creations, 
 and while he was writing, Fende?inis and the world 
 were for him one and the same. While, on the one 
 hand, he looked upon life with the eyes of a book, on 
 the other the personages of his story were real and beyond 
 his control. " I wonder what will happen with Pen- 
 dennis and Fanny," he writes one day ; "... somehow 
 it seems as if it were true. I shall know more about 
 them to-morrow." He cannot conceal his admiration for 
 the Major, and he is delighted to encounter a familiar 
 friend. " At the station," says he, " whom do you think 
 
 I found ? Miss G , who says she is Blanche 
 
 Amory, and I think she is Blanche Amory — amiable 
 at times, amusing, clever, and depraved." Who Miss 
 
 G was is immaterial, but Thackeray's own comment 
 
 upon the poet of Mes Larmes is at once curious and just. 
 In structure and composition Pe?ide>inis differs little 
 from Vanity Fair, for though it is a novel with a hero, 
 it is still a novel without a plot. It has the same 
 motive as To?n /ones, Gil Bias, or le Fere Goriot. In 
 other words, it describes the impact of an enterprising,
 
 PENDF.NNIS. 127 
 
 adventurous youth upon the world. But unhke the 
 heroes of the other masterpieces I have mentioned, 
 Pendennis moves in a formal little circle, not of his 
 own choosing. His adventures are limited, not merely 
 by his lack of courage, but by a narrow, ruthless con- 
 vention of life. From the very first he is taken charge 
 of by the tyrants of habit and custom. He is pushed 
 along the common groove from school to college, from 
 college to London, until he reaches the comfortable 
 goal of fiction — a blameless marriage. When Ras- 
 tignac emerged from the humble boarding-house near 
 the Pantheon, he was fortified by the predatory phil- 
 osophy of Vautrin to make war upon society. Pen- 
 dennis found a mentor more circumspect than Ras- 
 tignac's. His Vautrin was the admirable Major, whose 
 cynicism conceived nothing worse than an entrance 
 into the best houses and a rich alliance.^ But while 
 Rastignac remains a triumph of romantic portraiture, 
 
 ^ Compare, for instance, the worldly-wise counsels which the 
 Major administers 10 his nephew with the fierce exhortations of 
 Vautrin, whose famous address to Eugene de Rastignac is the 
 perfection of cynicism. "Voilh, le carrefour de la vie, jeune 
 homme," says he, " choississez. Vous avez deja choisi : vous ctes 
 alle chez notre cousin de Beauseant, et vous y avez flaire le luxe. 
 Vous etes alle chez Madame de Restaud, et vous y avez flaire la 
 Parisienne. Ce jour-la, vous etes revcnu avec un mot ecrit sur votre 
 front, et que j'ai bien su lire: Farvaiir! parvenir a tout prix. 
 'Bravo!' ai-je dit, ' voila un gaillaid qui me va.' II vous a fallu 
 de I'argent. Ou en prendre ? " That question is easily resolved ; 
 and if you set this cynical rhapsody of Vautrin side by side with 
 the Major's amiable approval of "a good name, good manners, 
 good wits," you will understand the difi'erence not merely between 
 the talent of Balzac and the talent of Thackeray, l)ut something of 
 the difference between France and England.
 
 128 THACKKRAY. 
 
 Pendennis ends as he began, an intelligent, meritorious 
 young gentleman. 
 
 The one generous adventure of his life, the adora- 
 tion of the Fotheringay, is properly represented as a 
 mere boyish folly, and it is dit^cult to believe sincerely 
 in the episode of Fanny Bolton. A chance meeting 
 at Vauxhall, the ignition of a spark in a childish heart 
 — these are not the material of a tragedy, or even of 
 an embroilment. ^Vhat is the crisis, indeed, that could 
 hang upon so slender a thread of fate as a kiss 
 innocently given or a word of kindness spoken in a 
 whisper ? The truth is, that Thackeray dared not 
 face the logic of his facts, and his readers may be 
 forgiven if they find the situation incredible. Between 
 Balzac and Thackeray, then, there is a wide ocean of 
 temperament and e.xperience, and while Thackeray 
 timidly hugs his shore, Balzac dives into the deeps, 
 unconscious of fear. Le Fere Goriot is of universal 
 significance. Pendennis, the book, is so severely 
 English that it will hardly cross the Channel. Pen- 
 dennis, the hero, is not merely an Englishman ; he is 
 also a blurred reflection of his author ; and it is not 
 strange, therefore, that both book and hero strike what 
 Matthew Arnold called a note of provincialism. 
 
 For Pendennis is in essence an autobiography. It is, 
 of course, an idle task to seek in the novel the author's 
 actual experience. Whether he borrowed his own 
 character or the character of a friend, Thackeray 
 liberally transformed it. He was content to select a
 
 PENDENNIS. 1 29 
 
 trait here, an episode there, keeping the general effect 
 of the picture true to its model. That Pendennis 
 was a reminiscence of himself he was quite conscious. 
 " Being entirely occupied with my two new friends, 
 Mrs Pendennis and her son Mr Arthur Pendennis," 
 he wrote to Mrs Brookfield, " I got up early again 
 this morning, and was with them more than two hours 
 before breakfast. He is a very good - natured and 
 generous young fellow, and I begin to like him con- 
 siderably. I wonder whether he is interesting to me 
 from selfish reasons, and because I fancy we resemble 
 each other in many points." Moreover, in loyalty to 
 his own school and college, Thackeray gave Pendennis 
 the same education he had himself enjoyed. Arthur, 
 too, was at Grey Friars' School, distinguished as 
 neither a dunce nor a scholar. He, too, devoured all 
 the unprofitable literature that came in his way, and 
 spent his pocket-money upon tarts for himself and his 
 friends. Being naturally disposed to indolence, he cared 
 for fighting as little as for learning ; but, on the other 
 hand, he neither told lies nor bullied little boys. 
 
 Again, when he had passed through the ordeal of 
 love, Pendennis, like the author of his being, went to 
 Cambridge, and the chapters which describe Pen's 
 triumph and failure at the University are of Thack- 
 eray's best. There are many failures to prove how 
 difficult it is to paint a picture of university life. 
 Some remember their Alma Mater as the sad home 
 of a priggish scholarship, while others recall their
 
 130 THACKERAY. 
 
 contemporaries as the riffraff of bars and racecourses. 
 But Thackeray's sense of reahty saved him from either 
 pitfall. He accomplished his delicate task without 
 exaggeration, and with not more than a spice of 
 sentimentality. His Mr Bloundell-Bloundell doesn't 
 ring quite true ; but the others — even the lordly, the 
 extravagant, the admirable Pen himself — are of the 
 genuine metal. And how just is the reminiscence 
 evoked by "the old Oxbridge tracts"! Is it not in 
 this spirit that one always looks back upon the first 
 precious days of freedom to think wildly or to act 
 foolishly ? " Here is Jack moaning with despair and 
 Byronic misanthropy, whose career at the university was 
 one of unmixed milk-punch. Here is Tom's daring 
 essay in defence of suicide and of republicanism in 
 general, . . . Tom, who wears the starchiest tie in 
 all the diocese, and would go to Smithfield rather 
 than eat a breakfast on a Friday in Lent." And, 
 best of all, there is Bob, "who has made a fortune 
 in railway committees, bellowing out with Tancred and 
 Godfrey : 
 
 ' On to the breach, ye soldiers of the cross, 
 Scale the red wall and swim the choking foss. 
 Ye dauntless archers, twang your crossbows well ; 
 On bill and battle-axe and mangonel ! 
 Ply battering-ram and hurtling catapult, 
 Jerusalem is ours — // Dti/s znilt: " 
 
 There is the true aspect of the University, mellowed 
 by a knowledge of the larger world. So, too, when
 
 PENDENNIS. 131 
 
 Thackeray brought Pendennis up to London, he kept 
 an eye upon his own experience. Pendennis, hke the 
 author of his being, was as intimately at home in Grub 
 Street as in Baker Street or Carlton House Terrace ; 
 he, too, born to Tyburnia, strayed awhile in the wilder 
 province of Bohemia ; he, too, visited the broken man 
 of letters in jail, and himself knew what it was to 
 write for his bread. Moreover, the London to which 
 Pendennis came after his sojourn at Cambridge was 
 in all respects the London of Thackeray's youth ; and 
 the curious may find a clear proof of Thackeray's 
 fidelity to truth in the files of " Baron " Nicholson's 
 forgotten journal. The Town, to name but one source 
 of corroboration. As sketched by that amiable ruffian, 
 London is a paradise of night-saloons and "free-and- 
 easies." The Coal Hole, over which presided " the 
 pleasant, agreeable Rhodes," was already the rival of 
 the more famous Evans's, where old English ballads 
 alternated with the improvisations of Charles Sloman, 
 " the great liitle Jew." ^ There the nobs from the 
 West End — and Pendennis among them — would finish 
 the evening more sedately begun at ball or rout, and 
 would even condescend to play their part in the 
 entertainment. 
 
 In such haunts as these, then, — haunts meet for the 
 
 midnight Apollo, — Thackeray sets many a scene in 
 
 his drama, and his sympathy with Rhodes and his 
 
 like is as plain as his understanding of them. No 
 
 ^ See above, p. 21.
 
 132 THACKERAY. 
 
 writer, indeed, has depicted this strange chapter in the 
 history of manners with Thackeray's skill and verisim- 
 ilitude. To compare his treatment of the theme with 
 Nicholson's is to note the difference between the artist 
 and the journalist. Where Thackeray presents a picture, 
 the "Baron" affects a desire to prove that "vice rarely 
 reigns in the human heart unaccompanied by better 
 feelings." This desire, to be sure, was universal in 
 that age, and Thackeray was no stranger to it. But 
 the current literature of the day proves Thackeray 
 the least of many offenders, and we may be frankly 
 grateful to him for saving from oblivion an institution 
 long since dead and gone. To revive the glories of 
 Evans's and the Coal Hole, higher spirits and a 
 livelier talent would be necessary than we can find 
 to-day ; no more will " the great improvisatore " touch 
 off the newest comer in a neat couplet ; no more will 
 the brutality of " Sam Hall " affront the Philistine. 
 Yet who will say that in exchanging the " free-and- 
 easy " for the " marble hall " we have got the better 
 of the bargain ? 
 
 So with equal step Thackeray and Pendennis pace 
 the stones of London. But that which they achieve 
 is far less important than those whom they encounter 
 by the way. As we have said, Fe?ide?inis does not 
 depend upon its plot, and its single complication — the 
 blackmailing of Clavering by Altamont, and Blanche 
 Amory's legitimacy — seems a trifle out of tone. No, 
 Fendenfiis, like Va/iity Fair, is eminent for a set of
 
 PENDENNIS. 133 
 
 characters, shrewdly observed and wittily drawn. In 
 one respect it shows an advance upon Vanity Fair; 
 it is more uniform ; it is not composed in so many 
 varying planes of caricature. Its dramatis persome, 
 with few exceptions, belong to the same age, and 
 are drawai to the same scale. Yet once again Thack- 
 eray shows his interest in eccentricity and rascal- 
 dom. The best of his characters are not those who 
 conform to the standard of the copy-book heading. In 
 other words, he is more at home with the sinners than 
 with the saints, and at the head of them all stands the 
 incomparable Major, who, if he sinned, sinned in the 
 cause of worldly success and good breeding. The 
 Major, in truth, is the most vital, as he is the most 
 entertaining, figure in the book. Amiable, heartless, 
 honourable, cunning, he epitomises in his character and 
 career some of the worst vices castigated in the Book of 
 Snobs. But, to prove that Thackeray the artist is more 
 sincere than Thackeray the moralist, he is drawn with 
 rare knowledge and insight. The world in which he 
 moves is narrow and select. Beyond the confines of 
 his own St James's he knows nothing, save a German 
 Spa and half-a-dozen great houses. The society which 
 he affects is the best and the worst. Marchionesses 
 leave notes at his club ; the young men like to walk 
 with him down Pall Mall, " for he touched his hat to 
 everybody, and every other man he met was a lord." 
 On the other hand, he does not disdain the little French 
 parties which the Marquis of Steyne gave at the Star
 
 134 THACK F.RAY. 
 
 and Garter, and he is on terms of intimacy with that 
 elderly buck Lord Colchicum. 
 
 It is but natural, therefore, that he valued etiquette 
 more highly than polite letters, and that in his view 
 procedure was of greater import than morality. After 
 himself, he worshipped his family, which was but 
 another form of self. " My nephew marry a tragedy 
 queen ! " he exclaimed when he heard of Arthur's 
 entanglement. " Gracious mercy, people will laugh at 
 me so that I shall not dare show my head." Where- 
 fore, for his own sake as much as for his nephew's, 
 he declined the invitations of his exalted friends, and 
 reluctantly went to Fairoaks on his errand of discre- 
 tion. Here he behaved with his wonted magnificence. 
 " Why are there no such things as kffres-de-iac/ief" he 
 asked, "and a Bastille for young fellows of family?" 
 And it was in this spirit that he tackled the question of 
 his nephew's brief madness. His mind was made up 
 from the first. " The issue shan't be marriage, my 
 dear sister," said he. " We're not going to have a 
 Pendennis, the head of the house, marry a strolling 
 mountebank from a booth." And he handled the affair 
 with a fine tact ; he went so far, for the sake of the 
 house, as to laugh at the pretensions of his own nephew; 
 and he treated Costigan with a mixed contempt and 
 cajolery which did credit to the world in which he lived. 
 Nor could Thackeray have found better foils for the 
 Major's worldliness than his sister's mild indulgence 
 and the swaggering blackguardism of Captain Costigan ;
 
 PENDENiWrS. I 3 5 
 
 and it is no wonder that the Major came off from the 
 encounter with flying colours. 
 
 Henceforth he plays Mentor to Arthur's Telemachus. 
 As I have said, he is the Vautrin of the drama ; but 
 his philosophy (it may be repeated) is neither so daring 
 nor so romantic as the Frenchman's. The world 
 which he would have his nephew conquer is merely 
 the world of his own narrow acquaintance, where a 
 knowledge of fashionable families is far more import- 
 ant than courage. " My dear boy," says he, " you 
 cannot begin your genealogical studies too early ; I 
 wish to Heaven you would read in Debrett every day." 
 The prospect which he holds out to his nephew is 
 comfortable, if commonplace — a rich marriage. Parlia- 
 ment, distinction. " Remember," he observes with the 
 genuine accent of sound counsel, — " remember, it's as 
 easy to marry a rich woman as a poor woman : and 
 a devilish deal pleasanter to sit down to a good 
 dinner than to a scrag of mutton in lodgings. Make 
 up your mind to that. A woman with a jointure is 
 a doosid deal easier a profession than the law, let 
 me tell you. Look out ; / shall be on the watch for 
 you, and I shall die content, my boy, if I can see you 
 with a good lady-like wife, and a good carriage and 
 a good pair of horses, living in society, and seeing 
 your friends, like a gentleman." That is an ideal of 
 life, like another, and perhaps, making an allowance 
 for nationality, it is not very different from Vautrin's 
 own. Nor in this is there any hint of insincerity.
 
 136 THACKERAY. 
 
 The ideal which the Major holds up to others is ever 
 before his own eyes. " I am an old soldier, begad," 
 he pleasantly remarks as he rides in Sir Hugh Trump- 
 ington's brougham, " and I learned in early life to 
 make myself comfortable." 
 
 For him, in truth, society was a profession as well 
 as a cult. He studied his acquaintances, as other 
 men study law or theology. When the Duke gave 
 the Major a finger of a pipe -clayed glove to shake, 
 the Major was in high good-humour. " Yes, depend 
 upon it, my boy," thus he moralised ; " for a poor 
 man there is nothing like having good acquaintances. 
 Who were those men with whom you saw me in the 
 bow-window at Bays's ? Two were peers of the realm. 
 Hobanob will be a peer as soon as his grand-uncle 
 dies, and he has had his third seizure ; and of the 
 other four, not one has less than his seven thousand 
 a-year. . . . That is the benefit of knowing rich 
 men; I dine for nothing, sir; I go into the country, 
 and I'm mounted for nothing. Other fellows keep 
 hounds and gamekeepers for me. Sic vos non vobis, 
 as we used to say at Grey Friars, hey ? Fm of the 
 opinion of my old friend Leech, of the Forty-Fourth ; 
 and a devilish shrewd fellow he was, as most Scotch- 
 men are. Gad, sir, Leech used to say he was so poor 
 that he couldn't afford to know a poor man." 
 
 And so the Major went through life, neither toiling nor 
 spinning, arrayed in all the magnificence which the best 
 of tailors and an irreproachable valet could compass.
 
 PENDENNIS. 137 
 
 A touch of birth or fashion made the whole world kin 
 for him. When his nephew lived in chambers with 
 Warrington, he was easily consoled with the thought, 
 " Suffolk Warringtons ! I shouldn't wonder, a good 
 family," and he was even reconciled to Pen's attack upon 
 literature, remembering that nowadays clever fellows got 
 into the very best houses. Even his ignorances were 
 such as become a gentleman. When Pendennis told 
 him he was plucked, " I wonder you can look me in the 
 face after such a disgrace, sir," thunders the Major, " I 
 wonder you submitted to it as a gentleman," and asked 
 in amaze whether it was done in public. Yet for all 
 that he is a gentleman always, a gentleman kindly and 
 shrewd, whose worldly wisdom is at once genial and 
 dignified. Thackeray, moreover, drew his portrait with 
 evident sympathy. Once, it is true, he lectured him 
 after his wont. " Is this jaded and selfish worldling," he 
 asks, " the lad w^ho, a short while back, was ready to 
 fling away his worldly all, his hope, his ambition, his 
 chance of life for his love ? This is the man you are 
 proud of, old Pendennis." But old Pendennis escaped 
 with less scolding than most, and Thackeray did not 
 hide his predilection. " My vanity," he told Mrs 
 Brookfield, "would be to go through life as a gentleman, 
 as a Major Pendennis," and in this half-humorous con- 
 fession Thackeray was perhaps nearer the truth than he 
 thought. 
 
 Like master, like man, and the Major is admirably 
 matched in Morgan, the valet. Had that worthy done
 
 I3B THACKERAY. 
 
 nothing else than describe the Temple as " rather a shy 
 place," he would not have been created in vain. But 
 below-stairs, or at the "Wheel of Fortune," he is as 
 great an aristocrat as his master in another sphere. 
 Not only does he follow his master into "the best 
 houses " ; he has both made money and surprised secrets. 
 However, when he attempts blackmail, he is no match 
 for the Major, and he is speedily forced to an abject 
 surrender in a scene which is among the best in the 
 book. In his other descent below-stairs, Thackeray is 
 not so happy. Alcide Mirobalant is on the one hand a 
 concession to fashion, on the other he is monstrously over- 
 drawn. At the time when Pendeimis was written the 
 world had long been curious about cooks. Louis Eus- 
 tache Ude had won a place among the Fraserians, and 
 though many experts ridiculed the talent of this eminent 
 sentimentalist, he nevertheless symbolised a prevailing 
 taste. In other words, gastronomy was the mode ; man 
 was defined as "a dining animal," and the common- 
 places of Erillat-Savarin were deftly served up by nov- 
 elist and critic. Lord Lytton had already panegyrised 
 the cook — qu'un cuisinier est un mortel divin ! — in a 
 famous chapter of Pel/iant. In his most approved style 
 he had exclaimed, " By LucuUus, what a visionary bech- 
 amelle ! " He had pronounced Guloseton's chickens 
 " worthy the honour of being dressed." He had even 
 compared the lusty lusciousness of a pear to the style 
 of the old English poets. 
 
 But concerning cookery, as concerning many other
 
 PENDENNIS. 1 39 
 
 arts of life, the /oais classicus is to be found in the 
 works of Disraeli. It is in Tancred that the artistry of 
 the cook is most wittily expressed, without the bombast 
 of Lytton or the caricature of Thackeray. Leander 
 and the Papa Prevost are drawn with the proper 
 touch and in the true colours. Being artists, they are 
 conscious of their high destiny, and it is not surprising 
 that they wither without appreciation. Leander at Mon- 
 tacute Castle, with no message from the Duke, is like a 
 poet whose verses are unread and unsung. " How can 
 he compose," asks Prevost, " when he is not apprec- 
 iated ? " That is the proper spirit of the mock heroic ; 
 that is the quiet solemnity, which gives to irony its 
 sharpest, surest point ; and Thackeray, in following the 
 fashion, fell below the excellence of his model. 
 
 For it was in frank competition with Leander that 
 Monsieur Alcide Mirobalant, " chef of the bouche of 
 Sir Clavering, Baronet," was drawn. And he is not a 
 success, because all his traits are exaggerated. He does 
 not resemble a cook so much as the comic Frenchman 
 of convention. His costume is as fantastic as himself, 
 and is designed to excite laughter rather than to con- 
 vince you of his reality. You believe as little in the 
 man himself as in his light green frock, his crimson 
 velvet waistcoat, his pantalon ecossats, and the other 
 appurtenances of his holiday attire. His declaration 
 of passion to the adorable Blanche, made by means 
 of the J>lafs which she loved best, is amusing enough, 
 but it is a piece of frank burlesque, suddenly intro-
 
 140 THACKERAY. 
 
 diiced into a piece of realism. Equally ludicrous is 
 Mirobalant's encounter with Pendennis at the Bay- 
 mouth ball, and the absurdity is heightened by the 
 apology which Laura forces Pendennis to make, and 
 which proves that the episode is taken seriously. In 
 brief, Mirobalant is out of tone, but he may be ac- 
 cepted as an interlude of farce, as a specimen of 
 that "comic relief," which our playwrights believe to 
 be the essence of drama. 
 
 But while Mirobalant fails, the Blanche of his adora- 
 tion is a little triumph of portraiture. vShe is as pert 
 a jade as ever deceived in life, or masqueraded in 
 fiction. The Chevalier Strong, whose hatred of her is 
 unconcealed, describes her best. " Miss Amory," says 
 he, "is a muse — Miss Amory is a mystery — Miss 
 Amory is a foiunc incpiiiprisc.'' And with her little 
 airs and graces, with her little poems, with her fierce 
 and selfish temper, she is exquisitely superficial and 
 malicious. She is of the type about which men 
 flutter, and which women decry and contemn. While 
 Laura detects her hypocrisy in an instant, she ensnares 
 Pendennis with the deftest flattery, and only transfers 
 her love to the hapless Foker at the last minute. 
 When the cold, harsh world depreciates her, she takes 
 refuge in the little book bound in blue velvet, with 
 a gilt lock, and on it printed in gold the title of 
 " Mes Larmes." " Mes Larmes ! " she murmurs, "isn't 
 it a pretty title." But all is pretty about her, her fair 
 hair with its green reflections, her dark wistful eyes,
 
 PENDENNIS. 1 4 I 
 
 her little moues, and her dainty frocks — all is pretty, 
 indeed, except her devilry and her cunning. No 
 wonder the poor Baronet wishes Missy was dead ; no 
 wonder Ned Strong would like to see her deep in a 
 well, for, as Clavering admits, " she turns all the house 
 round in her quiet way, and with her sentimental airs." 
 But when she unmasks her battery she is more than a 
 match in mere worldliness for the Major himself, and 
 it is clear that Thackeray drew her after life and with 
 genuine delight. 
 
 Admirable, too, is Mr Harry Foker, a reflection, it 
 is said, of one Archdeckne, long a familiar figure in the 
 clubs. Now, Foker is a downy cove, who knows the 
 time of day, and is willing to impart his knowledge 
 to his friends. In this peculiar quality of downiness 
 he is superior to the worthy brewer, his father, or to his 
 devoted mother, the exquisite Lady Agnes. Safe from 
 scrapes himself, he is ready with sublime generosity to 
 extricate others. This young buck preaches to Pendennis 
 in a strain which the Major would have approved with 
 all his heart. For his part he had done with Oxbridge. 
 " Parley voo's the ticket," says he ; " It'ly and that sort 
 of thing." But he doesn't like to leave Pendennis among 
 the Philistines. He urges him to eat dinners, not give 
 them ; to ride other men's horses ; and to keep clear of 
 gambling. "They'll beat you at it. Pen, my boy, even 
 if they play on the square," he urges ; " which I don't say 
 they don't, nor which I don't say they do, mind. But 
 / wouldn't play with 'em. You're no match for 'em.
 
 143 THACKERAY. 
 
 You ain't up to their weight. It's Hke Httle Black Strap 
 standing up to Tom Spring — the Black's a pretty fighter, 
 but, Law bless you, his arm ain't long enough to touch 
 Tom, — and I tell you, you're going it with fellers 
 beyond your weight." Such is Foker's philosophy, and 
 very sound it is. But this downy young gentleman is 
 always on the spot, whether he is nursing a debauched 
 headache, or driving Miss Pinckney to Richmond, or 
 attending Ben Budgem's night at the Three-cornered 
 Hat, or simpering over Miss Blanche at the piano. He 
 is always on the spot, and Thackeray has drawn him, 
 big cigar, fancy waistcoat, large buttons and all, with 
 the fidelity which comes of intimate acquaintance and 
 perfect understanding. 
 
 The rest of the less reputable characters are realised 
 with equal skill — the Costigans, the Claverings, and 
 Strongs. Altamont is monstrous even for his com- 
 pany, but the others are true enough to themselves 
 and their purpose. Costigan is as nearly related to 
 the kings of Ireland as was his ancestor, Barry Lyndon, 
 and he is sketched with the same neatness and the same 
 spice of malice which Thackeray generally brings to 
 the portraiture of Irishmen. He was invented, as 
 Thackeray said in a paper entitled De Finibiis, "as 
 authors invent their personages, out of scraps, heeltaps, 
 odds and ends of characters." But, though he was 
 invented out of scraps, Thackeray knew him so well, 
 and his pride of birth, and his love of brandy and 
 idleness, and his delight in his daughter's talent and
 
 PENDENNIS. 143 
 
 marriage, that when he encountered him in real Hfe 
 he recognised him instantly. 
 
 "I was smoking in a tavern parlour one night," so 
 the author tells the story in De Finibus, "and this 
 Costigan came into the room alive, the very man : the 
 most remarkable resemblance of the printed sketches 
 of the man, of the rude drawings in which I had 
 depicted him. He had the same little coat, the same 
 battered hat, cocked on one eye, the same twinkle in 
 that eye. 'Sir,' said I, knowing him to be an old 
 friend whom I had met in unknown regions — 'Sir,' I 
 said, ' may I offer you a glass of brandy-and-water ? ' 
 ^ Bedad, ye may,^ says he, 'and I'll sing ye a song 
 tu.' Of course he spoke with an Irish brogue. Of 
 course he had been in the army. . . . How had I 
 come to know him, to divine him ? Nothing shall 
 convince me that I have not seen that man in the 
 world of spirits." It may be left to the mystics to 
 explain the phenomenon. But the resemblance of the 
 man in the tavern to Costigan is a high tribute to 
 Costigan's human similitude. The resemblance ex- 
 plains also the accusation often levelled at Thackeray 
 of drawing too nearly after life. The champions of 
 Catherine Hayes took umbrage at a name. Five Irish- 
 men recognised themselves, without warrant, in the 
 Mulligan of Mrs Ferkfns's Ball, and their anger was 
 but another proof of Thackeray's skill. His charac- 
 ters suggested something which was not mere fiction, 
 something which was alive, and the guilty braggart
 
 144 THACKERAY. 
 
 caught sight of his Ukeness, as in a mirror, and 
 confessed. 
 
 Upon a set of eccentric characters, then, PciideiDiis 
 establishes its claim to immortality. Unhappily the 
 more reputable personages in the drama do not inspire 
 the same admiration as Mr Foker and the Major. Arthur 
 Pendennis himself, the young Marquis of Fairoaks, is a 
 coxcomb, and not a very fine coxcomb either. He 
 would have been none the worse material for that had 
 Thackeray frankly pictured him a prig as he frankly 
 pictured George Osborne a cad. But Thackeray both 
 displays his own sympathy for Pendennis and demands 
 yours. In the author's eyes Pen is a good-natured, 
 generous young fellow, and so no doubt he is at times. 
 On the other hand, he is — in his hours — a portentous 
 prig. The truth is, he is so many things that he is 
 neither consistent nor intelligible. Though he is a 
 young man about town, his nights, you are given to 
 understand, were " wild," not " wicked." He was " too 
 lofty to stoop to a vulgar intrigue," and " never could 
 speak to one of the sex but with respectful courtesy." 
 His little passage with Fanny Bolton is so ludicrous 
 that one wonders what all the pother is about. And 
 Thackeray's lack of courage not only spoils the character 
 of Pendennis, it weakens the motive of the book. You 
 cannot believe him a devil of a fellow, who has so few 
 sins to his account ; and the kindest thing to say of him 
 is that he is true, not to human nature, but to the 
 British nature of the early 'Forties.
 
 PEN DENNIS 145 
 
 As to the two ladies, Helen Pendennis and Laura, 
 we prefer to believe that they belong to no age nor 
 clime. In Thackeray's representation they suggest 
 nothing save dulness and insipidity. They are not so 
 much women as bottles of tears, reverberating phono- 
 graphs of sobs. Their talk is like the sad twittering 
 of sparrows in a wintry garden, or the pit-a-pat of rain 
 upon the window. At the smallest excuse, " the two 
 women rush into each other's embraces," and while the 
 mother is always " fond," Laura is ever " affectionate 
 and pure." Why this young woman of sixteen, brought 
 up in the seclusion of Fairoaks, should be anything else 
 than pure it is difficult to surmise. She was as pure, 
 you are convinced, as the white muslin frock, tied 
 with a blue bow on the shoulder, which she certainly 
 wore. But it was the fashion of the time to insist 
 upon the obvious virtues, which we now take for 
 granted, and Laura or Flora (as the Major called 
 her) is essentially a thing not of life but of fashion. 
 
 George Warrington, from the nobility of his character, 
 must be classed with the two poor ladies, though, of course, 
 he is more substantial than they, more closely compact 
 of bone and muscle. He is what is called nowadays a 
 good all-round man, a Bohemian who is a gentleman, 
 an athlete who is also a scholar. "He had been one of 
 the hardest livers and hardest readers of his time at Ox- 
 bridge," says Thackeray, "where the name of Stunning 
 Warrington was yet famous for beating bargemen, pull- 
 ing matches, winning prizes, and drinking milk-punch." 
 
 K
 
 146 THACKERAY. 
 
 He is one of those heroes to whom nothing comes 
 amiss : he can write, he can box, he can talk. In fact, 
 he is a mixture of Guy Livingstone and the Grub Street 
 hack. The worst is that Thackeray has overdone his 
 love of squalor ; he has put him in an atmosphere of 
 tobacco, which is too thick for belief. The gentleman 
 who wipes his wrist across his beard after a draught 
 of ale smacks of the fairy story, and the dilapidation 
 of his chambers is an unnecessary smudge upon the 
 portrait. His carpet is full of holes, you are told, 
 his Plato is battered, his tables are stained with the 
 circles of many pint-pots, he has scarcely " an article 
 of furniture that has not been in the wars." Now, since 
 there is no particular merit in squalor, and since War- 
 rington is drawn as a grave and serious scholar, as well 
 as a gentleman, many of these traits contradict them- 
 selves, and he appears less a man than a catalogue of 
 "sterling" ciualities. His contempt of ambition, his 
 secret consciousness of a broken life, his candid honesty, 
 his suppression of himself in anonymous journalism, are 
 excellent virtues and well depicted. But a finer subtlety 
 of detail might have made the character at once credible 
 and consistent. As he is, he is not for a moment com- 
 parable to the Major, and if, as is said, he is drawn from 
 George Stovin Venables, he assuredly does not flatter 
 his model. 
 
 But Pe7ide7iiiis had another claim, besides its char- 
 acters, to public recognition ; it aroused the public 
 curiosity upon another ground. It presented a picture
 
 THE WORLD OF LETTERS. 147 
 
 of the literary world, as Thackeray knew it, which is 
 neither pleasant nor unjustified. Grub Street was 
 never the most amiable quarter of the town, and 
 Thackeray described it with the contempt of one who 
 had strayed within its precincts in his own despite. 
 As has already been said, he was no native of Bohemia, 
 nor was he ever acclimatised to its heavy atmosphere. 
 But he knew it all the better, because he looked upon it 
 with the unprejudiced eye of an outsider. Clearly, then, 
 the experience of Pendennis is in all respects his own, 
 and the chapters in which the foundation of The Pall 
 Mall Gazette is set forth are intimately autobiographical. 
 Pendennis, in fact, entered the world of letters by the 
 same gate as Thackeray, and for the same reasons. 
 He, too, wished to fill a depleted purse ; he, too, had 
 a natural gift, which could easily be turned into current 
 coin of the realm ; and when Arthur modestly tells War- 
 rington that " he cannot fly on his wing," Warrington 
 replies in words which accurately describe Thackeray 
 himself, " But you can on your own, my boy, which 
 is lighter and soars higher, perhaps." Poor Pen, de- 
 lighted at the praise, thinks of his "Ariadne in Naxos," 
 and Warrington instantly brings him down to earth 
 with a burst of laughter. He tells him it is useless 
 for him, an absurd little tomtit, to set up for a Pindar, 
 but he candidly allows that " he can write a magazine 
 article, and turn out a pretty copy of verses." 
 
 In other words. Pen has the same talent which dis- 
 tinguished his author when he joined the staff of
 
 148 THACKERAY. 
 
 Fraser's Magazine. And Pendennis rushes into Grub 
 Street with the delightful enthusiasm of inexperience 
 which the author of his being knew so intimately. In 
 a few pages the romance of the literary calling is 
 artfully displayed. In Pen's eyes all is poetry and 
 delight. What a career, to emulate " the sense, the 
 satire, the scholarship " of his friend Warrington ! 
 Shandon, again, is a man of genius, infamously com- 
 pelled by the avarice of the publishers to languish in 
 the Fleet. The knights of the pen are chivalrous, 
 brilliant, and honest, every one of them. Pen carries 
 his manuscripts to the office " with a great deal of 
 bustle and pleasure ; such as a man feels at the out- 
 set of his literary career, when to see himself in print 
 is still a novel sensation." His first set of verses 
 are " screwed out " with the pleasure and excite- 
 ment which are the privilege of youth. When the 
 first parcel of books come for review from The Fall 
 Mall Gazette^ he " had never been so delighted in 
 his life : his hand trembled as he cut the string of 
 the packet, and beheld within a smart set of new neat 
 calico-bound books — travels, and novels, and poems." 
 It is all fresh as sunshine, no shadow of drudgery lies 
 across his path as Pendennis, having sported his oak, 
 sits down to read and to review. 
 
 Moreover, the Press was not yet common enough to 
 have lost its mystery. Optimists still believed in its 
 mission and influence. Even Warrington, the soft- 
 hearted cynic, was amazed at the trade which he fol-
 
 THE WORLD OF LETTERS. I49 
 
 lowed. " Look at that, Pen," he said, as they passed a 
 newspaper office in the Strand. "There she is — the 
 great engine — she never sleeps. She has her ambas- 
 sadors in every quarter of the world — her couriers upon 
 every road. Her officers march along with armies, 
 and her envoys walk into statesmen's cabinets. They 
 are ubiquitous ? Yonder journal has an agent, at 
 this minute, giving bribes at Madrid ; and another 
 inspecting the price of potatoes in Covent Garden. 
 Look ! here comes the Foreign Express galloping 
 in. They will be able to give news to Downing 
 Street to-morrow : funds will rise or fall, fortunes be 
 made or lost ; Lord B. will get up, and, holding the 
 paper in his hand, and seeing the noble Marquis in his 
 place, will make a great speech ; and — Mr Doolan will 
 be called away from his supper at the Back Kitchen ; 
 for he is foreign sub-editor, and sees the mail on the 
 newspaper sheet before he goes to his own." 
 
 Thus with perfect candour Thackeray said what might 
 be said in praise of the world of letters. While in Pen- 
 dennis he pictured in vivid colours the enthusiasm of 
 his youth, he made Warrington the mouthpiece of his 
 maturer opinion and harsher criticism. The literary 
 medal had, and has always had, a reverse, and Thack- 
 eray did not hesitate to show it. His Paternoster Row 
 is given over to sordid rivalries and eager toadyism. 
 His Bungays and Bacons are as ignorant as they are 
 avaricious ; and Captain Shandon is not a dignified 
 example of literary genius. The famous scene in the
 
 150 THACKERAY. 
 
 Fleet Prison, wherein the Captain reads the prospectus 
 of The Pall Mall Gazette, is a piece of satire which 
 Thackeray did not often surpass. It was to the gentle- 
 men of England that the imprisoned Captain made his 
 appeal. He observed from the secure retreat of the 
 Fleet Prison that " the good institutions, which had 
 made our country glorious, and the name of English 
 Gentleman the proudest in the world, were left without 
 defence." He referred in moving words to the plain 
 of Waterloo, and on remarking how his venerable friend 
 Bungay was affected, declared that he had used the 
 Duke and the battle of Waterloo a hundred times — and 
 "never knew the Duke to fail." From friends the Cap- 
 tain turned lightly to foes, dismissed in a sentence certain 
 " hireling advocates," and declared that they must not 
 " have Grub Street publishing Gazettes from White- 
 hall." Whereupon Bungay wagged his dull head and 
 says, " For a slashing article, there's nobody like the 
 Capting — no-obody like him." So with a flourish the 
 Captain addressed himself " to the higher circles of 
 Society : we care not to disown it — The Pall Mall 
 Gazette is written by gentlemen for gentlemen ; its 
 conductors speak to the classes in which they live and 
 were born." And Bungay awoke from a second snooze, 
 which held him as securely as sleep held Jonathan Wild 
 at the ministrations of the prison chaplain. 
 
 Still more bitter is the satire of Bungay's dinner- 
 party, whose table-talk sounds like a travesty of Swift's 
 ' Polite Conversation.' The entertainment is as vulgar
 
 THE WORLD OF LETTERS. 151 
 
 and fatuous as possible. 'Iliackeray spares nothing and 
 nobody. Miss Bunion's vast appetite, Mr Wagg's bad 
 puns, Wenham's snobbery, the Captain's drunkenness, 
 Percy Popjoy's ambition to be taken for a literary man, 
 Captain Sumph's ^ silly stories of Byron — are all ridi- 
 culed without stint or pity. The conversation never 
 sparkles for an instant. It is silly and sordid from soup 
 to dessert, and none of those who " cut mutton " with 
 Bungay proves worth his salt. The satire is legitimate, 
 but Thackeray's comment is hardly just. "Not one 
 word about literature," says he, "had been said during 
 the whole course of the night." And why, indeed, 
 should this word have been spoken ? Not only is the 
 objection unnecessary ; it weakens Thackeray's argu- 
 ment, since there is no more reason why men of letters 
 should discuss literature with one another than why 
 lawyers should dispute of law, or parsons of theology. 
 The literary world is indicted in Pendennis for taking 
 itself and its craft too seriously, for claiming exemp- 
 tion from the duties imposed by honest citizenship. 
 Yet when once it declares itself indifferent to its calling, 
 Thackeray is ready with a reproach. 
 
 But Thackeray did not frame his indictment against 
 journalists and publishers without warrant. He de- 
 scribed Grub Street, as he knew it, with scrupulous 
 
 -«; 
 
 ^ It is scarcely worth while to trace all Bungay's guests to their 
 origins, but Sumph was doubtless suggested by Captain Medwin, of 
 the 24th Light Dragoons, who published (in 1824) a set of foolish 
 Conversations zviih Lord Byron.
 
 152 THACKERAY. 
 
 accuracy. And it was not a very pleasant place. 
 A strange mixture of sentimentality and recrimination, 
 it inclined on the one side to insipidity, on the other 
 to violence. There was room within its borders both 
 for Bludyer and Popjoy : indeed it may be said that 
 Popjoy was Bludyer's best excuse. But such as they 
 were, Thackeray understood them, and their fellows, 
 intimately, and, since he had spent his life among 
 them, this knowledge is not surprising. He had edited 
 papers ; he had contributed to them from at home 
 and abroad ; he had done the work of a special cor- 
 respondent ; he had for many years cut a figure in the 
 magazines, and in Fe/ideunis he resumes his experi- 
 ence. Not a few of his characters are drawn direct from 
 life. Bungay, for instance, is an unamiable portrait of 
 Colborn the publisher, while Archer, the quidnunc, 
 whose advice is always wanted at the Palace, and whose 
 taste for cold beef the Duke himself consults, is none 
 other than Tom Hill of The Monthly Mirror^ whom 
 Theodore Hook painted as Hull in Gilbert Gurney. 
 
 But by far the most famous portrait in the gallery is 
 Captain Shandon, for which sat Maginn, the " bright 
 broken " Irishman. It is not unkind, this portrait, for 
 the Captain is as gentle a ruffian as ever wrote a 
 slashing article or spent his last shilling on a drink. 
 There are many touches, too, which heighten the veri- 
 similitude, and make the intention certain. The 
 Doctor's knowledge of the Fleet was as intimate as the 
 Captain's, and the prospectus of The Fall Mall Gazette^
 
 THE WORLD OF LETTERS. 1 53 
 
 pompously composed within the walls of a prison, 
 reminds us of The Tobias Correspondence^ wherein 
 Maginn, from the security of a garret in Wych Street, 
 set forth " the whole art and mystery of writing a paper." 
 Nevertheless, the portrait does not do perfect justice to 
 the Doctor. For Maginn, when his shillelagh was laid 
 aside, was a real man of letters, and a finished scholar 
 to boot. There was, of course, something lacking in 
 his character ; and his ambition, if indeed he knew the 
 meaning of the word, never kept pace with his attain- 
 ments. For some years he concealed his name, even 
 from Blackwood ; and when he descended into the pit 
 of London journalism he speedily won a reputation for 
 what was worst in him. The savage mangier of 
 Grantley Berkeley, for instance, captured a fame which 
 was long withheld from the scholar who turned Chevy 
 Chase into Latin, and Homer into the metre of a 
 border ballad. 
 
 The truth is, facility and an inborn love of fighting 
 destroyed him. He could turn his hand so easily to 
 anything, prose or verse, Latin or English, that he 
 never did justice to his own talent. He once told 
 Blackwood that there was no chance of "his turning 
 author of anything beyond a spelling-book," and though 
 now and again he wrote a book for money, with char- 
 acteristic prodigality he left the best of his work buried 
 in Fraser's Magazine, where his essays on Shakespeare 
 and Rabelais and his brilliant versions of Lucian remain 
 to attest his sound judgment and his happy hand. Nor
 
 154 THACKERAY. 
 
 should it be forgotten that so fastidious a critic as 
 Matthew Arnold praised his Homeric ballads, and that 
 Lockhart loved and served him to the end. Unfortun- 
 ately, his vices always eclipsed his virtues in the popular 
 eye ; his reckless character soon got the better of his 
 conspicuous talent ; and when his collapse was com- 
 plete, he sacrificed principle for a pittance, and would 
 write for one side as easily as for the other. But such 
 as he was, he belonged to his time, and Thackeray 
 found a full warrant as well in his gifts as in his mis- 
 fortunes for the portrait of Captain Shandon. 
 
 However, no sooner were those chapters of Peji- 
 dennis published which describe the literary world, 
 than the Press made a characteristic outcry against 
 Thackeray. The author was accused by The Chronicle 
 of " fostering a baneful prejudice against literary men." 
 The Exaniitier, with miraculous insight, detected not 
 merely the sin, but its motive. It charged Thackeray 
 with " condescending to caricature (as is too often his 
 habit) his literary fellow-labourers, in order to pay 
 court to the non-literary class." ^ Now, such criticism 
 as this is manifestly absurd As Thackeray himself 
 
 1 Yet Thackeray was born a man of letters, and he was conscious 
 of his birthright. " The first literary man I ever met was Croly," 
 he told Elwin. " I was a lad of seventeen, on the top of a coach, 
 going to Cambridge. Somebody pointed Croly out to me. I had 
 read Salathiel at sixteen, and thought it divine. I turned back and 
 gazed at him. The person who pointed him out to me said, ' I 
 see that lad is fated.' He knew it by the way I gazed after a literary 
 man."
 
 THE WORLD OF LETTERS. I 55 
 
 said in reply, " If every character in a story is to 
 represent a class, not an individual, novels would 
 become impossible." This reply is unanswerable and 
 sufficient, and Thackeray, who was accused again and 
 again of attacking a profession or a nation through an 
 individual, made use of it many times. 
 
 But in answer to The Chronicle and Examiner he 
 was not content with the obvious refutation. He set 
 forth with energy and eloquence his views upon the 
 dignity of literature. It was a subject upon which he 
 always wrote with wisdom and conviction, and all men 
 of letters owe him a debt of gratitude. He looked upon 
 his profession without cant or humbug; he claimed for 
 it neither favour nor privilege. " Men of letters," said 
 he, " had best silently assume that they are as good as 
 any other gentlemen." He denied that the " non-literary 
 class " delighted in the degradation of authors, who, on 
 the contrary, won by their pen friends, sympathy, 
 applause. He declares, with perfect truth, that no man 
 loses his social rank, whatever it may be, by the practice 
 of letters. With equal truth he points out that many a 
 man claims a place in the world by his writings, which 
 he did not inherit, and which his writings alone could 
 give him. 
 
 But, in return, he insists that a man of letters 
 should not be excused by his talent from performing 
 the common duties of citizenship. In other words, 
 he confesses a "prejudice against running into debt 
 and drunkenness and disorderly life." Nowadays, when
 
 156 THACKERAY. 
 
 literature has entered upon a career of extreme re- 
 spectability, this prejudice is unnecessary. But in the 
 days of Bludyer and the Captain no one who re- 
 spected his craft could do less than impose upon his 
 fellow-craftsmen the obligations of order and honesty. 
 Moreover, Thackeray was not unduly censorious in 
 his judgment of his colleagues. While he would 
 have them preserve a high standard of life, he would 
 not condemn them too hardly if they failed. His 
 sympathy with Shandon is clearly expressed, and he 
 was no less kind to the model who sat for Shandon's 
 portrait. " I have carried money," said he, " and 
 from a noble brother man-of-letters, to some one not 
 unlike Shandon in prison, and have watched the 
 beautiful devotion of his wife in that place." But he 
 was never of those who believed that a servile imita- 
 tion of Shelley's or Byron's supposed vices was the 
 short cut to genius, and the simple, honest views 
 which he held he set forth with honest simplicity. 
 
 Nor, for the rest, would he cherish any illusions con- 
 cerning his craft. He puts the strongest case against 
 the professors of literature in the mouth of Warrington, 
 and that sturdy hack does not spare the defendants. 
 " A good deal of undeserved compassion has been 
 thrown away upon what is called a bookseller's drudge," 
 says Warrington ; and when Pen in the inexperienced 
 enthusiasm of youth protests against the cynicism bred 
 of solitary pipes and ale, "a fiddlestick about men of 
 genius," cries Warrington, — " I deny that there are so
 
 THE WORLD OF LETTERS. 1 5/ 
 
 many geniuses as people who whimper about the fate of 
 men of letters assert there are." And in his own person 
 Thackeray supports Warrington's view. In a review of 
 Lytton's Memoir of La man Blanchard, he declines to 
 pity what he deems a fortunate career. He recognises 
 that Blanchard followed the profession he loved best, 
 and found his delight not only in the scanty reward of 
 his work, but in the mere practice of literature. This 
 attitude is surely more reasonable than Lytton's pos- 
 ture of sorrow and regret. After all, Blanchard's talent 
 was slender enough, and doubtless he put it to the best 
 possible use in the literature of the day. 
 
 Indeed, Thackeray's main argument that the man of 
 letters must obey the general law of life and conduct 
 is irrefragable, and it is only when he would apply the 
 tenets of the Manchester school to literature that you 
 disagree with him. Literature is not a mere matter of 
 supply and demand. Some men, at any rate, write 
 because they have something to say, and are undeterred 
 by lack of appreciation. Thackeray himself did not re- 
 nounce his craft because he failed to find readers. For 
 ten years he WTOte assiduously for the magazines, often 
 without success. Barry Lyndon was a sad failure when 
 it appeared in the pages of J^egina, and Vanity Fair 
 itself was within an ace of being suppressed at the fifth 
 number for lack of subscribers. But Thackeray neither 
 hesitated nor despaired. He knew in his heart that 
 what he " supplied " was superior to the popular " de- 
 mand " ; he knew also that reputation was far better
 
 158 THACKERAY. 
 
 than what he afterwards called it, " the cant of our 
 trade " ; and loyally he worked to win it. And his work 
 was not thrown away, for reputation, conferred by fellow- 
 craftsmen, is the assurance of self-respect, to sacrifice 
 which is the peculiar sin of literature. 
 
 Nevertheless, if Thackeray erred at all in the judg- 
 ment of his profession, he erred upon the right side. 
 That which he wrote seems less than half true to- 
 day, because the conditions of literary life are changed. 
 Men of letters long ago deserted Bohemia to live 
 upon the outskirts of Belgravia or within the sacred 
 precincts of Tyburnia. They no longer address an 
 audience of gentlemen from the Fleet, nor do they 
 write masterpieces while hiding from their creditors. 
 They pay their tailors, and they refrain from drink, 
 and so far they conform to the standard which 
 Thackeray set up for them. But with their prosperity 
 they have developed new vices, which no Thackeray 
 has arisen to castigate. They are pompous ; they take 
 themselves and their profession all too gravely ; and, 
 worse still, they hunger and thirst after notoriety. It 
 is not legitimate reputation which keeps them awake — 
 that is no longer the cant of their trade. They are 
 sleeplessly eager for the advertisement not of their 
 works, but of themselves. They are unhappy when 
 they are taken for mere men, like lawyers or stock- 
 brokers. They would, if they could, go through life 
 with the stamp of their art upon them. It is hard 
 to say which Thackeray would have preferred, his own
 
 THE WORLD OF LETTERS. 1 59 
 
 age or ours. But it is certain that the chapters 
 devoted to the literary profession claimed an audience 
 for Pendennis which would have been obstinately in- 
 different to its easy unaffected style, its pictures of 
 contemporary manners, and its half-a-dozen vividly 
 drawn characters. Perhaps the author's own comment 
 upon the book is the fairest. "I lit upon a very stupid 
 part, I'm sorry to say," he wrote to Mrs Brookfield, 
 after reading some back numbers of Pendennis, "and 
 yet how well written it is ! What a shame the author 
 don't write a complete good book ! " A shame, indeed, 
 which presently the author did his best to remove.
 
 i6o 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 LECTURES AND LECTURING, ESMOND. 
 
 In 1850, when the last number of Pendoinis was 
 given to the world, Thackeray's reputation was firmly 
 assured. He was, in fact, the one rival near the 
 throne of Dickens, and the zealous readers of the 
 day enrolled themselves under one banner or the 
 other, according to temperament. A year later, elec- 
 tion to the Athenoeum Club set a seal upon his fame, 
 and it should be remembered to Croker's credit that 
 Thackeray, as has been said, owed this honour in 
 some measure to the advocacy of Mr Wenham. But 
 in those days fame was not easily convertible into 
 money, and men of letters were not apt to make a 
 fortune with a single book. To enrich his family, 
 therefore, Thackeray resolved upon a course of lec- 
 tures. Within four years he travelled from end to 
 end of England, and paid two visits to America. It 
 was a task which was always irksome to him, yet 
 he performed it with excellent taste and tact ; and, 
 after the first display at Willis's Rooms, success was
 
 LECTURES AND LECTURING. l6l 
 
 assured. He never concealed the fatigue which the 
 long journeys and the oft-recurring lectures inflicted 
 upon him. He Avent to America, he wrote to his 
 daughter, " not because I like it, but because it 
 is right that I should secure some money against 
 my death for your poor mother and you two girls." 
 Again, on his second visit across the Atlantic, " Oh, 
 how weary, weary I am of this lecturing," he complained. 
 But once having taken the resolution, he did his 
 utmost to fit himself for the task. A month before 
 the first lecture, he tried the great room at Willis's, 
 and, as he told Mrs Brookfield — "recited part of 
 the multiplication -table to a waiter at the opposite 
 end, so as to try my voice. He said he could hear 
 perfectly, and I daresay he could, but the thoughts 
 somehow swell and amplify with that high - pitched 
 voice and elaborate distinctness." And instantly 
 Thackeray discerns, after his wont, how "orators 
 become humbugs " ; nevertheless, he found this " dip 
 into a life new to him " interesting, and he acquired 
 to perfection what Motley called a " light - in - hand 
 manner." His first lecture, given on May 22, 1851, 
 has been described by many an appreciative pen. 
 " It was given at Willis's Rooms," wrote Charlotte 
 Bronte, "where the Almack's balls are held — a great 
 painted and gilded saloon, with long sofas for benches. 
 The audience was said to be the cream of London 
 society, and it looked so. I did not at all expect 
 that the great lecturer would know me or notice me 
 
 L
 
 l62 THACKERAY. 
 
 under these circumstances, with admiring duchesses and 
 countesses seated in rows before him ; but he met me 
 as I entered, shook hands, took me to his mother, 
 whom I had not before seen, and introduced me." 
 
 But Charlotte Bronte could not help seeing that 
 her idol had feet of clay, and presently she set 
 forth her view in more critical terms. " I could not 
 always coincide with the sentiments expressed," she 
 wrote, " or the opinions broached ; but I admired 
 the gentlemanlike ease, the quiet humour, the taste, 
 the talent, and the originality of the lecturer." It is 
 impossible to recover the tone of a lecturer, or to 
 echo the accent of a dead actor. When the voice is 
 still, we can only place a humiliating reliance on press 
 notices, and these agree so far as to give a vague 
 impression of Thackeray's manner. In speaking, as 
 in writing, he esteemed ease above eloquence. As 
 in his books he shunned rhetoric, so in his lectures 
 he avoided elaboration.^ He regarded his audience 
 
 ^ An article published in The New York Evening Post, and 
 printed in The Letters of IV. M. Thackeray, sums up in flattering 
 terms the general opinion. " His elocution," says The Post, 
 "surprised those who had derived their impressions from the 
 English journals. His voice is a superb tenor, and possesses 
 that pathetic tremble which is so effective, in what is called 
 emotive eloquence, while his delivery was as well suited to the 
 communication he had to make as could well have been im- 
 agined. His enunciation is perfect. Every word he uttered 
 might have been heard in the remotest quarters of the room, 
 yet he scarcely lifted his voice above a colloquial tone. The 
 most striking feature in his whole manner was the utter absence 
 of affectation of any kind."
 
 LECTURES AND LECTURING. 163 
 
 as friends with whom he was conversing, rather than 
 as strangers before whom he was making a display, 
 and he easily achieved the success at which he 
 aimed. 
 
 The matter of his lectures was no less character- 
 istic than their manner. In choosing The English 
 Humourists of the EighteentJi Century ^ as the subject 
 of his first course, he did but follow the natural 
 bent of his mind. Had he been a man of leisure 
 he would, he says, have devoted himself to the study 
 of the past, and for some years he was resolved to 
 compose a serious history of Queen Anne and her 
 Court, For such a task he had many qualifications. 
 He possessed the imaginative faculty of living in an- 
 other age than his own ; he could see with a quick 
 artistic eye the trappings of dead and gone periods. 
 Despite his love of progress and modern ideas, he 
 submitted easily to the dictates of fancy, and could 
 understand the outward life of any age to which 
 his desultory reading carried him. When he was 
 writing his lectures on the Humourists, he declared 
 that the eighteenth century absorbed him to the ex- 
 clusion of the nineteenth. But while he had the 
 imagination, without which history cannot be written, 
 he lacked the no less indispensable faculty of criticism. 
 He refused to recognise the tyranny of facts. Such 
 men as he encountered in the past must conform not 
 
 ^ The Humourists, first delivered in 1851, were published in the 
 shape of a book two years later.
 
 1 64 THACKERAY. 
 
 with the truth of their careers but with his vision of 
 them. In other words, the noveUst ahvays got the 
 better of the historian. His Swift, Pope, and Sterne 
 correspond loosely with their originals. They are the 
 creatures of fiction, coloured by prejudice, and trans- 
 formed by fancy. 
 
 The truth is that Thackeray, in his historical essays, 
 considered the facts last of all. He began with a 
 purely personal view, to which words and deeds were 
 alike subservient. Thus in his intense conviction he 
 forgot that the humourists of the eighteenth century 
 were men like himself, whose qualities should not 
 elude a vigilant research. In his eyes they were so 
 many Esmonds or Warringtons, who, so long as they 
 did no violence to their century, might aptly illustrate 
 the lecturer's cynicism or embellish his sentimentality. 
 That he did not esteem resemblance essential to a 
 biographical portrait is evident on every page of his 
 Lectures. But, that there might be no doubt, he 
 explains in a letter addressed to M. Forgues " the 
 history of Addison." Now, M. Forgues had declared 
 in a French paper, without the slightest shadow of 
 justice, that Thackeray had praised Addison " to 
 curry favour with the English aristocracy." Thackeray 
 naturally resented so grotesque a calumny, and in self- 
 defence he laid bare the genesis of Addison's char- 
 acter. He confessed that he had no personal liking 
 for the man. But he admired his humour, and more 
 than his humour he admired his conduct of life.
 
 LECTURES AND LECTURING. 165 
 
 " Rich or poor," says he, " he was an upright, honest, 
 dignified gentleman;" and he praised him "as one of 
 our profession," to silence "the absurd outcry about 
 neglected men of genius." This absurd outcry Thack- 
 eray had done his best to silence elsewhere, and he 
 might have looked at Addison with no other object 
 than faithfully to paint his character. But that would 
 have been alien to his method, and he was content 
 that Addison, like the rest, should point a moral and 
 illustrate a theory. 
 
 His first lecture was devoted to Swift, and if we have 
 a right to demand verisimilitude, the Dean's portrait 
 is by far the worst in the gallery. The picture devised 
 by Thackeray's imagination was vile, and traits were 
 ingeniously sought to justify it. The motive which 
 shaped his Addison we know ; he does not reveal the 
 motive of his Swift. It is a pity, since this piece of 
 fierce injustice demands an excuse. Not only is the 
 essay packed with inaccuracies ; the truth is always 
 twisted to a sinister end. He begins by asking an 
 irrelevant question. "Would we," says he, "have liked 
 to live with him ? " With respect, it may be pointed 
 out that our preference has nothing to do with the 
 character and achievements of Swift. But it is in- 
 dubitably true that the best of Swift's contemporaries 
 did like to live with him, and felt honoured in his 
 acquaintance. For monstrous though he appear to 
 Thackeray, he had the genius of friendship before all 
 his fellows. The great men of the time loved and
 
 1 66 THACKERAY. 
 
 reverenced him. Addison and Pope, Harley and 
 Bolingbroke, Arbuthnot and Gay were faithful to the 
 end of their lives or his. Bolingbroke was as little 
 sentimental as Swift. While both were giants in 
 intelligence, neither the one nor the other anticipated 
 the Victorian emotion. Yet wrote Bolingbroke in 
 1729: "I loved you almost twenty years ago." And in 
 the same year the same statesman addresses his friend in 
 a strain of singular eloquence. "While my mind," says 
 he, "grows daily more independent of the world, and 
 feels less need of leaning on external objects, the ideas 
 of friendship return oftener : they busy me, they warm 
 me more. Is it that we grow more tender as the 
 moment of our great separation approaches ? Or is it 
 that they who are to live together in another state (for 
 vera amicitia noii nisi inter bows) begin to feel strongly 
 that divine sympathy which is to be the great band of 
 their future society ? " Would Bolingbroke have written 
 so fine a sentence to one who was nothing but scorn, 
 bitterness, rage, and obscenity? No : vera amicitia non 
 nisi inter bonos, and inter bonos both Bolingbroke and 
 Swift take a lofty place. 
 
 So, too, the good Arbuthnot cherished the friendship 
 of Swift. " I can assure you," he wrote to the Dean a 
 few months before his death, — " I can assure you, with 
 great truth, that none of your friends or acquaintance 
 has a more warm heart toward you than myself. I am 
 going out of this troublesome world ; and you among 
 the rest of my friends shall have my last prayers and
 
 LECTURES AND LECTURING. 16/ 
 
 good wishes." So, too, Pope, from whom, says Thack- 
 eray without warrant. Swift " slunk away," remained 
 unto the end Swift's friend and admirer. But such 
 records of friendship mean nothing to Thackeray, who 
 seems to have made up his mind about Swift before he 
 wrote his biography. He is quite sure, in defiance of 
 facts, that Swift's companionship and conversation were 
 without charm. He toadied his superiors, we are told, 
 this man who never stooped to flatter ; he bullied and 
 insulted his inferiors ; he quailed before you if you met 
 him like a man, and then "watched for you in a sewer, 
 and came out to assail you with a coward's blow and 
 a dirty bludgeon." 
 
 It need scarce be said that for these libels Thack- 
 eray quotes no authority; there is not an episode in 
 Swift's career to justify one of them ; and the in- 
 apposite use of the word " sewer " is sufficient proof 
 of prejudice. Even when Thackeray does admit Swift's 
 kindness or devotion, he at the same time suggests 
 that the virtue is prompted by baseness. He insulted 
 a man as he served him, says the biographer, and flung 
 his benefactions into poor men's faces. Did Pope 
 harbour this unkind thought when Swift collected a 
 thousand guineas for him ? or young Harrison, whom 
 he befriended ? Was this the view of the fifty friends, 
 for whom, while he failed to advance himself, he found 
 preferment ? Did Parnell, or Gay, or Congreve, or 
 Rowe, all of whom owed places to him, look upon 
 their benefactor with this acrimony ? Was it in this
 
 l68 THACKERAY. 
 
 spirit that the Irish people remembered its champion ? 
 Assuredly npt. In truth, no man of his time received 
 the simple worship which Ireland laid at the feet of 
 Swift. When he returned to Dublin from London in 
 1726 bonfires were lit, and the church-bells rang out 
 peals of welcome. Once upon a time Walpole was 
 minded to arrest the Dean, and he was asked if he 
 had ten thousand men to spare, for the job could not 
 be done with less. This monster, too, who insulted 
 where he gave, distributed a third of his income, and 
 won from his dependents, whom he was said to insult, 
 a frank and lasting affection. 
 
 Again, because Swift, who was, in Bolingbroke's 
 phrase, "a hypocrite reversed," did not advertise to 
 his guests his performance of family devotions, Thack- 
 eray belabours him with charges of insincerity. But 
 it is clear that in his critic's eye he could do no 
 right. He was guilty of "boisterous servility," though 
 we know as little to whom he was servile as how 
 servility to any man can be boisterous. In the same 
 spirit Thackeray delights to paint his sojourn in 
 Temple's house in the blackest colours, as a time of 
 insult and oppression. Yet he was familiar enough 
 with the period to recognise that the relation of client 
 to patron was honourable and honourably understood. 
 When Swift wrote to Temple for a certificate of morals 
 and learning, he did but employ the conventional terms 
 of his age. Yet this is how a simple action strikes 
 Thackeray : " I don't know anything more melancholy
 
 LECTURES AND LECTURING. 169 
 
 than the letter to Temple, in which, after having broke 
 from his bondage, the poor wretch crouches piteously 
 towards his cage again, and deprecates his master's 
 anger." It is not the poor wretch's letter that is mel- 
 ancholy ; it is the biographer's comment. 
 
 It is plain, therefore, that Thackeray entertained a 
 kind of personal hatred against Swift. When open 
 charges fail him, he is content with a hinted sugges- 
 tion of evil. He declares that Vanessa was not merely 
 a woman of taste and spirit, but " a fortune too," as 
 though the man, who indignantly refused the money 
 which Harley proffered him, and who never begged 
 a favour for himself, had his eye upon Vanessa's gold. 
 On another page, he blames him for changing sides, yet 
 he should have known that Swift was the most consistent 
 politician of his time. However, it is idle to pursue 
 the critic's inaccuracies, though it may be worth while to 
 attempt an explanation of his acrimony. In the first 
 place, I think, Thackeray disliked Swift, because Swift 
 did not take that genial, w^orldly view of Hfe, which was 
 suitable to the haunter of clubs and drawing-rooms. 
 The Dean of St Patrick's was a misanthrope, who loved 
 his friends, and delighted in stealthy benevolence. But 
 he was a misanthrope for all that. A man, who in his 
 own phrase "understood not what was love," and who 
 by ill-health and isolation was driven back upon his own 
 intelligence, he had the leisure to contemplate, and the 
 brain to measure the follies of the human race. In con- 
 tempt he is Olympian. He gave no quarter, and he
 
 170 THACKERAY. 
 
 expected none. He laid bare human folly, and he has 
 suffered for his courageous indiscretion. But he did 
 not make his attacks upon his fellows from mere 
 savagery. He never put pen to paper save in scorn 
 of stupidity, or with a fixed desire to reform abuses. 
 And the easy-going man about town not unnaturally 
 saddled his back with all the sins and all the absurdities 
 that he castigated in others. 
 
 Worse still, Swift was an ironist, and, like all ironists, 
 he has been consistently vilified and misunderstood. 
 Yet surely the author of Bariy Lyndon should have 
 understood this subtle artifice. But no ; like the 
 bitterest Philistine, he imputes to Swift himself all 
 the sins which Swift denounces in others. He follows 
 the familiar critic in applying an infamously false 
 meaning to Swift's Alodest Proposal. This tract, as all 
 the world might know, was written in a mood of savage 
 despair against the wrongs of Ireland. Outwardly 
 humorous, it is aflame with a passion of sincerity. 
 Every sentence it contains is a cry of hopeless misery, a 
 detestation of suffering which " tore the writer's heart." 
 And Thackeray can say no more than that neither Dick 
 Steele, nor Goldsmith, nor Fielding could have written 
 it. Surely they could not, for the lofty passion which 
 inspires it was not theirs. " Not one of these but melts 
 at the thoughts of childhood, fondles and caresses it," 
 says Thackeray. " Mr Dean has no such softness, and 
 enters the nursery with the tread and gaiety of an ogre." 
 No, Mr Dean has no such softness, when the starving
 
 LECTURES AND LECTURING. 171 
 
 are to be fed and bitter wrongs clamour for redress. 
 He is not content to " fondle and caress " ; he would 
 also feed and succour. True, Thackeray is not quite 
 so foolish as a modern critic, who, having read the 
 passage in which " a very knowing American " declares 
 " that a young healthy child, well nursed, is, at a 
 year old, a most delicious, nourishing, and wholesome 
 food," charges Dean Swift with ignorance or contempt 
 of our American Colonies. But Thackeray's imputa- 
 tion of cannibalism is little less gross, and it proves 
 that, well as he knew the period, he had not chosen 
 to read aright the works of Jonathan Swift. 
 
 What a strange perversion of mind it is, which 
 ascribes to the eager champion of right the very wrongs 
 which he eloquently condemns ! Yet in Thackeray's 
 opinion even Gulliver must be taken literally, and judged 
 by the offences in whose dispraise it was written. "As 
 for the humour and conduct of this famous fable," he 
 writes, " I suppose there is no person who reads but 
 must admire ; as for the moral, I think it is horrible, 
 shameful, blasphemous ; and giant and great as this 
 Dean is, I say we should hoot him." And hoot him he 
 does with the greatest heartiness. Yet I doubt whether 
 " hooting " is the critic's most useful weapon, and I am 
 sure that so highly accomplished an ironist as Thackeray 
 would have been wiser to pierce the mystery of an adept 
 incomparably greater than himself, than to join in the 
 general and foolish " hoot " which for two centuries has 
 been heard in the Dean's dispraise.
 
 1/2 thackp:ray. 
 
 I have dwelt at length upon Thackeray's portrait of 
 Swift, because, while it is typical of his method, it pre- 
 sents with sad lucidity the worst vices of that method. 
 What the method was Thackeray clearly explains in a 
 question put to his audience. " In common life," he 
 asks in the lecture on Steele, " don't you often judge 
 and misjudge a man's whole conduct, setting out from a 
 wrong impression ? " To this question the lecturer him- 
 self could have given but one answer. He misjudged 
 his Humourists continually, viewing them all with an air 
 of sorrowful patronage, as roysterers who fell far short of 
 the standard set up in 1850. This one he reproaches 
 with having sat too long at Button's with Mr Addison ; 
 that other displeases him because he has soiled his lace- 
 ruffles with Harry Fielding's claret. He seems to con- 
 fuse a love of genial company with habitual drunken- 
 ness, applying to his victims the process of a cross- 
 examining lawyer. " You were caught revelling last night 
 in a tavern, sir," you can hear him say; "that is how 
 you squander your time, and waste your talents." It is 
 always "Poor Dick Steele," "poor Harry Fielding," and 
 "poor Congreve." Yet these men were not homunaiH 
 that they should be fitted with nicknames of contemjit. 
 They ask no condescension, and deserve no pity. Surely 
 Congreve, who yields in good fortune and accomplish- 
 ment to none of his contemporaries, was " poor" neither 
 in character nor esteem ? And to the libel that " Harry " 
 F^ielding was stained with ink and wine, a life of pro- 
 digious and productive energy is the best answer. The
 
 LECTURES AND LECTURING. 173 
 
 worst of nicknames is that they easily overpower truth 
 and research. Mr Lecky^ complains with perfect justice 
 that Steele has always " received hard measures from 
 modern critics," for which injustice Thackeray is largely 
 to blame. What boots it that " poor Dick " was a keen 
 soldier, an indefatigable writer, an ardent politician ? 
 It is far more difficult to discover his good qualities 
 than to recognise the conventional portrait of a " tipsy 
 champion," and so Steele takes his place with the rest in 
 an immemorial tavern. 
 
 Even where he approves, Thackeray damps his 
 approval with prejudice. His admiration of Fielding's 
 novels is so frank and generous that you regret 
 the more deeply his inapposite qualification. As he 
 hoots at Swift for the last part of Gulliver, so he 
 thinks " Fielding's evident liking and admiration for 
 Mr Jones shows that the great humourist's moral 
 sense was blunted by his life, and that, here in 
 Art and Ethics, there is a great error." Whereon he 
 proceeds to belabour Mr Thomas Jones, who, says 
 he, "would not rob a church, but that is all," and 
 to wonder which is the worse enemy to society — 
 Jones or Blifil. By this twisted sentiment he spoils 
 what might and should have been a noble panegyric. 
 In another place he is so thickly befogged by an austere 
 morality as to be unjust even to Pope, the god of 
 his devoutest idolatry. " I wish Addison could have 
 loved Pope better," says he. "The best satire that 
 
 ^ England in the Eigliteentli Century, i. 186.
 
 174 THACKKRAY. 
 
 ever has been penned would never have been written 
 then, and one of the best characters the world ever 
 knew would have been without flaw." It is hard to 
 say which is the stranger perversity — to see Pope's 
 character without a flaw, or to wish The Dunciad 
 unwritten. Thackeray hails and salutes the achieving 
 genius; he "does homage to the pen of a hero"; 
 yet he contemplates with regret the hero's crowning 
 achievement, and having painted Swift all black, he 
 paints Pope all white. And thus it is that the 
 didactic spirit always fails to interpret the past. It 
 informs even his favourite Addison with a kind of 
 inhumanity. It is not easy to take an interest in 
 one "who stooped to put himself on a level with 
 most men," who "must have been one of the finest 
 gentlemen the world ever saw," and who, as he is 
 drawn by Thackeray, might have sat for his portrait 
 in the gallery of Snobs. 
 
 Nevertheless, The English Humourists contain many 
 excellent passages not merely of description but of 
 criticism. Though Thackeray rates Sterne soundly for 
 outraging the code of the nineteenth century, he sums 
 up his talent in a phrase which only just misses the 
 truth. "The man is a great jester," says he, "not a 
 great humourist." Again, while he pities Congreve, he 
 has a shrewdly just understanding of his comedy, to 
 which he attributes " a jargon of its own quite unlike 
 life, a sort of moral of its own quite unlike life too." 
 But it is in the painting of manners that his real
 
 LECTURES AND LECTURING. 175 
 
 gift lies. Scattered up and down his lectures there 
 are pages of description, distinguished by an ease and 
 grace which are Thackeray's own. With how light 
 a hand does he sketch the world of The Spectator 
 and revivify the London of our ancestors ! How 
 deftly he resumes the England which Hogarth saw 
 and drew ! Nor does he anywhere prove this faculty 
 more conspicuously than in his Four Georges, a curious 
 medley of sermonising and memoirs. While on the 
 one hand each monarch is the text for a moral dis- 
 course, the letters and journals of each reign most 
 pleasantly adorn the tale. It is no "drum-and- 
 trumpet" history that he aspires to write. "We are 
 not the Historic Muse," says he, "but her ladyship's 
 attendant, tale-bearer, valet de chambre, for whom no 
 man is a hero." So he has much to say of Bath 
 and its visitors, but very little of the American 
 Rebellion ; so he describes the life of a German 
 Court with excellent humour, while he is silent of 
 campaigns and changing ministries. This view of 
 history is in perfect consonance with his talent, and 
 to their purpose the lectures on the Four Georges 
 are admirably adapted. To-day they excite no con- 
 troversy ; they set forth no original views ; but at 
 the time of their delivery their author was absurdly 
 charged with disloyalty, and it is difficult to discern 
 what sentiment it was of national pride or prejudice 
 that he outraged. 
 
 The chief merit of the lectures is their style. Com-
 
 iy6 THACKERAY. 
 
 posed for the lecture-hall, they appeal to the ear rather 
 than to the eye. The cadence of the prose is nicely 
 devised to claim and to hold the attention. It displays 
 at their best the variety, the ease, the carelessness, 
 which we expect from Thackeray. Seldom rhetorical, 
 and never pompous, the lectures resemble conversation 
 rather than oratory, and quite apart from the opinions 
 of which they are the vehicle they gave an intelligible 
 pleasure to many audiences. It was, indeed, with a 
 keen sense of the theatre that Thackeray sought and 
 found his effects. There is but one — the attack upon 
 Swift — that is monotonous in scope and expression. 
 In the rest grave and gay are cunningly mixed ; even 
 the tragedy of George III. is pleasantly relieved by a 
 sketch of George Sehvyn and his circle. From the 
 point of view of the platform this relief was happily 
 contrived, since the most sympathetic audience cannot 
 easily spend an hour with the same emotion. But 
 when we have done our utmost to imagine the effect 
 which their author's voice and gesture gave to them, 
 we cannot but remember that truth is the essence of 
 biography, and that the lectures on the Humourists are 
 the worst blot upon Thackeray's literary reputation. 
 
 The lectures were first given in London between 
 May and July 185 1. Three months later Thackeray 
 sailed for America, to find a new world and warm- 
 hearted friends. Wherever he went, north or south, 
 he was enthusiastically received, and no doubt it 
 was the hospitality of the place which deprived us
 
 LECTURES AND LECTURING. 177 
 
 of another Sketchbook. The picturesque reporter was 
 ahvays aUve in Thackeray, and, one is sure, he was 
 eager to record his impressions. But the spirit of 
 gratitude counselled silence, and though Thackeray's 
 judgment in the matter is sound, we may still regret 
 that the artist did not overcome the man. Never- 
 theless, the letters addressed to his friends do some- 
 thing to make up the deficiency, and it is easy to 
 recover Thackeray's appreciation of America. Life 
 was as rapid in New York fifty years ago as it is 
 said to be to-day, and Thackeray was speedily caught 
 up in the whirl. " I hardly know what is said," he 
 wrote, — " am thinking of something else, nothing defin- 
 ite, with an irrepressible longing to be in motion." The 
 noise and rattle of the street appall him. "Broadway 
 is miles upon miles long," he tells ]\Irs Brookfield, " a 
 rush of life such as I have never seen ; not so full as 
 the Strand, but so rapid. The houses are always being 
 torn down and built up again, the railroad cars drive 
 slap into the midst of the city. There are barricades 
 and scaffoldings banging everywhere. . . . Nobody is 
 quiet here, no more am I. The rush and restlessness 
 pleases me, and I like, for a little, the dash of the 
 stream." For every city he has an apt comparison or a 
 shrewd character. Washington reminds him of Wies- 
 baden — "there are politics and gaieties straggling all 
 over it." Boston he finds like Edinburgh — "a vast 
 amount of Toryism and donnishness everywhere"; while 
 the company of New York is in his eyes the simplest
 
 178 THACKERAY. 
 
 and least pretentious. "It suffices," says he, "that a 
 man should keep a fine house, give parties, and have a 
 daughter, to get all the world to him." But much as 
 he delighted in the keen air, the splendour, and the 
 generosity of the North, he felt himself more intimately 
 at home in the South, where life was as quiet and 
 sluggish as in Kensington. He was happiest at New 
 Orleans, where " the sweet kind French tongue is 
 spoken in the shops." Despite his inborn Radicalism, 
 he professed no horror at slavery. "The negroes don't 
 shock me," he wrote in a letter, " or excite my com- 
 passionate feelings at all ; they are so grotesque and 
 happy that I can't cry over them." Some years later, 
 in a " Roundabout Paper " called A Mississippi Bubbk, 
 he bore a willing testimony to the "curious gaiety" of 
 the American negroes. " How they sang," he exclaims ; 
 ** how they laughed and grinned ; how they scraped, 
 bowed, and complimented you and each other." But 
 for domestic purposes slavery seemed to him "the 
 dearest institution that can be devised." He declared 
 that in a Southern city fifteen negroes did " the work 
 which John, the cook, the housemaid, and the help do 
 perfectly in your own comfortable London house." In- 
 deed, comfort and happiness made an easy conquest of 
 political prejudice, and he found all the ways of the 
 South excellent. At a tavern in Pontchartrain he had a 
 bouillabaisse, worthy of Marseilles, worthy of the Rue 
 Neuve des Petits Champs, which he himself celebrated 
 in a ballad, and everywhere flowed Medoc, good, super-
 
 ESMOND. 179 
 
 abundant, and nothing to pay. How then should he, 
 with his sincere love of France, withhold admiration 
 from the Sunny South, still French in its luxury and 
 abandonment ? " As for New Orleans, in spring-time," 
 so he rhapsodises, — "just when the orchards were flush- 
 ing over with peach-blossoms, and the sweet herbs came 
 to flavour the juleps — it seemed to me the city of the 
 world where you can eat and drink the most and suffer 
 the least." So when the war came between the North 
 and South, Thackeray's sympathies followed his heart, 
 and "the abstraction of the two Southern Commissioners 
 from under our flag " inspired half-a-dozen pages of 
 righteous indignation — On Half a Loaf — rare in the 
 works of Thackeray. In brief, Thackeray's two journeys 
 to America — he revisited it in 1855 with The Four 
 Georges — were disturbed by nothing else than the 
 fatigue and drudgery of lecturing ; he brought home 
 with him both fame and money ; he had been ap- 
 preciated by the people and by the press — save by 
 Boston, which found him a snob, and by the Irish, who 
 remembered Catherine Hayes ; and he had stored his 
 head, as we shall presently see, with the material of 
 another novel. 
 
 But the lectures did something else than fill Thackeray's 
 pocket. As his SketcJibook held the raw material of 
 much admirable fiction, so The English Humojirists were 
 the wisest possible preparation for the writing of Esmond. 
 He did but translate into the form of a novel the ma- 
 terial which had already served to amuse the dis-
 
 l8o THACKERAY. 
 
 tinguished audiences of Willis's Rooms. Written in 
 1852, the story was published as its author set sail for 
 America. Indeed, a copy was put into his hands at the 
 very moment of starting. It was the first, and it re- 
 mained the only, book of which Thackeray wrote the 
 last page before the first was printed. In other words, 
 it was given to the world not in parts but in three 
 complete volumes, and it is not surprising that it is 
 better composed and more closely consistent than any 
 other of his works. Now, JEswofid is a deliberate at- 
 tempt to reconstruct the past in word, in fact, in feeling. 
 The scene is laid in the England of Queen Anne, and 
 Thackeray puts his curious knowledge of the period to 
 the best advantage. But he is never dominated by his- 
 tory ; as in the Lectures, so in Es»io/id, it is the novelist 
 who always keeps the upper hand. Nor does he indi- 
 cate his period by any trick of phrase or artifice of 
 diction. His style is no affair of old trappings, made 
 in Wardour Street. You will search his pages in vain 
 for strange words or strangely constructed sentences. 
 It is true that he makes a few concessions to an ancient 
 fashion of spelling : he writes Peterborow, for instance, 
 and Bruxelles ; but for the rest he gives a very liberal 
 interpretation to archaeology. How, then, does he 
 produce the effect of another century ? Merely by 
 keeping his style at a higher level than it usually 
 attains. From beginning to end he writes with a 
 restraint which you will vainly seek in Pendennis. He 
 has thrown over the story a veil of solemnity, through
 
 ESMOND. 1 8 I 
 
 which his personages appear far away like the distant 
 shapes of another age. The critic who declared that 
 there is no page of Esmond but might have been 
 written by a contemporary of Queen Anne was mani- 
 festly deceived. Examine the text narrowly, and you 
 will find both words and phrases essentially modern. 
 Indeed, it is the cadence rather than the phrase that is 
 of the eighteenth century, and Thackeray's ear seldom 
 misled him. In other words, the author of Esmond 
 has reproduced the effect, not the actual language, of 
 the past, an achievement at once more subtle and 
 convincing than the ransacking of some Gradus ad 
 Parnassian for musty names and otiose epithets. 
 
 The truth is, Thackeray's knowledge was profound 
 enough to be held in check. He had not crammed 
 the period up in a night to answer a popular demand. 
 There was no need for him to cloak a too obvious 
 ignorance with a parade of hastily acquired knowledge. 
 He did not attain local colour, after the fashion of 
 to-day, by admitting nothing into his novel that was 
 not obsolete. The heroes of modern romance do not 
 live in a real world ; they are ticketed in a museum 
 of antiquity ; they make love beneath trees whose 
 branches are haunted by stuffed birds ; the very 
 words they use belong not to human speech, but to 
 a time-worn phrase-book. But Thackeray's method, 
 far happier than that of his successors, was also an 
 indirect reproof to those of his contemporaries who 
 pursued the art of historical fiction. He swept away
 
 1 82 THACKERAY. 
 
 at a stroke all the conventions of G. P. R. James 
 and his school, of Bulwer and Harrison Ainsworth. 
 In Esmond you will find none of the catch-phrases, 
 once so popular. He does not tell you that " as 
 dawn was breaking a solitary horseman might be 
 seen " and the rest of it. The best of his characters 
 are real men and women, although they belong to 
 the past, and it might be said that the shining merit 
 of Esmond was its naturalness. At the same time, 
 W'hile Thackeray is not enslaved by archjeology, he 
 makes the period clear by a thousand light and inci- 
 dental touches. When Esmond writes his verses to 
 Gloriana, " Have you never read them ? " he asks. 
 "They were thought pretty poems, and attributed by 
 some to Mr Prior." And so, while he scrupulously 
 avoids pompous description and fine writing, he creates 
 an atmosphere at once consistent and just. 
 
 ^^'hen, in Vanity Fair, Thackeray chose a great 
 historical setting for his characters, he made no attempt 
 to introduce Napoleon or Wellington upon the mimic 
 scene. He allowed his readers to hear no more than 
 the echo of the guns which swept the plain of Water- 
 loo. In Esmond he was less wisely counselled, and 
 though the temptation to let Steele, Addison, and the 
 others speak for themselves was strong, the novel 
 would have been all the better had he resisted it. 
 He had sketched these personages, for good or evil, 
 in his Lectures, and there he might have left them to 
 the judgment of posterity. But he must needs ask
 
 ESMOND. 183 
 
 them to play their part in the drama of Esmond ; and 
 it may be said that his characters are never further 
 from reality than when they bear real names. 
 
 Now, if a novelist admits famous men into his 
 romance, he lays upon himself a double burden. For 
 the famous men must not only be picturesque and 
 consistent with the creatures of the writer's imagina- 
 tion — they must also be consistent with their own 
 history. That is to say, the author's fancy is, or 
 should be, hampered by truth, and the difficulty of the 
 problem is seen by the rarity of its solution. The 
 invention of imaginary characters carries with it no such 
 responsibility : to attempt an artistic presentation of 
 historical facts is doubly dangerous, because not only 
 does it control the author's imagination, but it admits 
 the reader into the workshop. The material being 
 known, the treatment of it can be more narrowly 
 scrutinised ; and dramatis persomc bearing the names 
 of Richard Steele and Joseph Addison challenge a 
 criticism which Tom Smith and John Brown escape. 
 Thackeray, being a man of letters, has succeeded in 
 a difficult task far better than the most of his rivals. 
 The heroes whom he borrows from real life are never 
 ridiculous. Though they often speak with a voice 
 which is not their own, their accent is not inhuman, 
 and even if you forget their names, you might still 
 deem them men. Nevertheless the author is not at 
 his ease with them. They neither move nor speak 
 with the naturalness which distinguishes Esmond and
 
 184 THACKERAY. 
 
 Castlewood, and whenever they appear they enwrap 
 the story in another atmosphere. 
 
 The positive errors may be passed over lightly. It 
 is superfluous, for instance, to ask why Thackeray 
 should have dressed up Prue Steele in the garb of Mrs 
 Malaprop, or why he should insist that Roger Sterne 
 was an Irishman. Nor need we do more than refer 
 to the repeated and monstrous outrage upon Jona- 
 than Swift. ^ Let us take Richard Steele and Joseph 
 Addison, who are drawn with the deepest sympathy 
 and the greatest elaboration. They are both a trifle 
 bibulous. Dick the Scholar always " imparts a strong 
 perfume of burnt sack along with his caress," and 
 Addison drinks too deeply of my Lord Halifax's 
 burgundy. Again, they both speak like books. Steele 
 quotes copiously from his own Tafkrs,- and Addison 
 cannot keep off the subject of his own poems. And 
 since men of letters have a life and character apart 
 from their printed works, this restriction indicates a 
 certain timidity in Thackeray's treatment. For the 
 
 1 Doctor Swift is represented in Esmond as morose in temper 
 and violent in manners. He is also, for this occasion, a wanton 
 frightener of children, so that he recalls more closely than ever the 
 Marquis of Steyne, who, it will be remembered, terrified Becky's 
 boy when he met him on the stairs. 
 
 ^ Steele tells Esmond that he " drummed at his father's coffin," 
 and he tells the same tale in The Tatler, No. iSl : " I remember I 
 went into the room where his body lay, and my mother sat weeping 
 alone by it. I had my battledore in my hand, and fell a-beating 
 the coffin, and calling Papa ; for, I know not how, I had some slight 
 idea he was locked up there."
 
 ESMOND. 1 8 5 
 
 rest, they are both amiable fellows, even though they 
 do some violence to their own characters. They are 
 bound together by that tie of schoolboy loyalty which 
 united Lamb and Coleridge, and which Thackeray illus- 
 trated again and again. Steele is a pleasant trifler, 
 even when sober ; Addison is not guiltless of pomposity 
 even in his cups. The scene wherein Esmond visited 
 Addison at his lodging, pictured the famous battle, and 
 " drew the river on the table aliquo 7nero" is admirably 
 managed ; but the dinner of the wits is as forced as Mr 
 Bungay's party, and Esinotid is never at its best when 
 these miracles of wit and learning are on the stage. 
 However, Thackeray himself realised their subordina- 
 tion ; he knew that they were merely incidental to the 
 action — mere painted trappings in the background ; and 
 he makes it clear that his essential interest is in his 
 own characters. Had he suppressed all his great men, 
 his own story would still have been complete. 
 
 But there is one personage, the great Duke of Marl- 
 borough, whom Thackeray has sketched with peculiar 
 rancour, and against whom, in the person of Esmond, 
 he brings the most fantastic charges. It is unnecessary 
 to say that the portrait is inconsistent with history as 
 with itself. The Duke, indeed, as Thackeray paints 
 him, is no man but a monster, a mere epitome of the 
 vices, a proper pendant in inconsequent ferocity to 
 the Dean of St Patrick's, painted by the same hand. 
 Being Commander-in-Chief, he traitorously accepts 
 bribes from the French king, and loses battles that
 
 1 86 THACKERAY. 
 
 he may fill his own pocket. His personal sins are 
 worse even than those which sully his public reputa- 
 tion. In cowardice and hypocrisy he almost outdoes 
 Swift himself. " He would cringe to a shoeblack," we 
 are told, "as he would flatter a minister or monarch; 
 be haughty, be humble, threaten, repent, weep, grasp 
 your hand (or stab you whenever he saw occasion)." 
 These words are strangely applied to a hero, at whose 
 feet all Europe knelt, and who never cringed to man 
 or woman save to Sarah, his own implacable Duchess. 
 Nor is this the worst. The Duke lied, we are told, 
 cheated fond women, and robbed poor beggars of 
 halfpence. And these charges are brought not by 
 the villain of the piece, but by Esmond himself, who 
 is not merely the hero of the romance, but who 
 may, without injustice, be accepted as the vehicle of 
 Thackeray's own opinion. 
 
 Of course a writer of fiction is not upon oath : 
 he may handle history with a certain licence ; but he 
 oversteps his privilege when he paints white black, 
 and breathes the very soul of meanness into a hero 
 or a patriot. This is not the place to celebrate the 
 serene intelligence, the supreme mastery of the great 
 Commander, who never fought a battle which he did 
 not win, who never besieged a city which he did not 
 take, who was as great in diplomacy as in arms, and 
 who, in Chesterfield's phrase, " possessed the graces 
 in the highest degree, not to say engrossed them." 
 What i\Iarlborou<j;h was and what he achieved stand
 
 ESMOND. 1 87 
 
 in letters of gold upon the scroll of history. But we 
 may try to discover the reason for Thackeray's perverse 
 hatred. Now, Thackeray failed as a historian, because 
 he always carried the prejudices of his own age back 
 Into the past. He judged the heroes of a dead century 
 as though they were contemporary with himself and 
 amenable to the same discipline. And one of his pre- 
 judices was a dislike of success. He was no hero- 
 worshipper, attracted by dignity of manner or grandeur 
 of achievement. To him Louis XIV. was old " Square- 
 Toes," and he found it possible to imagine the Duke 
 of Marlborough pilfering from a beggar. Speaking in 
 praise of the Duke of Berwick, he says " fire and 
 genius were given to baser men"; and as it is not 
 greatness but virtue which he admires, he is persuaded 
 to suspect genius, where'er it be found. 
 
 But there was another reason why Thackeray should 
 have looked with displeasure upon Marlborough. 
 General Webb, the conqueror of Wynendael, was of his 
 kindred, and having given Esmond a brief for the 
 General, Thackeray bade him plead Webb's cause with 
 all the energy of a violent partisan. Now, a novel 
 is not the best place for polemics of this kind, and 
 the controversy rudely interrupts the serene course of 
 Esmond. Nevertheless, Thackeray has contrived an 
 amusing portrait of General Webb, the beau sabreur 
 with a grievance ; and though, as he says, he does not 
 love the stately Muse of History, he has sketched the 
 battle of Wynendael with spirit and accuracy. The
 
 l88 THACKERAY. 
 
 General, "as Paris handsome and as Hector brave," 
 is neither a monster nor a caricature. He is just the 
 foolish, vain, genial ruffian that he was in real life. 
 Thackeray makes no attempt to palliate his devotion 
 to the bottle or his rancorous hatred for the Duke. 
 He represents him as a reckless hero, impatient of 
 discipline and contemptuous of his superior's prowess. 
 And General Webb does not cut a very glorious figure 
 when he comes home, to brag in his cups of the 
 valiant deeds he did on the battlefield. In truth he 
 well deserves the comment, put by Thackeray into St 
 John's mouth : " II est fatiguant avec sa trompette de 
 Wynendael." But he is the excuse for one excellently 
 dramatic scene : the generals are dining with Prince 
 Eugene, when The London Gazette arrives, and reveals 
 the truth that General Webb's name is omitted from 
 the despatch. 'Tis Marlborough's one appearance upon 
 the stage, and Thackeray, as though conscious of his 
 villain's greatness, puts but two phrases in his mouth. 
 "There's some mistake, my dear General Webb," says 
 he, as he notes the omission. And when Webb, with 
 unpardonable insolence, hands him The Gazette on his 
 sword's point, "Take it," says the Duke to his Master 
 of the Horse. Not even Thackeray dare make the great 
 Duke ridiculous upon the scene ; and this reticence is 
 some atonement for an infamous portrait. 
 
 But when Thackeray deserts the great ones of history 
 for the personages of his own creation, there is no 
 fumbling nor faltering. In none of his books does he
 
 ESMOND. 1 89 
 
 keep so firm a grasp upon his characters as in Esmond, 
 which is as consistent in portraiture as it is in style and 
 effect. Nor was the task which he set himself a light 
 one. Not only is the scene laid in the England of 
 Queen Anne, but the action covers many years, and the 
 actors grow up under the reader's gaze. Yet they are 
 never false either to their time or to themselves. What 
 Esmond was, when he first came to Castlewood, so he 
 remained until the last chapter, when his dear mistress's 
 " eyes of meek surrender yield to his respectful impor- 
 tunity." He may not realise an ideal of all that is noble 
 in mankind. Some may detect in him the signs of a 
 nascent priggishness. Some may object that now and 
 again he resembles the author of his being too nearly to 
 be a true Augustan, — that his essentially modern tirade 
 upon the horrors of war, for instance, belongs more 
 intimately to Thackeray himself than to a soldier of the 
 eighteenth century. (Perhaps it was not for nothing 
 that Esmond, when he went to Cambridge, kept in 
 Thackeray's own rooms, " in the great court close by 
 the gate.") Nevertheless he is a man of blood and 
 bone, who acts always in accord with his own qualities. 
 And in his dear mistress he is well matched. Lady 
 Castlewood, an odd mixture of caprice and devotion, 
 of kindliness and anger, is always the same and always 
 herself. She, also, has certain traits which we could 
 dispense with in our friends. She is almost as 
 lachrymose as Mrs Pendennis ! She carries devotion 
 too far, when she says to Esmond: "Let me kneel
 
 I90 THACKERAY. 
 
 and worship you." But our preferences do not affect 
 the truth of an exquisite portrait, subtly conceived 
 and finely drawn. 
 
 Again, the main theme of the book is treated with 
 the utmost delicacy. The transference of a man's love 
 from daughter to mother is not a sympathetic motive 
 for romance. But Thackeray insists so gravely upon 
 Esmond's admiration and my Lady's gratitude, that 
 her surrender is not surprising, is even inevitable. 
 Mrs Beatrix is not so successful. She, indeed, does 
 not come into her own, until she appears in later 
 life as Madame de Bernstein. Her caprices are too 
 vain for belief; her rejections too heartless. Yet how 
 picturesquely she is brought upon the scene ! Who 
 will ever forget her descent of the stairs, and the 
 scarlet glint of her stocking ? How splendid, too, 
 is Esmond's enthusiasm, when he sees her again on 
 his return from the wars ! He had left her a girl ; 
 he now gazes upon " a woman whose eyes are fire, 
 whose look is love, whose voice is the sweetest love- 
 song, whose shape is perfect symmetry, health, decision, 
 activity, whose foot as it plants itself upon the ground 
 is firm but flexible, and whose motion, whether rapid or 
 slow, is always perfect grace — agile as a nymph, lofty as 
 a queen — now melting, now imperious, now sarcastic — 
 there is no single movement of hers but is beautiful." 
 What wonder that, as he thought of her, he felt young 
 again, " remembering a paragon ! " 
 
 But if Beatrix is a picturesque apparition rather than
 
 ESMOND. 191 
 
 a real woman, the world of Castlewood, through which 
 she walks a magnificent shadow, is admirably depicted. 
 The vague background of rebellion and Jesuitry gives an 
 air of added gaiety and peace to the gay or tranquil 
 inhabitants. My Lord Castlewood himself is one of 
 those warm-hearted, foolish, shiftless gentlemen whom 
 Thackeray knew so well how to -draw. He is a Rawdon 
 Crawley, more happily mated, and when the crisis of 
 his destiny arrives he bears himself, as did Rawdon, like 
 a man. Nothing could be better than his conduct of 
 the duel with Lord Mohun, a duel most artfully com- 
 posed from the records of the time. Nor is the son, 
 Francis the Younger, unworthy his brave, spendthrift, 
 debonair father. Though he is as vain as his sister, his 
 vanity is tempered by an amiable disposition. " I know 
 my place," he tells Esmond. " I'm not proud ; I am 
 simply Francis James, Viscount Castlewood in the 
 peerage of Ireland." He is not clever, but he has what 
 the old Dowager calls the bel air. Mr Steele hits him 
 off in a line. " The lad looks good things," says he, 
 " and his laugh lights up a conversation as much as ten 
 repartees from Mr Congreve." And while the principal 
 actors in the drama are well understood and well 
 drawn, Esmotid is singularly free from those stock- 
 characters with which few novelists can dispense. True, 
 the Jesuit Holt, with his strange comings and goings, 
 his secret hiding-places, and his inaccurate information, 
 is a type rather than a man. True, also, the old Mar- 
 chioness, the wicked Dowager of Chelsey, is but Miss
 
 192 THACKERAY. 
 
 Crawley artfully disguised, and more thickly coated 
 with paint. But, when all deductions are made, Thack- 
 eray has achieved a success granted to few novelists 
 besides Sir Walter Scott : he has peopled an unreal 
 world with real men and women, for though the age is 
 Anne's, Esmond and my Lady and Frank Castlewood 
 are human enough to have lived at any time and under 
 any sky. 
 
 But it is not merely for its characters that we esteem 
 Esiiio/id, nor for its many passages of dignified, even 
 elevated, prose. The book will ever be memorable 
 also for one or two scenes of haunting beauty, or 
 dramatic intensity. Who can ever forget Esmond's 
 visit to Walcote after his return from Vigo ? It is in 
 Winchester Cathedral that he sees my Lady Castle- 
 wood and Frank after his estrangement, bringing back 
 with him, in Tom Tusher's phrase, " Gaditanian 
 laurels." " And Harry's coming home to supper. 
 Huzzay ! huzzay ! " cries my lord. " Mother, I shall 
 run home and bid Beatrix put her ribands on. Beatrix 
 is a maid of honour, Henry. Such a fine set-up minx !" 
 The passage expresses the sentiment, not the sentiment- 
 ality, of home-coming, without a word too much, with- 
 out a note falsely struck. Still better is the last chapter 
 of all, wherein Esmond and the young lord pursue the 
 Prince to Castlewood. These dozen pages are, I think, 
 Thackeray's highest achievement. The three men are 
 perfectly realised — Esmond dignified and austere, as be- 
 comes the head of the house ; Frank chivalrous and
 
 ESMOND. 193 
 
 impulsive, like the sound-hearted boy he is ; and his 
 Majesty, when once his rage is mastered, every inch a 
 king. " Eh, bien, Vicomte," says the young Prince, 
 who was a boy, and a French boy, " il ne nous reste 
 qu'un chose a faire : embrassons nous." It is a brave 
 picture, bravely painted, without a stroke awry, without 
 a superfluous touch. 
 
 Since Esmond many hundreds (or is it thousands ?) 
 of historical novels have been published ; yet Esmond's 
 supremacy is still unchallenged. The author's own 
 opinion of the book changed with his temper. One 
 day he finds it "clever, but also stupid, and no mis- 
 take " ; another, he wishes " the new novel was not so 
 grand and melancholy " ; and when he contemplated it 
 in all the bravery of its three volumes, " Esjjwnd" he 
 wrote, " looks very stately and handsome in print, and 
 bore as he is, I think he will do me credit." Thack- 
 eray's prediction has been fulfilled. Esmond did him 
 infinite credit, and came nearest to being "the complete 
 good book" which, said he, it was a- shame the author 
 didn't write.
 
 194 
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 THE NEWCOMES A PARLIAMENTARY ELECTION. 
 
 The Newcomes ^ was published to a chorus of applause. 
 The Press, of whatever temper and complexion, received 
 it in respectful admiration. " This is Mr Thackeray's 
 masterpiece," said the old-fashioned Quarterly, "as it 
 is undoubtedly one of the masterpieces of English 
 fiction." The Oxford and Cambridge Afagazi/ie, the 
 brand-new " organ " of the pre-Raphaelites, was no less 
 emphatic, declaring T/ie A^e^vio/nes " the masterpiece of 
 all novel-writing," and numbering its author "among 
 the great naturalists of all time." Since 1855 the word 
 " naturalist " has borne many a heavy burden. It has 
 supported the dullest researches of M. Zola and his 
 followers. It has been inscribed upon the banner of 
 those who believe that nothing is true save the abnormal, 
 and properly enough it has fallen into disrepute. But 
 in the mouth of the pre-Raphaelites it was a term of 
 
 ^ The jVctucoiucs : A^onoirs of a viost rcsj^ec/able Family, tdiied 
 by Arthur Pendennis, Esq. : published in twenty-four monthly 
 numbers from October 1S53 to August 1S55.
 
 THE NF.IVCOMES. 1 95 
 
 adulation. They believed that all nature should be as 
 meticulously observed and as carefully described as the 
 foregrounds of their own works, and in calling Thackeray 
 a "naturalist," they did but share with him their own 
 glory. Nor was the term wholly misapplied. In a 
 sense, completely opposite to that which it has since 
 attained, it fits Thackeray closely enough. So far as he 
 looked upon the common aspects of life, so far as he did 
 not travel beyond his own experience, Thackeray was a 
 true naturalist. 
 
 The reader will vainly seek hairbreadth escapes or 
 curiosities of vice in the pages of The Newcomes, 
 which is so close to nature as to contain nothing ab- 
 normal. It was this perfect correspondence with the 
 average knowledge of life which partly explains the 
 book's popularity. But there is another reason why 
 The Newcomes should have found favour in the world's 
 eye. It seemed Mr Thackeray's masterpiece, because 
 it was most characteristic of his talent and prejudices. 
 It was, so to say, Fendeji?iis carried to a higher power, 
 and it was acceptable to all those who thought that 
 Esmond was a rude interruption to the author's real 
 work. In other words, the thick-and-thin admirers of 
 Thackeray found in The Newcomes precisely what they 
 expected, and found it in fuller measure. Here was the 
 same easy style of writing which distinguished Vanity 
 Fair and Fe?idennis, the same easy treatment of great 
 personages, the same liberal mixture of over-sweet honey 
 and too - bitter gall. But in half a century the un-
 
 196 THACKERAY. 
 
 essential has been winnowed from that which matters, 
 and we may look upon what appeared " the masterpiece 
 of all novel-writing " with a less partial eye. 
 
 The Ncivcomes is a comedy conducted, for the most 
 part, in defiance of the comic spirit. Instead of sketch- 
 ing a serious situation, and demonstrating with a laugh 
 its inherent comedy, the author too often puts his 
 characters into a situation of comedy and proves that 
 it is fit for nothing else than a sermon. If this be 
 a " natural " book, our fathers, like Coleridge, must 
 have never done anything but preach. The Newcomes 
 is long — in its newest edition it covers more than 
 eight hundred pages — yet if you took away all the 
 trite essays upon morality, all the exhortations to good 
 conduct, all the tearful deplorations of villainy, the 
 trouble of reading would be halved, and the pleasure 
 doubled. The most trivial episode in the book is an 
 excuse for a moving discourse, and while the virtues 
 of some actors are exaggerated, the villainies of others 
 are monstrously overdone. 
 
 Like so many optimists, who fondly believe in the per- 
 fectibility of the human race, Thackeray had a touching 
 faith in deep and manifold wickedness. It is thus that 
 he describes a punter at Baden : " That man, so calm 
 and well-bred, with a string of orders on his breast, 
 so well dressed, with such white hands, has stabbed 
 trusting hearts ; severed family ties ; written lying vows ; 
 signed false oaths ; torn up pitilessly tender appeals 
 for redress, and tossed away into the fire supplications
 
 THE NEWCOMES. 1 97 
 
 blistered with tears ; packed cards and cogged dice ; or 
 used pistol and sword as calmly and dexterously as 
 he now ranges his battalions of gold pieces." The 
 cogging of dice and the packing of cards are easily 
 credible, but who can put faith in the lying vows and 
 stabbed hearts ? These, indeed, are the trappings of 
 the crudest melodrama, and are out of place in a 
 comedy of manners. It is not surprising that the 
 worthy J. J., himself a strayling from a sentimental 
 theatre, should believe in and " shrink away from 
 such lawless people," but their introduction gives an 
 air of unreality to Thackeray's " naturalism," and 
 suggests that the Pre-Raphaelite view of life was as 
 primitive as the inspiration of their painting. 
 
 The truth is, that whenever Thackeray mounted 
 upon his predicatory hobby-horse (and this spirited 
 steed prances energetically through The Newcomes), 
 he does not know how far it will carry him. He 
 apostrophises his readers ; he apostrophises his charac- 
 ters ; he calls upon vague unseen powers to redress the 
 balance. '■'• Bead illi!^' he exclaims, when he regards 
 the tie of friendship which unites the Colonel and his 
 son. ^^ Beati illi I oh man of the world, whose wearied 
 eyes may glance over this page, may those who come 
 after you so regard you ! O generous boy, who read 
 in it, may you have such a friend to trust and cherish 
 in youth, and in future days fondly and proudly to 
 remember!" The wearied man of the world is as 
 purely fantastic as the gentleman of the stabbed hearts
 
 198 THACKERAY. 
 
 and false oaths, and it is difficult to see why he is 
 called in to wonder at a simple situation. And the 
 puzzle is all the greater, because Thackeray was very 
 quick to detect false sentiment in others. The Washer- 
 woman of Finchley Common always moved his ridicule ; 
 but he was not above taking a leaf out of her book. 
 " Let us be thankful for our race," says he, when he 
 remembers Thomas Newcome's earliest friend, " as we 
 think of the love that blesses some of us. Surely it 
 has something of heaven in it, and angels celestial 
 may rejoice in it, and admire it." However worthy 
 the sentiment may be, it is too obvious to need 
 expression ; and, thus expressed, it seems to echo the 
 very tone and accent of the Washerwoman herself 
 
 However, Thackeray was not eminent for his 
 philosophy, which was superficial, nor for his moral 
 reflections, which were commonplace ; and the chief 
 merit of The Neivcomes^ as of Peiideunis, lies in its 
 characterisation. A word first as to the conduct of the 
 story. His earliest critics admired, with justice, the 
 ease wherewith he "kept every member of the crowd 
 faithful to his own nature." A vast number of actors 
 play their part upon the stage of The Newcomes ; they 
 grow from youth to middle life under the eye of the 
 reader, and they seldom, if ever, do violence to the law 
 of their being. Moreover, the novel, if it has neither 
 plot nor hero, presents the history of a whole family, and 
 covers two generations. It is true that one lady dies, 
 and is brought to life again, but this is the sole outrage
 
 THE NEWCOMES. 1 99 
 
 upon probability, and none of the others ever goes back 
 upon himself. So, while Thackeray holds the threads 
 tightly in his own hands, he places them unravelled 
 in the hands of the reader. The exposition of the 
 family and its early history is a marvel of lucidity, 
 which, though it is packed with information, is never 
 dull. 
 
 Yet, if the characters are consistent each with itself, 
 they are not always consistent with the general plan. 
 In other words, like the personages of Vafiify Fair, 
 they are drawn in varying planes. The Colonel, for 
 instance, Charles Honeyman, and Fred Bayham are 
 overcharged to caricature, and are not designed on the 
 same scale as Ethel and Barnes Newcome, the best 
 examples of Thackeray's "naturalism." At the first 
 publication of the book. Colonel Newcome^ seems to 
 have won all the suffrages. His nobility of character 
 attached the soft-hearted at once. He was said to 
 exceed Don Quixote himself, upon whom he was 
 modelled, in humane dignity. His death affected the 
 public, like the death of Paul Dombey, with the sense 
 of personal loss. Opinion has now undergone a re- 
 action, and the majority is content to accept Thackeray's 
 own opinion. " He is a dear old boy," he wrote to 
 Miss Proctor, " but confess you think him something 
 
 ^ Ingenuity has bteu busy in seeking the original of Colonel 
 Newcome. He is probably a composite portrait, which owes some- 
 thing to Sir Richmond Shakespear, something to an old pensioner 
 at the Charterhouse, whom Thackeray visited, but most of all to the 
 author's step-father, Major Carmichael -Smyth.
 
 200 THACKERAY. 
 
 of a twaddler." That is precisely what he is : he is a 
 twaddler, who harmonises very ill with his surroundings, 
 even when all deductions are made for his training and 
 for the many years he has spent in India. 
 
 At his first entry into the Cave of Harmony, he 
 makes it evident that his style and stature are not those 
 of the men who surround him. He is at once too 
 simple and too pompous to be naturalistic. "And this 
 is the abode of the Muses," says he, as he looks about 
 him with an amiable pride. He thinks Hoskins as 
 good as Incledon. He invites Mr Nadab, the little 
 Jew, for whom we may read Sloman, to dine with him, 
 and at every sentimental ditty " the tears trickle down 
 the honest warrior's cheek." But when Captain 
 Costigan has finished the second verse of the ribald 
 song which he volunteers, the Colonel starts up, seizes 
 his stick, and roars out Silence ! " ferocious as though 
 he had been going to do battle with a Pindaree." 
 Tradition assures us that the song the Captain sang 
 was the famous "Sam Hall,"^ and if it were, it is 
 difficult to understand why it was so stubborn a rock 
 
 ' The song which is said to have aroused the Colonel's wrath, 
 the notorious Saui Hall, though it is familiar by tradition, has not 
 yet got into print. The hero of the ditty was one Jack Hall, a 
 chimney-sweeper — his name was changed to Sam by a poet's licence 
 — wlio was hanged at Tyburn in 1707 for breaking the dwelling- 
 house of Captain Guyon. He was so famous a rascal in his own 
 day that he inspired an elegy and an epitaph, as well as the song 
 which still survives. The " pretty new Tune," called The Ckiinney- 
 Sweep, to which the song was sung, may be found in Tom D'Urfey's 
 Wit and iMirth (1712).
 
 THE NEWCOMES. 20I 
 
 of offence. But the Colonel's fighting blood is up ; 
 he involves the whole company in Costigan's degrada- 
 tion and dishonour ; and, as the chronicler says, " that 
 uplifted arm had somehow fallen on the back of every 
 man in the room." In this same spirit of the antique 
 world he deplores the society into which he is thrown. 
 His brothers' lack of cordiality is as unintelligible to him 
 as Costigan's drunken shame. He carries unselfishness 
 to the point of inhumanity ; his generosity, his kindli- 
 ness, his folly are all too great for flesh and blood. 
 Even the pathetic scene, in which the Colonel says 
 " Adsum," does not move us as it should, because we 
 have so little confidence that the Colonel ever lived and 
 breathed. Thackeray has spared his readers nothing ; 
 he has deafened their ears with an appeal for pity. 
 And when the pity should be given, it is perforce 
 withheld ; for who can shed tears for the travesty 
 of a man ? 
 
 Charles Honeyman, too, is a frank caricature, and 
 though his hold upon life is not very secure, he is 
 as genial an impostor as fiction can present. On 
 his first appearance, with a begging letter, he strikes 
 the right note. Now, Charles has a style, which gives a 
 weight to his lightest word, a sense of importance to his 
 meanest action. Having ventured his all in the acquis- 
 ition of Lady Whittlesea's chapel, he addresses the 
 Colonel, upon whom he has drawn a bill. " Have I 
 genius ? " he asks in his best rhetorical manner. " Am 
 I blessed with gifts of eloquence to thrill and soothe,
 
 202 THACKERAY. 
 
 to arouse the sluggish, to terrify the sinful, to cheer and 
 convince the timid, to lead the blind groping in dark- 
 ness, and to trample the audacious sceptic in the dust ? 
 My own conscience, besides a hundred testimonials 
 from places of popular, most popular, worship, from 
 reverend prelates, from distinguished clergy, tell me I 
 have these gifts." So he cheerfully listens to the voice, 
 which urges Charles Honeyman to go forth, and fight the 
 good fight ; he as cheerfully mulcts the Colonel of two 
 hundred and fifty pounds. But he is readily eloquent 
 even upon the simplest themes. In lofty terms he 
 refers to the brothers Newcome, " whom to name," 
 says he, "is to designate two of the merchant princes of 
 the wealthiest city the world has ever known." "The 
 fellow is always in the pulpit," muttered Barnes New- 
 come with perfect truth : but the pulpit was his profess- 
 ion, and he was not one to forgo an advertisement. 
 
 He is, indeed, a very accomplished cleric ; he sings ; 
 he plays on the violoncello ; he has a thousand tales and 
 quips, wherewith he entertains the ladies who worship 
 at his shrine. His notions of luxury, perhaps, better 
 befit a P'rench Abbe of the old school than the incumb- 
 ent of Lady Whittlesea's chapel. But the labourer is 
 worthy of his hire, and why should not the impassioned 
 orator live in comfortable ease, and beguile his leisure 
 with the perusal of impudent French books, signed by 
 the hands of Balzac, Dumas, or Paul de Kock ? With 
 such qualities, and such ambitions, he is naturally a sens- 
 itive soul. In the words of his friend F. B., Charles
 
 THE NEWCOMES. 203 
 
 was "great in the lachrymatory line " ; and it was said 
 that " no man in London understood the ring-business 
 or the pocket-handkerchief-business better, or smothered 
 his emotion more beautifully." But poor Charles was 
 ill suited to fight the harsh, unsympathetic world. He 
 fell upon evil days ; he mortgaged his chapel to one 
 Jew, himself to another ; and Sherrick, the Hebrew, 
 who used the basement of the sacred edifice as a wine- 
 vault, might, as F. B. said, " turn Lady Whittlesea into 
 a synagogue, and have the chief Rabbi into the pulpit." 
 
 Yet all was not lost. F. B. was still fertile in re- 
 source. He was taking tea with Mrs Sherrick when 
 the great idea came to him. The singing boys had 
 all gone to the Cave of Harmony. Why should not the 
 ladies take their place, and sing Handel to the strains of 
 an organ ? It was a harmlesss dodge, as F. B. said, but 
 it drew immensely. Mrs Sherrick and her daughter 
 adopted a nun-like costume, practised by moonlight in 
 the chapel, and " the thing took." Charles Honeyman 
 was himself again, and a few lessons from Husler, of 
 the Haymarket, put a fine polish on his elocution. 
 " His sermons are old," as F. B. confessed, " but, so to 
 speak, he has got them up with new scenery, dresses, 
 and effects ! " The flowers came from Covent Garden. 
 The Flemish-painted window was picked up in Wardour 
 Street ; the new hymn-books were large and gilt. In 
 brief, all the trappings were superb, and fashion set with 
 a favouring breeze towards Lady Whittlesea's chapel. 
 Charles himself, splendid in prosperity, affected a medi-
 
 204 THACKERAY. 
 
 seval pose. An odour of mille - fleurs rustled by as 
 he took his place at the desk. His vestments were 
 simpler and more austere than heretofore ; the curl, 
 upon which he had lavished so much care, was gone 
 from his forehead. The performance succeeded mar- 
 vellously. Sherrick paced up and down the aisle, 
 saying, " Capital house, wasn't it ? " and Honeyman's 
 fortune was remade. 
 
 Honeyman is one very good example of Thackeray's 
 caricature. Mr Frederick Bayham is another, extrava- 
 gant as the accomplished, aristocratic Stiggins. Now 
 F. B. also has a style, more robust and flamboyant 
 than his friend's. F. B. is built upon a large scale. He 
 weighs fourteen stone, and his boots, " known by the 
 name of the Prussian general who came up to help the 
 other christener of boots at Waterloo," his trousers, his 
 dressing-gown, ragged and flowing, even his voice, are 
 all large. He speaks in the grandiloquent manner 
 which befits the man of letters. " Salve, spes Jidei, 
 lumen ccclcsia" thus he salutes his friend Honeyman ; 
 and then tells him " by cock and pye " that his wine is 
 not worth a "bender" a glass. He has an easy gift of 
 imitation and of insolence. He gives an exhibition 
 of his uncle the l)ishop ; he reminds the Reverend 
 Charles of the lies which he told at school, and he 
 desires to inform Colonel Newcome that he is " an 
 orphan himself, in needy circumstances, and he heartily 
 wishes he would adopt him." Meanwhile he is de- 
 lighted to dine with the Colonel, and to declare his
 
 THE NEWCOMES. 205 
 
 "deliberate opinion that F. B. has got into a good 
 thing." 
 
 But F. B., too, " descended from the ancient kings 
 that long the Tuscan sceptre swayed," has his moments 
 of didacticism. It is not a panegyric of debt that he 
 sings, like Panurge, but a threnody. He addresses a 
 solemn warning to Clive, telling him that he dodges 
 down a street to avoid a boot-shop, or that his colossal 
 frame trembles if a sudden hand is put upon his 
 shoulder. And all this he does in a style which gives 
 you the impression that he is drawn from life, and then 
 exaggerated beyond the measure of reality. He is 
 eminent in whatever company he finds himself, whether 
 it be at the Cave of Harmony or in Park Lane. When 
 The Fall Mall Gazette offers him an opening for his 
 talents, he turns his hand to anything with a joyous 
 facility. Art, the drama, theology, are the same to 
 him. But his masterpiece, no doubt, is " Pulpit Pen- 
 cillings," which, signed Laud Latimer, give a tone of rare 
 respectability to the paper. " You wouldn't suppose now, 
 my young Clive," says he, " that the same hand which 
 pens the x^rt criticisms, occasionally when his Highness 
 Pendennis is lazy, takes a minor theatre, or turns the 
 sportive epigram, or the ephemeral paragraph, should 
 adopt a grave theme on a Sunday, and chronicle the 
 Sermons of British Divines?" But thus it is that 
 he assisted in the rehabilitation of the Rev. Charles 
 Honeyman, and even that enterprise did not ex- 
 haust his versatility. When the Bundelcund Banking
 
 206 THACKERAY. 
 
 Company was at the height of its prosperity, F. 
 Bayham betook himself to the city. Here, as else- 
 where, he cut a splendid figure. He moved among 
 " managers and city nobs " ; he ate " kibobs with 
 nabobs." He took the rooms which were once 
 graced by the Reverend Charles ; his costume was at 
 once more cleanly and yet more variegated than before. 
 No longer dependent upon the pittance which he 
 drew from The Pall Mall Gazette, he assumed what he 
 deemed his proper station in life, and even contem- 
 plated marriage and a settlement. But into whatever 
 situation he was cast, F. B. filled it in all senses with 
 ease and humour, and he remains one of the master- 
 pieces in Thackeray's gallery of portraits. 
 
 But excellent as these two are, — Honeyman and 
 F. B., — they are not triumphs of "naturalism," and if 
 we are on the look-out for that quality, we must 
 seek it in Ethel Newcome and her brother. Now, 
 Ethel is not a flood of tears, a mere bundle of 
 sensibilities ; she is a real woman, and assuredly 
 Thackeray drew few characters which surpass her in 
 verisimilitude and individuality. At her first entrance 
 upon the scene, child though she is, she is already 
 determined and herself. " Alone, farouche, and in- 
 tractable," — it is in these terms that she is described, — 
 and " alone, farouche, and intractable " she remains to 
 the end. The prejudices of her family affect her so 
 little that she is ready to defend the Colonel and 
 his son. " You are always sneering about our uncle,
 
 THE NEWCOMES. 20/ 
 
 and saying unkind things about Clive," she darts out 
 at Barnes, and her courage equals the generosity of 
 her thought. She is represented as gravely proud, 
 yet kindly withal, " quick to detect affectation or in- 
 sincerity, impatient of dulness and pomposity," and 
 these qualities, added to a gift of sarcasm, and a love 
 of truth, which flashes from her grey eyes, render her 
 unpopular with both men and women. 
 
 But Thackeray is not content with enumerating her 
 qualities : he makes her speak and act always in accord 
 with them. In her many encounters with her brother 
 and Lady Kew she is quietly victorious : conscious of 
 the schemes which are laid for her marriage, she 
 frustrates them with a natural bravery, and an hon- 
 est simplicity, which are admirably depicted. " We 
 are sold," she says; "we are as much sold as 
 Turkish women ; " yet Kew might have held her to 
 the bargain had he not fallen below her lofty standard. 
 When Lady Kew insults her, " Keep your bad names," 
 says she, " for my Aunt Julia ; she is sick and weak, 
 and can't defend herself" She resolves to accept 
 neither abuse from the old lady nor lectures from 
 Kew. At Baden she defies every one of them — 
 Kew, his mother, and the Duchesse d'lvry. She 
 keeps the famous ball alive almost by herself. She 
 dances with Count Punter, with Captain Blackball, with 
 any one that comes along, and in answer to remon- 
 strance asks, " Was she to be so proud as not to 
 know Lord Kew's friends ? "
 
 208 THACKERAY. 
 
 It is not surprising, therefore, that she should despise 
 the humble obedience of Lady Clara. "The sight 
 of the patient timid little thing chafed Ethel, who 
 was always more haughty and flighty and bold when 
 in Clara's presence than at any other time." But, 
 despite the intrigue which goes on about her, she is 
 resolute to direct her own life. She refuses the honest 
 Kew, who " takes his share of the pain as a boy at 
 school takes his flogging, stoutly and in silence," and 
 she refuses him from a scruple, which, though honour- 
 able enough, she might have waived. In her treatment 
 of Lord Farintosh, her other lover, she behaves with 
 a pride and dignity which the poor Marquis cannot 
 understand ; and the whole scene is written with more 
 than common skill. In brief, though Thackeray too 
 often held a loose hand upon his plot, though he 
 not seldom permitted his personages to act and speak 
 as they listed, he treated Ethel Newcome with con- 
 sistent sympathy and care. He had made up his 
 mind about her before he began, and he never forgot 
 the admirable qualities which distinguish his heroine. 
 He has sketched her appearance with a precision which 
 is rare in his works. She is tall, he tells us, " a severe 
 Diana " ; her hair and eyebrows are jet black, and in 
 her black hair is " a gentle ripple, as when a fresh 
 breeze blows over a nielan hudor "y her eyes are grey ; 
 her mouth rather large ; " her teeth as regular and 
 bright as Lady Kew's own." It is by these signs that 
 we may recognise her, and if her features are familiar
 
 THE NEWCOMES. 209 
 
 to our sight, her heart and character are yet more 
 clearly revealed to our understanding ; she has no 
 kinship with the Lauras and Helens, whose tears have 
 washed the truth from so many of Thackeray's pages ; 
 she is a real woman, faithfully drawn, and the reader 
 cannot but regret that in the end she is mated with 
 so indistinct and irresolute a young man as Clive. 
 
 Barnes, her brother, is made of other metal ; yet 
 he also rings true to himself and to his author's pur- 
 pose. Nothing can surpass the placid self-assurance 
 wherewith this "fair-haired young gentleman, languid 
 and pale, and arrayed in the very height of fashion," 
 receives the Colonel. "Very happy to see you, I'm 
 sure," said the young man. " You find London very 
 much changed since you were here ? Very good time 
 to come — the very full of the season." He is so pleased 
 with himself and his career that he patronises not 
 merely his uncle but Sir Thomas de Boots and the 
 other fogeys that he meets at his club. He is abashed 
 at nothing — not even when he has to confess that he 
 has never heard of Don Quixote. And why, indeed, 
 should he have heard of Don Quixote ? The one end 
 and aim of his life is to make money. For this he 
 would even sacrifice his own pleasures, and after all 
 what are pleasures to a man who worships wealth and 
 respectability with a constant heart ? If he speaks of 
 business, he instantly drops his languor and affect- 
 ation, and becomes simple, selfish, and alert. In a 
 moment he is as " keen as the oldest curmudgeon ; a 
 
 o
 
 2IO THACKERAY. 
 
 lad with scarce a beard to his chin, he would pursue his 
 bond as rigidly as Shylock." The Colonel loathes his 
 worldliness even more bitterly than his insolence. " If 
 he is like this at twenty, what will he be like at fifty ? " 
 groans the old soldier. 
 
 Above all, the young man is determined never to 
 compromise himself in the eyes of his fellows. He 
 " never missed going to church or dressing for dinner. 
 He never kept a tradesman waiting for his money." 
 For the same reason he never drank too much, and 
 always showed up at his office spick and span. Of 
 course he is a cheat and a coward, to whom honour 
 is of far less importance than the law. He takes 
 charge of letters, and keeps them back. When the 
 famous paper is found in Orme's History^ which should 
 benefit Clive, Barnes stoutly refuses to make resti- 
 tution. But though he is resolute enough in holding 
 on to his money-bags, at the mere suggestion of a 
 quarrel, this " Fenchurch Street fire-eater " takes alarm. 
 When Clive, having thrown a glass of wine in Barnes' 
 face overnight, visits him in the morning with an 
 apology, he receives him with a nonchalant civility, as 
 though nothing had happened. "You are come to 
 breakfast, I hope," says he, and swears that he has for- 
 gotten the row and the broken glass. When he should 
 have resented the appearance of Jack Belsize at Baden, 
 he trembles at the very mention of his name, and shifts 
 his hand uneasily to a pistol at a moving shadow. 
 But it is to the Colonel and Clive that he most con-
 
 THE NEWCOMES. 211 
 
 spicuously shows the white feather. He refuses to 
 fight the Colonel on account of their relationship, and 
 assumes a noble rage at the enforced discretion. But 
 when Clive takes up his father's quarrel, he turns tail 
 and flees in an agony of terror. It is old Sir Thomas 
 de Boots who best sums the matter up. " Yesterday," 
 says he to Barnes, " you talked as if you would bite the 
 Colonel's head off, and to-day, when his son offers you 
 every accommodation, by dash, sir, you're afraid to 
 meet him. It's my belief you had better send for a 
 policeman. A 22 is your man, Sir Barnes Newcome." 
 On the other hand, Thackeray, having for the moment 
 deserted caricature for naturalism, does not make 
 Barnes all bad. He endows him with easy manners, 
 a bitter satirical tongue, and a gift of waltzing. He 
 even admits that while he is not handsome there is 
 " something in his face odd-looking and distinguished." 
 He makes him a present of beautiful feet and hands. 
 In brief, as Thackeray explains, Barnes has an air. 
 He has an air when at the Newcome Atheuceum he 
 shows that the true office of the bard is to appeal 
 to the affections ; that " to decorate the homely thresh- 
 old, to wreathe flowers round the domestic hearth, 
 is the delightful duty of the Christian singer." And 
 it is only in moments of stress, as when Belsize drags 
 him from his saddle, that his air evaporates. But 
 Thackeray had the tact never to make him inhuman, 
 and he is from first to last a piece of genuine and 
 faithful portraiture.
 
 212 THACKERAY. 
 
 Of the other characters some are good, some bad, 
 yet Thackeray moves them all on and off the stage 
 with an adroitness which the reader cannot but admire. 
 Clive himself is a florid young man, for whom it is 
 difficult to entertain much sympathy. A livelier Pen- 
 dennis, he is generous, and gay, and noble-hearted, 
 and all that. " His laughter," we are told, " cheered 
 one like wine " ; but his very virtues render him 
 incredible, and he leaves pretty much the same im- 
 pression upon us as a barber's block. Moreover, he is 
 a painter, and painters in fiction are always dull, with 
 their chatter of Raphael and Michael Angelo, and 
 the sketches which they dash off at a stroke. As 
 for Rosey, she is but the shadow of a shade, which 
 disappears as silently as it comes. Her mother, on 
 the other hand, the famous campaigner, is made of 
 sterner stuff, both humanly and artistically. She is 
 drawn with so firm a hand, her intrigues and her 
 avarice are so vividly depicted, that she seems to have 
 passed out of literature into experience, and to be 
 recognisable wherever we have the misfortune to meet 
 her. And old Lady Kew, who uses her poor daughter 
 Julia as a pincushion, and who is, it must be con- 
 fessed, a trifle melodramatic, takes her place in the 
 same corner of the gallery as Miss Crawley and the 
 Baroness Bernstein. 
 
 Most of the rest we are content to forget. J. J. 
 and Miss Cann, for instance, are so highly characteristic 
 of their own age that they are wholly uninteresting to
 
 THE NEWCOMES. 21 3 
 
 ours. But there is one scene in the drama, laid at 
 Baden, which not merely introduces a set of Parisians, 
 rare in English fiction, but which is composed in 
 such a vein of comedy as Thackeray seldom struck. 
 The trappings are as gay as the drama : the tables, 
 the avenues, the music of Baden are indicated with 
 a light hand. The ball, whereat the fates of many are 
 decided, is as good as a scene from an old comedy. 
 Above all, the French men and women, who intrigue 
 and gamble in the little capital of the German state, 
 are essentially French. They are enlivened, it is true, 
 with more than a touch of caricature ; but for all that 
 they think and act as befits their nationality, and they 
 could not under any circumstances be mistaken for the 
 compatriots of The Xewco7nes. The English novelist 
 who would depict a Frenchman is so often content 
 to sketch a Briton, change his clothes and break his 
 English, that Thackeray's performance is the more re- 
 markable. Indeed we know not where to match his 
 Floracs and his Ivrys, unless it be in the Renee of 
 Beauchamf s Career^ who, however, is a greater achieve- 
 ment, since she is natural as a flower, and owes nothing 
 to the brilliant colours of caricature. 
 
 But if to be prophetic is to be true, then Thackeray 
 deserves the highest praise. His Madame dTvry, 
 Royalist, Philippist, Catholic, Huguenot, the exponent 
 of all the fads and every fantasy, the haggard siren, 
 who believes herself the image of Mary Queen of Scots, 
 has been reincarnated a dozen times since Thackeray.
 
 214 THACKERAY. 
 
 She died in Paris a brief five years ago, and in Paris, 
 we make no doubt, she is Hving again to-day. And 
 ce petit Cabasse, the student of law, whose lyrics — " les 
 Rales d'un Asphyxie " — have not passed unnoticed, 
 whose family has been at feud with I'Angleterre since 
 the days of the Prince Noir — was he not born again 
 a "deliquescent" some fifteen years since? Did he not 
 frequent the ccnacles of the Latin quarter, and print 
 his verses in the journals of the dciadence'i True, 
 these types are eternal ; but Thackeray, despite his 
 English blood, understood them perfectly, and drew 
 them with an astonishing accuracy. 
 
 But by far the most engaging of them all is M. de 
 Florae, who plays an entertaining and distinguished 
 part in the comedy of Baden. Under all circumstances 
 he proves himself a gentleman and a man of honour. 
 Thackeray wrote few better pages than those which de- 
 scribe Clive's meeting with him at Baden. Fortune has 
 been unkind to M. de Florae ; she has emptied his 
 purse, his portmanteaus, his jewel-box, his linen-closet. 
 " This campaign has been my Moscow, iiwn cher" he 
 tells Clive. "I am conquered by Benazet ; I have lost 
 in almost every combat. . . . Sometimes I have a mind 
 to go home ; my mother, who is an angel of forgive- 
 ness, would receive her prodigal, and kill the fatted veal 
 for me. But what will you ? He annoys me — the 
 domestic veal." So they dine at Duluc's, and are 
 waited upon by Frederic, who plays Balderstone to 
 Florae's Ravenswood. " Yes ; I am Edgar," exclaims
 
 THE NEWCOMES. 215 
 
 the nobleman, who, even after Moscow, is still gay, 
 polished, and good-tempered. And, then, acknowledg- 
 ing that the passions tear him, that play is fatal, but 
 not so fatal as women, he proposes to be Clive's 
 Mentor. " I saw you roder round the green tables," 
 says he with a fine fancy, " and marked your eyes as 
 they glistened over the heaps of gold, and looked at 
 some of our beauties of Baden." But, though he 
 suffer defeat, he is still master of his destiny. Per- 
 turbed neither by wealth nor by poverty, he is equal 
 to every encounter. Being a Catholic, he does not 
 feel a complete sympathy with his wife, nee Higg, of 
 Manchesterre, in the comte of Lancastre ; being a 
 gentleman, he treats her with a touching deference. 
 When his cousin dies, and he becomes a prince, 
 he is as modest (and as arrogant) as ever. He 
 delights in penny cigars, and when Barnes offers 
 him a seat in his brougham, "Bah!" he says, "I 
 prefer the peniboat'' With perfect discretion he sup- 
 presses his princely title ; with perfect philosophy he 
 justifies the suppression. " Moncontour cannot dine 
 better than Florae," says he. " Florae has two louis 
 in his pocket, and Moncontour exactly forty francs." 
 When he grows rich he is still the same Paul de Florae, 
 " sober and dignified " ; but in all circumstances he is 
 charming, and Thackeray was in his gayest mood when 
 he invented M. le Prince de Moncontour. 
 
 In conclusion, The Neivcomes is a formless book with 
 brilliant passages, and it bears in every chapter the
 
 2l6 THACKERAY. 
 
 traces of Thackeray's haphazard method. The story 
 was " revealed " to him, he says, at Berne in Switzer- 
 land, where he had strayed into a little wood, and both 
 characters and plot grew under his hand as they listed. 
 It was written at odd times and in odd places, and 
 when it was finished, Thackeray contemplated it, as he 
 contemplated all his books, with a curious aloofness. 
 He hardly knew whether the people of his drama " are 
 not true ; whether they do not live near us somewhere." 
 Such was his attitude towards his creations. He thought 
 them alive ; he heard their voices ; he was touched by 
 their grief; but he was never really master of them ; and 
 the result is that half The Newcomes is irrelevant. 
 
 In 1857 Thackeray permitted himself a holiday 
 from literature, and stood for Parliament. His views 
 were Radical, and the seat which he chose to con- 
 test was Oxford. Nor was it unexpected, this incur- 
 sion into politics, for politics had attracted him ever 
 since, at the age of twenty, he had aided Charles Buller 
 at Liskeard. In TIu- Constitutional, as we have seen, 
 he had " supported consistently, though feebly, the 
 great cause of Radicalism," and he had expressed his 
 sympathy with Richard Cobden by contributing a 
 drawing or two to The Anti-Corn-Lmv Circular. But 
 though his interest in the affairs of the country was 
 constant, he cannot be called a violent partisan, and it 
 would puzzle the most ingenious reader to formulate his 
 political creed. The author of The Book of Snobs was 
 obviously a staunch democrat, who loved the people for
 
 A PARLIAMENTARY ELECTION. 217 
 
 its own sake, and who devoutly believed in the natural 
 wickedness of monarchs. " I would like to see all men 
 equal," he wrote in 1840, "and this bloated aristocracy 
 blasted to the wings of all the winds." When Fiitic/i 
 gave him his chance, he descended from the general to 
 the particular, and attacked the Prince Consort, his hat, 
 his Chancellorship, and all that was his with a ceaseless 
 violence.^ The Bal Poudre, which the Queen gave in 
 1845, aroused his bitterest scorn, and inspired him to a 
 piece of satire that was neither pointed nor in good 
 laste.^ 
 
 But for all his detestation of kings, for all his love 
 of the free and enlightened democracy, he had no sym- 
 pathy with the people when it attempted to capture 
 its " rights " by force. He found its " views about 
 equalising property " mere robbery, and he " thanked 
 God that they had not a man of courage at their head 
 who might set the kingdom in a blaze." In other words, 
 
 ^ In Mr Spielmann's Hitherto Unidentified Contributions of W. 
 M. Thackeray to ' Punch ' the curious will find ample material for 
 forming a judgment on Thackeray's political opinions. 
 
 " It has been said by more than one of his champions that 
 Thackeray had a profound admiration for the Queen and Prince 
 Albert. If this were so, he showed it in the oddest fashion, and 
 Shirley Brooks's well-known lines, quoted by Mr Spielmann, ex- 
 pressed the general indignation : — 
 
 " We'll clear thy brain. Look westerly. See where yon Palace stands ; 
 Stains of the mud flung there by thee are on thy dirty hands." 
 
 But Shirley Brooks wrongly attributed the offence to Douglas 
 Jerrold, with whose disloyalty he contrasted 
 
 " The truthful, social sketch, drawn with Titmarshian skill 
 With colour bright as Dickens's, and pencil keener still."
 
 2l8 THACKERAY. 
 
 his love of the people was platonic, and was more than 
 counterbalanced by his hatred of physical force. So, 
 too, in his treatment of Ireland, he never showed a bigoted 
 admiration of one party or the other. He judged even 
 the great O'Connell on his merits, and while to-day 
 he pronounced him " the greatest man in the Empire," 
 and eloquently compared him to Washington, to-morrow 
 he is a buffoon, who, when " the Want of a Nation 
 stares him in the face, replies with a grin and a gibe," 
 an old sharper, who takes his compatriots' money, and 
 " scorns even to hide the jugglery by which he robs 
 them." His views upon Young Ireland were equally 
 inconsistent. In 1843 he contributed an effusion — 
 " Daddy, I'm Hungry " — to The Nation ; yet two years 
 later he had never heard of Davis, whom he attacks wih 
 becoming energy. And through it all he was constant only 
 to one thing — Home Rule — which he supported at first 
 for the sake of Ireland, and secondly that Great Britain 
 might be well rid of a disloyal and avaricious partner. 
 
 Such was Thackeray's political record, when in 1857 
 he opposed Mr Cardwell at Oxford. The circum- 
 stances of the election were peculiar : the sitting member, 
 Mr Neate, had been unseated for " twoj^enny worth of 
 bribery which he never committed," and Thackeray 
 frankly declared that " he would not have stood against 
 Cardwell, had he known he was coming down." But 
 having stood, he fought the election with all his energy. 
 The foremost plank in his platform was the question 
 of reform, which he had strenuously supported ever
 
 A PARLIAMENTARY ELECTION. 219 
 
 since his appearance at Liskeard in 1832 ; and he not 
 only pronounced himself in favour of the ballot, but 
 declared that it was his ambition to amend the suffrage 
 "in nature, as well as in numbers." In accord with 
 the principles which he had always professed, he be- 
 lieved that the State would be benefited " by the skill 
 and talents of persons less aristocratic " than those who 
 were then administering it, nor did he spare the elec- 
 tors the familiar commonplaces about " hard-working, 
 honest, rough-handed men." At the same time he 
 loyally promised to " advance the social happiness, the 
 knowledge, and the power of the people," and he lost 
 many votes by advocating the opening of museums on 
 Sunday. But throughout the election he showed him- 
 self a man of the world rather than a serious politician. 
 He owned that he " could not speak very well, but," 
 said he, " I shall learn," and he plainly recognised that 
 talking was not the chief business of the House of 
 Commons. That he was not returned was not sur- 
 prising, least of all to himself, and at the declaration 
 of the poll he made his happiest speech, told the story 
 of Gregson and Gully, how the victorious prize-fighter 
 was the. first to shake the hand of the vanquished, and 
 declared that he would retire, to " take my place with 
 my pen and ink at my desk, and leave to Mr Cardwell a 
 business which I am sure he understands better than 
 I do." Thus ended Thackeray's one political interlude, 
 which in his own phrase was "very good fun," and the 
 failure of which none regretted less than himself.
 
 220 
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 THE VIRGINIANS THE EDITORSHIP OF THE 
 
 CORNHILL. 
 
 So he returned to take his place with his pen and 
 ink at his desk, and four months after his defeat at 
 Oxford there appeared the first number of a new novel 
 — The Virginians,^ a Tale of the Last Century. As 
 Esmond was the natural result of the lectures on The 
 Humourists, so The Virginians came in due sequence 
 after the lectures upon The Four Georges, and 
 Thackeray's two journeys to America. But no books 
 could differ more widely in treatment than JEsmond 
 and The Virginians. Esmond is a deliberate work 
 of art, composed with a definite purpose, and in a 
 definite style. It is the worst fault of The Virginians 
 that it is without form or shape. It is less a novel 
 than a series of essays interspersed with anecdotes, and 
 with experiments in the art of literary imitation. It 
 professes by a permissible fiction to be written by a 
 
 1 The Mrgiiiians was published in twenty-four monthly parts, 
 from November 1857 to October 1859.
 
 THE VIRGINIANS. 221 
 
 descendant of the Warrington family. But Thackeray 
 too often forgets this fact, and lets the story write 
 itself in the language of the eighteenth century. The 
 consequence is that the two styles constantly overlap. 
 The story is now a modern retrospect, now an antique 
 experience, and the author is as uncertain of his style 
 as he is mutable in his point of view. Again and 
 again he will interrupt a narrative which belongs to 
 the eighteenth century with references to Carlyle, or to 
 Mr Disraeli's House of Commons. One thing only 
 is unchanging, — the moral reflection, which is always 
 of the nineteenth century, whether it be expressed by 
 the author or by one of the actors in his drama. The 
 result is a jumble of interests, a confusion of tongues. 
 
 To say that the book is at its best when Thackeray 
 most resolutely suppresses himself is superfluous, and 
 the sudden intrusion of modern ideas may generally be 
 taken as a sign of the author's boredom with his own 
 characters. Yet, even where he adheres most closely 
 to his period, he shows in The Virginians signs of haste 
 and lassitude. The real personages whom he introduces 
 are too near to history to be part of fiction. Tunbridge 
 Wells in his eyes is a sort of Madame Tussaud's, 
 in which all the celebrities of the time are collected, 
 clothed and coloured precisely as you would expect 
 them, and obviously wax. No doubt March and 
 Selwyn, Johnson and Richardson, James Wolfe and the 
 Countess of Yarmouth, were alive at the same time ; 
 no doubt, also, an author who includes them all in
 
 222 THACKERAY. 
 
 one chapter kills many birds with a single stone. But 
 he does it at too high a cost. He sacrifices probability 
 beyond all hope, and where he should present the 
 portrait of a man he suggests the research of a popular 
 text-book. And while he destroys the verisimilitude of 
 his characters by their mere proximity one to another, 
 he spoils each of them by making him, as it were, a 
 sublimation of the truth. He treats them as he treated 
 Steele and Addison in Esiiiofid : he never permits them 
 to utter a word that is unexpected. They must be 
 true, every one of them, to popular biography ; and yet 
 we believe that even Lord March and Jack Morris 
 sometimes opened their mouths without making a bet. 
 
 The Virginians^ then, is a thing of patches, not an 
 organic whole, and though some of the chapters thus 
 loosely knit together are humorous or picturesque, it is 
 impossible to sustain one's interest in a book so various 
 as this in style, character, and intention. But it would 
 not have been written by Thackeray if it had not con- 
 tained some half-dozen scenes of vivid drama, and more 
 than one admirably drawn portrait. The purpose of the 
 book, to which, by the way, the author did not long 
 adhere, is made clear in the opening sentence. " On 
 the library wall of one of the most famous writers of 
 America," says Thackeray, " there hang two crossed 
 swords, which his relatives w'ore in the great War of 
 Independence. The one sword was gallantly drawn in 
 the service of the king, the other was the weapon of 
 a brave and honoured republican soldier." The two
 
 THE VIRGINIANS. 223 
 
 swords might have suggested an interesting study of 
 opposing loyalties and severing patriotisms. But 
 Thackeray forgot his swords long before he came 
 to the end of his novel ; and the fact that the two 
 Warringtons took different sides in the American Re- 
 bellion is either irrelevant or obscured. 
 
 What remains is a story of life as it was lived in the 
 eighteenth century, with America for a shadowy back- 
 ground, and with a far-off echo of Braddock's campaign. 
 The best scene is the first of all, in which is described 
 Harry Warrington's visit to the home of his ancestors. 
 Seldom has the sentiment of the returned traveller been 
 better rendered, and this traveller returns to a home 
 which he knew only by tradition and report. Yet, 
 though he looked upon the scene for the first time, it 
 was perfectly famihar to his eye. He easily pictured the 
 knights and huntsmen of a bygone age crossing the 
 ford, to draw the sword perchance in the service of their 
 king, or to hunt their quarry with hawk and hound. 
 Meantime "the clinking of the blacksmith's forge, the 
 noises of the evening, the talk of the rooks, and the 
 calling of the birds," stirred in his mind the recollec- 
 tion of a past he had never seen, and yet knew more 
 intimately than that which happened a year ago in 
 Virginia. If only Thackeray had kept the whole book 
 in this same key he would have written a masterpiece 
 fit to rank with Estnond, but unhappily he soon let 
 the necessity of writing so much a- month conquer 
 him, and the book made itself the vehicle of the
 
 224 THACKERAY. 
 
 social prejudices and historical sympathies of its 
 author. Even though the scene be laid at the Wells 
 or the playhouse, the reader cannot but think of 
 Pendennis or Clive Newcome. Harry Warrington is 
 but these blameless youths in another dress. Though 
 he gambles with a braver recklessness than the young 
 Pendennis, he is, like that hero, merely "wild," not 
 " wicked " ; and yet, despite the author's protestations, 
 despite Harry's virtuous attachment to the aged 
 Maria, despite even the priggish reprimands of James 
 Wolfe, and the sound advice of the amiable Lambert, 
 the friend of March and Selwyn must, one is sure, 
 have been wicked as well as wild. The Fortunate Youth, 
 indeed, is not more easily convincing than Thackeray's 
 other heroes ; and while we are content to trace in 
 the features of General Lambert, the kind, scholarly 
 old soldier, who loved Rabelais, and sought his classical 
 quotations in Burton's Auatomy^ a resemblance to the 
 author of his being, it is, as usual, in the rogues, not 
 in the virtuous citizens, that Thackeray is at his best. 
 If Will Castlewood be exaggerated, Sampson, the 
 roystering parson, who loves wine better than his 
 prayers, and gambling better than either, is by no 
 means ill-drawn. Still better is my Lord of Castle- 
 wood, who, though he is a sharper and a coward, 
 preserves the outward seeming of a gentleman. He 
 is a fine specimen of the correct rogue : he is the 
 Barnes Newcome of his century, but better bred and 
 better mannered. The young Virginians are rightly
 
 THE VIRGINIANS. 225 
 
 pleased to be in his company. Nothing can disturb 
 his invariable attitude of politeness, and his dissipated 
 pomposity is only skin-deep. He deplores to Harry 
 Warrington the love of play which has made him 
 the poorest peer in England ; and though his reputa- 
 tion is so bad that few care to play with him, he 
 regretfully spares the Mohock, as he called Harry, so 
 long as he is under his roof. At the same time, 
 he frankly recognised that he was a fool " to fatten 
 a goose for other people to feed off." In brief, " he 
 was a far abler man than many who succeeded in 
 life. He had a good name, and somehow only 
 stained it ; a considerable wit, and nobody trusted 
 it ; and a very shrewd experience and knowledge of 
 mankind, which made him distrust them, and himself 
 most of all, and which was perhaps the bar to his 
 own advancement." But such as he was, Thackeray 
 drew him with evident understanding ; and the best 
 of him is that, though he shows the white feather, and 
 cheats at the cards, he never loses the outward restraint 
 and decorum of a gentleman. 
 
 A far greater figure is the Baroness de Bernstein, who 
 not only confers distinction upon The Virginians, but 
 is one of the very best portraits in Thackeray's gallery. 
 Now Thackeray had a very keen eye for a worldly old 
 woman ; he understood, as few have understood, both 
 the comedy and the bitterness of her existence. But 
 never did he surpass the Baroness de Bernstein, who is 
 superior to Miss Crawley in force, to Lady Kew in 
 
 p
 
 226 THACKERAY. 
 
 geniality, to both in humour. Though she is but 
 Beatrix Esmond grown up, she is as far beyond that 
 dashing young lady in temperament as in years ; though 
 she be harsh and imperious if she be not obeyed, she 
 cherishes a warm affection for those who bow the knee 
 and live up to her standard of conduct. But the 
 shallow artifices which the Castlewood family adopted 
 to gain her favour did not deceive her for a moment, 
 and, "being a woman of great humour, she played upon 
 the dispositions of the various members of this family, 
 amused herself with their greedinesses, their humiliations, 
 their artless respect for her money-box, and clinging 
 attachment to her purse." But it was with a very 
 different eye that she looked upon the strayling from 
 Virginia, whose exclusion from Castlewood aroused her 
 fury. An incivility put upon him excited her ire at 
 the very outset. Perhaps it was the memory of the 
 boy's grandfather that angered her against the mean- 
 ness of the Castlewoods ; but this restless and resolute 
 woman instantly took Harry Warrington under her 
 charge, and, callous - hearted though she were, she 
 stoutly protected him against his cousins. The first 
 meeting between the old lady and the Virginian is 
 in Thackeray's best manner. When Harry first entered 
 the garden of Castlewood, the baroness was "already 
 pacing the green terraces which sparkled with the 
 sweet morning dew, which lay twinkling, also, on a 
 flowery wilderness of trim parterres, and on the crisp 
 walls of the dark box hedges, under which marble
 
 THE VIRGINIANS. 22/ 
 
 fauns and dryads were cooling themselves, whilst a 
 thousand birds sang, the fountains plashed and glittered 
 in the rosy morning sunshine, and the rooks cawed 
 from the great wood." 
 
 Admirable as is the setting, the dialogue is worthy 
 of it. Nor was the baroness disappointed in the 
 young Mohock : she talked of none but him, she 
 praised his courage and address, until his cousins 
 were weary of his name ; and, with a rare confidence, 
 she told him the story of the house, and showed him 
 the room where his grandfather used to sleep, and the 
 secret cupboard where Mr Holt, the Jesuit, concealed 
 his papers. But sentiment was not natural to her, 
 and she very soon put it aside. With the greatest cun- 
 ning she held up the absurd Maria to ridicule before 
 the enamoured Virginian. "She takes liberties with 
 herself," said the old lady, drinking from a great glass 
 of negus. "She never had a good constitution. She 
 is forty-one years old. All her upper teeth are false, 
 and she can't eat with them." What words could have 
 been more cleverly devised than these to kill the 
 passion of love in a boy's heart ? But the baroness 
 did more ; she did not scruple to steal the comprom- 
 ising letter which bound Harry to his Maria, and she 
 only failed to separate the two because she did not 
 rightly measure the depth of the boy's loyalty. 
 
 Above all, she wished that Harry should not grow 
 up a milksop. She fondly believed that her nephew 
 was leading not merely a merry life, but a wicked one,
 
 228 THACKERAY. 
 
 and had she known the truth she would have been 
 bitterly disappointed. Even when the scapegrace was 
 arrested she was still disposed to help him, provided 
 he was not too deeply committed, for avarice quarrelled 
 in her heart with affection, and in the old lady's 
 eyes her own advantage still came first. Yet when 
 Harry rejected her terms she was sincerely proud of 
 him ; she was delighted at the contempt with which 
 he treated her lawyer ; indeed she liked nothing better 
 than to see a man insolent in adversity. And when 
 her nephew was overwhelmed with ruin she gave him 
 the soundest advice. " ' Fiddle-de-dee, sir ! ' said she. 
 ' Everybody has to put up with impertinences ; and if 
 you get a box on the ear, now you are poor and 
 cast down, you must say nothing about it ; bear it with 
 a smile, and, if you can, revenge it ten years later. 
 Mot qui vans park, sir ! — do you suppose I have had 
 no humble-pie to eat? All of us in our turn are 
 called upon to swallow it ; and now you are no longer 
 the Fortunate Youth, be the Clever Youth, and win 
 back the place you have lost by ill-luck.'" 
 
 Dr Tusher's widow no doubt had been given plenty 
 of humble-pie, but she was endowed with a tempera- 
 ment which nothing could dismay, and at every point 
 she was her nephew's superior. Yet keenly as she was 
 interested in men and women, she found a still keener 
 enjoyment in gambling, and she was never so happy 
 as at the green table. " The cards," said she, in a 
 passage of admirable philosophy, "don't cheat. A
 
 THE EDITORSHIP OF THE CORNHIIJ.. 229 
 
 bad hand teUs you the truth to your face ; and there 
 is nothing so flattering in the world as a good suite 
 of trumps." So the baroness is drawn cynical and 
 imperious, and from beginning to end she is consist- 
 ent and alive. For once Thackeray was determined 
 to depict a character without pointing a moral or 
 embellishing a sentiment, and though we may regret 
 the somewhat tedious surroundings in which Madame 
 de Bernstein finds herself, we would not change a 
 single touch in her admirable portrait. 
 
 Before the last number of The Virginians was pub- 
 lished, Thackeray had undertaken the editorship of The 
 Cornhill, an enterprise which brought wealth and fame 
 to all concerned with it. The hour was propitious, 
 and the man was found. The magazines of 1859 were, 
 with few exceptions, of a grave and sober suit. The 
 Quarterly and The Edinburgh had not yet lost their 
 autocracy ; they still dictated what the world should 
 think upon all matters of politics and literature. Black- 
 wood^s alone succeeded in combining instruction with 
 amusement, and its example was clearly worth follow- 
 ing. Nor could a better figurehead be found for the 
 ship which George Smith was about to launch than 
 the author of The Virginians. Thackeray's name 
 was familiar to the whole English-speaking world, and 
 while the slightest essay which he wrote himself was 
 sure of attention, he was distinguished enough to enrol 
 under his banner the greatest of the land. Moreover, 
 the public taste was not yet debauched by "popular"
 
 230 THACKERAY. 
 
 literature, and it is not wonderful that the liberal energy 
 of George Smith was instantly rewarded. 
 
 But the founder of The Cornhill did not make his 
 happy choice without hesitation. His first intention was 
 to rely upon Thackeray for a long story, and to intrust 
 the editorship to another hand. But when Tom Hughes 
 declined his aid, on the ground that he was pledged to 
 another house, the publisher invited Thackeray to take 
 the editor's chair, and it was under Thackeray's auspices 
 that the first number of T]ie CornhiU appeared. First 
 of all a title was necessary, and it was Thackeray 
 who hit upon the obvious yet distinguished name by 
 which the magazine has been known for nearly half 
 a century. In September 1859 he wrote to George 
 Smith from Coire, in Switzerland, telling him that St 
 Lucius, the founder of St Peter's Church, Cornhill, was 
 buried there. " Help us, good St Lucius ! " he ex- 
 claimed, and St Lucius in return gave him the happy 
 inspiration. Six days later the title was found: "The 
 only name I can think of as yet is ' The Cornhill 
 Magazine.' It has a sound of jollity and abundance 
 about it." The proprietor welcomed the suggestion, 
 and on January i, i860, the first number appeared. 
 Its success was instant and overwhelming.^ " It was 
 the literary event of the year," said its proud founder ; 
 "along Cornhill nothing was to be seen but people 
 
 ^ See Mrs Riclimond Ritchie's " First Number of The Cornhill" 
 in The Cornhill of July 1896, and Mr G. M. Smith's "Our Birth 
 and Parentage" in The Cornhill of Jarwiary 1901.
 
 THE EDITORSHIP OF THE CORNHILL. 23 1 
 
 carrying bundles of the orange - coloured magazine." 
 Of the first number 120,000 copies were sold, and 
 while the commercial triumph was never doubtful, the 
 magazine won the esteem of all the best judges. 
 Monckton Milnes thought it "almost too good both 
 for the public it was written for and for the money 
 it had to earn." Even FitzGerald, rarely roused to 
 enthusiasm, pronounced the first number "famous," 
 though his eagle-eye saw "the cockney let in" at 
 the second number. 
 
 The success was well deserved and not surprising. 
 Not only did Thackeray attract the wisest contributors, 
 but George Smith was " lavish to recklessness," ^ and 
 the first number could hardly be surpassed in interest 
 and variety. Mr Anthony TroUope opened with the 
 first chapters of Framley Parsonage, Thackeray himself 
 began Lovel the Widoiver, and men so distinguished 
 as Sir John Bowring and Sir John Burgoyne were 
 content to suppress their names and give their know- 
 ledge. In brief, there was enough in the new maga- 
 zine to attract all readers ; the generous founder was 
 justified of his liberality ; and Thackeray took a frank 
 delight in his victory. No sooner was the first number 
 
 ^ Mr Smith's figures are more eloquent than pages of comment. 
 The largest sum he paid for a novel was £^000, which was ex- 
 changed for Romola. The highest rate at which short articles were 
 rewarded was £,\2, 12s. a page, which Thackeray received for The 
 Roundabout Papers, and the most ever spent upon a single number 
 was ;iCii83, 3s. 8d. These figures might well turn the magazine- 
 writer of to-day green with envy.
 
 232 THACKERAY. 
 
 published than with a boyisli enthusiasm, characteristic 
 of him, he went oft* to Paris for a hoHday. During 
 these happy days he could not sleep, so he said, " for 
 counting up his subscriliers." He told Mr James T. 
 Fields, who found him in the Rue de la Paix half 
 delirious with joy, that " London was not big enough 
 to contain him, and he was obliged to add Paris to 
 his residence." He was eager to buy pocketfuls of 
 diamonds, that he might spend something at least 
 of his princely income; and if he saw half-a-dozen 
 Parisians chatting together, he was sure that news of 
 The CornJiill had reached France, and that the circu- 
 lation was still going up. But not only did he 
 feel a private joy in his success ; he blew the 
 trumpet of The CornJiill with a public and a signal 
 flourish. In a paper, entitled 0)i Some Late Great 
 Victories, he celebrates his own and his proprietor's 
 triumph. He fancies the Imperator standing on the 
 steps of the temple on the Mons Frumentarius, and 
 addressing the citizens. " Quirites," says he, " in 
 our campaign of six months we have been engaged 
 six times, and in each action have taken near upon 
 a hundred thousand prisoners. Go to ! What are other 
 magazines compared to our magazine ? " 
 
 But in the cup of victory there was already a bitter 
 drop ; there were already thorns in the cushion which 
 covered the throne of editorial state. Thackeray, in 
 fact, soon found the chair, in which at the outset 
 he took so just a pride, anything but comfortable. He
 
 THE EDITORSHIP OF THE CORNHILL. 233 
 
 had neither the sense of business which distinguishes tlie 
 perfect editor, nor the hard heart which makes it easy 
 to reject a proffered contribution. He was indifferent 
 to the stings of adverse criticism. The shillelaghs of 
 all Donnybrook hurtled round his impavid head. But 
 he could not bear to refuse the idle poetry or the 
 foolish prose of those who thought their happiness de- 
 pended upon his acceptance of their wares. " Before 
 I was an editor," he wrote, " I did not like the post- 
 man much ; but now ! " It was in vain that he urged 
 his correspondents to address their letters to the office 
 of the magazine. He was pursued by complaints and 
 entreaties even to his own door. Wherever he sat 
 down, there was the thorn awaiting him, and he 
 knew no remedy but to get rid of the editorial 
 cushion for ever. In May 1862, then, he resigned. 
 "I had rather have a quiet life than gold-lace and 
 epaulets," he said, in a characteristic letter of farewell, 
 "and deeper than ever did plummet sound, I fling 
 my speaking-trumpet." But though he resigned his 
 editorship, he did not cease to contribute. " Let my 
 successor command 71ie Cornhin," wrote he, "giving 
 me always a passage on board ; and if the printer's 
 boy rings at my door of an early morning, with a 
 message that there are three pages wanting or four 
 too much, I will send out my benediction to that 
 printer's boy, and take t'other half-hour's doze." 
 
 However, Thackeray's success is indisputable. The 
 Cornhill in his hands was not a mere rag-bag of odds
 
 234 THACKERAY. 
 
 and ends ; it was a genuine magazine of literature, and 
 the readers and writers of this age may look upon it 
 with an envious regret. The vast interest which it 
 excited, the vast circulation which it achieved, would 
 be impossible to-day ; nor can we contemplate the 
 change which has come over the public taste with 
 equanimity. The best books are for the few now, as 
 always ; but magazines make a direct appeal to the 
 people, and survive only by the people's favour. Forty 
 years ago Tennyson and Swinburne, Locker and 
 Matthew Arnold, Lytton and Sir John Herschel, Sir 
 James Stephen and Washington Irving, could ensure 
 a generous publisher a hundred thousand subscribers. 
 To-day they would be powerless to attract. They were 
 not "bright"; they were not "chatty"; they were 
 poets and men of letters giving their best and winning 
 their proper reward. Contrast Thackeray's Cornhill 
 with the printed stuff that is read to shreds in every 
 'bus and railroad of the kingdom, and you may measure 
 the disastrous change which has come over the public 
 taste. Can anything be more ignoble than the in- 
 coherent, useless information, the ruthless uncovering 
 of privacy, which are the distinguishing marks of our 
 popular magazines ? And against this irrelevant gossip 
 the best wits of the age would fight in vain ; yet 
 pestered though Thackeray was by thorns in his 
 cushion, he was still an editor who might treat his 
 contributors with generosity and his subscribers with 
 respect.
 
 THE EDITORSHIP OF THE CORNHILL. 235 
 
 Of Thackeray's own contributions to The Cornhill 
 there is little to say. Lovel the Widoiver is the trans- 
 lation into another medium of a little play — A Sheep 
 i?i Wolf's Clothing — which Thackeray composed for 
 his friends. It contains the same reminiscences, the 
 same reflections, which illumine Thackeray's larger 
 works. Mr Batchelor, like the author of his being, 
 purchases a paper which brings him more experience 
 than profit, and assumes the role, generally enacted 
 by Pendennis, of special providence to all the char- 
 acters of the story. But it is neither fresh nor spark- 
 ling, and little else need be said of it than that it 
 made its first appearance in the first number of The 
 Cornhill side by side with Franiley Parsonage, and 
 that doubtless it satisfied a public loyally determined 
 to admire all that came from Thackeray's pen. Nor 
 was Philip a more genuine success. Though it was 
 built upon an ampler scale, and expressed a higher 
 ambition, it is formless and void. It bears upon its 
 pages all the signs of fatigue. Neither the action nor 
 the characters progress at more than a foot's pace ; 
 the same situation recurs with a wearisome iteration ; 
 the hero is always poor and always quarrelling with 
 his bread and butter ; and when the split panel of a 
 carriage — surely a clumsy artifice — reveals old Ring- 
 wood's will, tke reader can but be delighted that never 
 again will Philip take counsel with Pendennis, the 
 Cynic, and his too amiable Laura. 
 
 At the same time, Philip disarms criticism. No one
 
 236 THACKERAY, 
 
 was more honestly conscious of its defects than Thack- 
 eray himself. He knew that it was a mere echo from 
 the past, and he spoke of it in the tone of tired de- 
 preciation. " Oh, it's weary work," he wrote to Mr 
 George Smith. " I don't know whether you or I should 
 be most pitied." When Elwin, the truest of his friends, 
 praised it, Thackeray did not hesitate to expose its 
 weakness. " I have told my tale in the novel depart- 
 ment," said he. " I can repeat old things in a 
 pleasant way, but I have nothing fresh to say. I get 
 sick of my task when I am ill, and think, Good 
 heavens ! what is all this stuff about ? " There is a 
 deep pathos in Thackeray's disgust at his own work. 
 Yet the disgust and the pathos were perfectly sincere. 
 To rewrite the early chapters of his autobiography, to 
 tell the thrice -told tale of a young journalist's fight 
 with poverty, was a hopeless task, and one which he 
 probably would not have undertaken, had not ill-health 
 hampered his imagination. 
 
 But when he said that he had " told his tale in the 
 novel department," he was unduly depreciative. In 
 Denis Duval, unhappily left a fragment at his death, he 
 recovered his old mastery, he displayed his old style. 
 Better than this, he suppressed himself more rigidly than 
 he had ever done, save in Barry Lyndon and Esmond. 
 He aimed with perfect deliberation at the reproduction 
 of a certain period in which there was no scope for 
 "snarling cynical remarks" nor trite moralities. In 
 other words, he made a return to history, always his
 
 THE EDITORSHIP OF THE CORNHILL. 237 
 
 favourite pursuit, and he studied his characters and 
 their environment with a rare diligence. Moreover, 
 as though to compensate for the broken narrative, 
 Thackeray left behind a set of notes which reveal to 
 us the birth and progress of the story. For once, at 
 any rate, the novelist was master of his material ; for 
 once he refused to follow whither his puppets led 
 him. The germ of his plot may be found in The 
 A?mual Register of 1782, where the true history is 
 told of M. de la Motte and the traitor Liitterloh. 
 But how liberally has the author's imagination trans- 
 lated fact into fiction ! With how deft a hand has 
 he dressed the dry bones of truth in the trappings of 
 romance ! And while the notes upon JDe?iis Duvai, 
 afterwards published by Mr Greenwood, are a lucid 
 commentary upon so much of the story as we possess, 
 they prove with how fine a spirit the unwritten chapters 
 might have been informed. We should have had an 
 account of Pearson's splendid battle with Paul Jones, 
 the Pirate ; we should have been told how Denis Duval, 
 chained in the hold of a Dutch East Indiaman, was 
 rescued by the captain of a Kingston privateer ; nor 
 would this have been the last of Denis's adventures, for 
 he was destined to rise by hard work and hard service, 
 to see fighting in France and Spain and America, to 
 witness the execution of Major Andre, and to prove 
 himself in all latitudes a proper hero of romance. 
 Then he was to encounter horse-thieves and smugglers ; 
 he was to take part in the Deal riots, and to oppose
 
 238 THACKERAY. 
 
 the great Mackerel party, of which his grandfather, 
 the old perriiqiiier, was an eminent member. 
 
 Indeed, the unwritten chapters of the book would 
 have been salt with the sea- spray and red with the 
 blood of fighting men. Above all, as if to show up 
 his own familiar practice, in Denis Duval Thackeray 
 had left nothing to chance. He had studied the 
 topography and government of Winchelsea, the scene 
 of his story, with the utmost care. He had noted 
 its three gates, its mayor and twelve jurats, its privi- 
 lege of "sending canopy- bearers to a coronation"; 
 he had made researches into the French Reformed 
 Church, whose members had a settlement at Rye — 
 in brief, he had overlooked nothing which might 
 throw light upon his period and his personages. Yet 
 he subordinated the truth to a romantic effect with 
 so delicate a tact that there is never a suspicion of 
 pedantry in the book. In other words, he is not 
 the slave of facts, and to compare his note-book with 
 the unfinished fragment is an excellent lesson in the 
 art of fiction. Admirable as are the characters who 
 play their parts in the drama, it is the harmoniously 
 consistent atmosphere of the story which wins our 
 highest respect, and intensifies the regret that so fine 
 a work was cruelly interrupted. Nor did its quality 
 lack appreciation. "In respect of earnest feeling," 
 said Charles Dickens, " far-seeing purpose, character, 
 incident, and a certain loving picturesqueness blending 
 the whole, I believe Denis Duval to be much the
 
 THE EDITORSHIP OF THE CORNHILL. 239 
 
 best of his works " ; to which high tribute, generously 
 paid by a great craftsman to his colleague, there is 
 no word to add. 
 
 But besides his novels, Thackeray contributed to The 
 Cornhill a set of essays called The Roundabout Papers, 
 which contain much of his best writing. Mellower in 
 judgment, maturer in temper, than his earlier essays, 
 they are enlivened by a serious gaiety, an amiable re- 
 flection which their author rarely equalled. Their 
 excellence is not surprising, because to write essays 
 was at once the talent and the bane of Thackeray. 
 He held opinions upon all subjects, and he liked to 
 express them — a liking which discursively interrupted 
 the progress of his stories. But in The Roundabout 
 Papers he was preaching about himself, and the world, 
 not about the puppets of his own creation, and he 
 could be as desultory as he chose, without defeating 
 his own purpose. FitzGerald declared that as he read 
 them, he heard Thackeray "talking to him," and though 
 "conversation" is not in general the test of a good 
 book, the essayist may easily be forgiven if he talks to 
 his readers. Thackeray, moreover, was checked by the 
 necessities of the magazine to a concision that you do not 
 often find in his works, and this simple restraint gave 
 a fine measure and rhythm to his prose. Egoism is, 
 as it should be, the essence of the papers. Thackeray 
 discourses of his youth, his travels, and his method 
 of writing, with the regretful geniality of an oldster 
 looking back upon the past. With an affectation
 
 240 THACKERAY. 
 
 of garrulity, he records his pleasant reminiscences. 
 Now, he pictures himself as a " lazy, idle boy," living 
 in fancy with Dumas' musketeers, or returning home 
 from school hungry and with an empty pocket. Now, 
 he recalls the golden days of youth, "when the stage 
 was covered with angels, who sang, acted, and danced," 
 when Duvernay and Sontag shone star - like in the 
 theatre. " Ah, Ronzi de Begnis, thou lovely one ! " 
 he exclaims ; " Ah, Caradori, thou smiling angel ! 
 Ah, Malibran ! " Thus he praises the tempus actum, 
 like the old fogey he liked to think himself; thus he 
 deplores the deterioration of women, and the lament- 
 able taste of the young fellows, who still found beauty 
 in the actresses of a degenerate age. 
 
 Then he strikes a sterner note, and in a panegyric of 
 Macaulay and Washington Irving, sings the praises of 
 his own craft. " We may not win the baton or the 
 epaulettes," said he, " but God give us strength to 
 guard the honour of the flag." Or he rises to a just 
 indignation against the policy of America. Or he 
 eloquently advocates, in an essay On Ribbons, " an 
 order of Britannia " for the unnamed heroes of the 
 merchant service. But throughout these last essays 
 his sympathies are wider and deeper than you expect 
 in this castigator of human folly. Tom Sayers' victory 
 over Heenan awoke his enthusiasm. "If I were 
 absolute king," says he, " I would send Tom Sayers 
 to the mill for a month, and make him Sir Thomas 
 on coming out of Clerkenwell." He is happy, as usual,
 
 THE EDITORSHIP OF THE CORNHILL. 24 1 
 
 in remembering France, and the thought of Desseins' 
 hostelry evokes a sympathetic memory not only of his 
 own youth, but of Sterne, Brummel, and other birds 
 of passage, who in days of yore sojourned at Calais. 
 The Roundabotit Papers, in brief, show the best side of 
 Thackeray, and suggest, that though Thackeray could 
 not refrain from essay-writing even in his novels, how 
 brilliant an essayist was lost in the author of Vaniiy 
 Fair. 
 
 Edward FitzGerald noted as a characteristic of these 
 last papers a quick sensitiveness to adverse criticism 
 — a nervous resentment against the misunderstanding 
 of foolish persons. It is not only that Thackeray 
 administers — in an essay On Screens in Dining-Roonis 
 — a well-deserved castigation to Edmund Yates, whom 
 he invites to " put up your note-book ; walk out of 
 the hall ; and leave gentlemen alone who would be 
 private, and wish you no harm " ; he displays an 
 inclination to take offence, which was alien to his 
 nature. This FitzGerald attributed to ill-health ; and 
 it is true that his friends had observed a recurring 
 fatigue. Yet again and again he rallied, and for a 
 while anxiety was dispelled. The respite was not for 
 long ; his work was done ; towards the end of the 
 year 1863 he was gravely ill; and on the morning of 
 Christmas Eve he died without pain or warning. Of 
 death he had no fear : in Mrs Ritchie's words, " he was 
 not sorry to go." He had faced the end before with an 
 easy mind and a confident trust. " Those we love can 
 
 Q
 
 242 THACKERAY. 
 
 but walk down to the pier with us " — he had written 
 some years before to Mrs Proctor — "the voyage we 
 must make alone. Except for the young or very 
 happy, I cannot say I'm sorry for any one who dies." 
 Not only did he look upon death with composure ; he 
 could contemplate with satisfaction twenty years of 
 unremitting toil, and reflect that he had built his own 
 monument. Death, then, had less regret for its victim 
 than for his friends. He was mourned by thousands, 
 who knew him only by his works, as well as by those 
 whom intimacy permitted to understand their loss. 
 FitzGerald (the oldest, most faithful of his friends, 
 yet one of how many !) sat moping about him in his 
 " suburb grange," and reading his books, and thinking 
 he would " hear his step up the stairs to this Lodging 
 as in old Charlotte Street thirty years ago." And 
 without doubt or question we may echo FitzGerald's 
 informal epitaph : " a great Figure has sunk under 
 Earth."
 
 243 
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 
 THE WRITER AND THE MAN.^ 
 
 Thackeray possessed in a greater measure than any 
 other English writer the style coulant, which Baudelaire 
 ascribed in dispraise to George Sand. His words flow 
 like snow-water upon the mountain-side. He could no 
 more restrain the current of his prose than a gentle 
 slope could turn a rivulet back upon its course. His 
 sentences dash one over the other in an often aimless 
 succession, as though impelled by a force independent 
 of their author. The style, as employed by Thackeray, 
 has its obvious qualities and defects. It is so easy 
 that it may be followed by the idlest reader, who 
 willingly applies to Hterature the test of conversation. 
 The thread of argument or of character is so loosely 
 held that it need not elude a half-awakened attention. 
 
 ^ In this last chapter I propose to regather the threads, to resume 
 as briefly as may be the traits, which mark Thackeray off from his 
 fellows both as a writer and as a man. Much has been said in the 
 preceding chapters on those subjects, and I may perhaps be for- 
 given if, for the sake of completeness, I am now and again guilty of 
 repetition.
 
 244 THACKERAY. 
 
 On the other hand, the style must needs be at 
 times inaccurate and undistinguished. The solecisms 
 of which he is guilty, and they are not few, may 
 readily be forgiven. It is more difficult to pardon the 
 frequent lack of distinction, especially as in Esmo7id 
 Thackeray proved that he could write, if he would, 
 with perfect artistry. But the method of his more 
 familiar books seems the result less of artifice than 
 of temperament. He seldom gives you the impres- 
 sion that he has studied to produce a certain effect. 
 An effect is there, of course, facile and various, but 
 beyond his management. He is so little conscious 
 of his craft that he rarely arrives at the right phrase, 
 thus presenting an obvious contrast to Disraeli, who, 
 often careless in composition, yet sowed his pages with 
 pearls of speech which time cannot dim. But how 
 little do we take away from the most of Thackeray 
 beyond a general impression of gentlemanly ease ! 
 
 From this it follows that he possessed no economy of 
 speech. He never used one word, if a page and a half 
 could adequately express the meaning ; and at all save 
 his high moments you miss a controlling hand, a 
 settled purpose. Nor is this remarkable, when you 
 recall the shifts and starts in which he did his work. 
 He was of those who write better anywhere than 
 in their own house. He would carry his unfinished 
 manuscript to Greenwich with him, and write a chapter 
 after dinner, or he would go off to Paris, and compose 
 as he went. " I should never be at home," he told
 
 THE WRITER AND THE MAN. 245 
 
 Elwin, " if I could help it. ... I write less at home 
 than anywhere. I did not write ten pages of The 
 Newcomes in that house at Brompton. . . . This " 
 — meaning a hotel — " is the best place to work in." 
 
 While Thackeray left the words to look after them- 
 selves, he confesses himself the humble slave of his 
 own characters. " Once created," said he, " they lead 
 me, and I follow where they direct." He devised 
 his actors as by instinct, and without realising the 
 full meaning of the drama in which they played their 
 part. " I have no idea where it all comes from," 
 he told Elwin. " I have never seen the people I 
 describe, nor heard the conversations I put down. 
 I am often astonished myself to read it when I have 
 got it on paper." It is not strange, therefore, that 
 he regarded the personages in his own dramas as quite 
 outside himself. "I have been surprised," says he, "at 
 the observations made by some of my characters. It 
 seems as if an occult power was moving the pen." 
 And it was precisely this externality which linked 
 Thackeray and his characters in the bonds of acquaint- 
 ance. Had they been the deliberate and conscious 
 creations of his brain, they would have been at once 
 more and less familiar to him. He would have re- 
 membered precisely where the strings lay which pulled 
 the figures ; but he could not have said, " I know the 
 people utterly — I know the sound of their voices." He 
 would not have seen Philip Firmin in a chance visitor ; 
 he would not have recognised the drunken swagger
 
 246 THACKERAY. 
 
 of Captain Costigan, when he met him, years after 
 his creation, in a tavern. We may be quite sure that 
 he never encountered Sir Francis or Beatrix Esmond, 
 for these he made himself; but the majority of his 
 characters grew without his knowledge, and even against 
 his will. "That turning back to the old pages," he 
 murmurs in a passage of genuine lament, "produces 
 anything but elation of mind. Would you not pay a 
 pretty fine to be able to cancel some of them ? Ah, 
 the sad old pages, the dull old pages ! " 
 
 It was this fatality, this frank obedience to his own 
 puppets and his own pen, which explains the frequent 
 formlessness of Thackeray's work. But though he per- 
 mitted most of his books to write themselves, it must 
 not be thought that his style was uniformly hazardous. 
 Despite its occasional inaccuracy, despite its loose tex- 
 ture, it has many shining qualities. It is graphic, various, 
 and at times eloquent. It is easy to recall a hundred 
 passages which would entitle Thackeray to a high place 
 among the writers of English. The Waterloo chapters 
 of Vanity Fair, much of Esmond, Harry Warrington's 
 first visit to England, Denis Duval's journey to London, 
 — these, to name but a few, are touched by the hand 
 of a master, who need fear comparison with none. 
 Even where Thackeray's prose is least under control, 
 it inspires no more than his own regret that he did 
 not write "a completely good book." For it is always 
 the prose of a man of letters. 
 
 Now, in Thackeray's time scholarship was not fashion-
 
 THE WRITER AND THE MAN. 247 
 
 able. Neither Dickens nor Bulwer (save in his last 
 novels) gives you a sense of literary allusion. But 
 Thackeray, in his most careless mood, suggests the 
 classics or hints at the eighteenth century. As he 
 wrote rather as an essayist than as a novelist, as his 
 style was a sincere, untrammelled expression of his 
 mind, he reveals his literary preferences by a thousand 
 light touches. His reading, if not wide, was deep. 
 He was perfectly familiar with both the Augustan 
 ages. Horace he knew best of all, and quoted 
 most constantly. Nothing pleases him better than 
 to allude in a phrase to his favourite poet. " Nuper 
 — in former days — I too have militated," — thus he 
 writes in The Rou?idabout Papers^ — " the years slip away 
 fugacius;" and again, "To-morrow the diffugient snows 
 will give place to Spring." Above all, he loved the 
 Augustan doctrine of an easy life. The contemner of 
 Swift naturally found Juvenal a "truculent brute," but 
 he felt a natural sympathy for the satirist of Venusia, 
 who timidly avoided unpleasant themes, and who, had 
 he lived in the nineteenth century, would have been 
 a man about town, and have haunted the very clubs 
 to which Thackeray himself belonged. And when he 
 chose to express himself in verse, he echoed with skill 
 and fidelity both the manner and the philosophy of 
 Horace. 
 
 To our own Augustan age his Lectures on the Humour- 
 ists are an eloquent, if misleading, tribute. He was, after 
 them, the eloquent champion of simpUcity. That which
 
 248 THACKERAY. 
 
 he prized most highly in his own work was the rigid 
 exclusion of barbarous or fantastic words, the stern 
 avoidance of involved sentences. And what he avoided 
 himself, he sternly reprobated in others. See how wittily, 
 in his Essay 071 Thunder and Small Beer, he exposes the 
 turgid sentences of T/ie Times, with how hot an iron he 
 brands the pompous Latin of the critic. "That is 
 proper economy," says he of the Thunderer's finest 
 sentence, "as you see a buck from Holywell Street 
 put every pinchbeck pin, ring, and chain which he 
 possesses about his shirt, hands, and waistcoat, and then 
 go out and cut a dash in the park, or swagger with his 
 order to the theatre." But Thackeray would have 
 his ornaments few and appropriate. Maybe the Augus- 
 tan ideal, simplex immditiis, impoverished his style ; 
 maybe he would have been the greater for a deeper 
 consciousness of himself and his appearance. And 
 though he loyally followed the simplifiers of our 
 English tongue, he knew and admired the better 
 models. If we assume, as we may, that General Lam- 
 bert, of The Virginiaiis, was his mouthpiece, he loved 
 Rabelais and Burton with a constant heart, though he 
 did not admit their influence. Lamb he canonised, and 
 he could quote to excellent purpose Richard Graves' 
 Spiritual Quixote, a piece of satire ill deserving the 
 oblivion into which it has fallen. Again, he tells us that 
 Montaigne and Howell's Letters were his " bedside 
 books." " If I wake at night," said he, " I have one or 
 other of them to prattle me to sleep again." But it was
 
 THE WRITER AND THE MAN. 249 
 
 not until he attained the serene egoism of The Round- 
 about Papers that either of these writers directed his 
 footsteps, and though they solaced his sleepless nights, 
 by temper and sympathy he remained a true Augustan. 
 
 In nothing did he show himself a man of letters 
 more clearly than in his versatility. He could bend 
 his mind to more than one kind of literature. For him 
 the English language was an instrument upon which he 
 could play many measures. In his hands it was apt for 
 satire or reflection, for fiction or criticism. Though he 
 was often careless of his own style, he had a quick 
 perception of style in others, as is proved by his imita- 
 tions of the novelists, the very perfection of criticism. 
 It is doubtful whether Disraeli took much pleasure in 
 Codlingsby, which, nevertheless, touches off the extrava- 
 gances of his style with a wit which is still modest, with 
 a humour which will never lose its sparkle. Then, 
 again, he was a great hand at a controversy, as many 
 a mangled opponent found to his cost. And he could 
 turn easily from a full-length novel to the exquisite 
 fooling of a tale written for children. His Christmas 
 Books, though written in conformity with a prevailing 
 custom, are by no means the worst of his works, and he 
 seldom surpassed the amiable drollery and good humour 
 which keep The Rose and the Ring ever fresh. 
 
 Once upon a time he aspired to be a painter — he had 
 worked in a Parisian studio ; and it is therefore the more 
 remarkable that he is seldom deliberately " picturesque." 
 He does not, like the novelists of our own day, ladle
 
 250 THACKERAY. 
 
 his local colour out from a full bucket. He may weary 
 the reader with tedious sermons ; he never tries his 
 patience with purple passages of irrelevant description. 
 Indeed, he so sternly suppresses the external world 
 that when you recall his novels, you have but a faint 
 impression of the scene on which the drama is played. 
 The few landscapes which he sketches produce, from 
 their very rarity, an astonishing effect. There is, for 
 instance, a picture of Baden by night in The Newcomes^ 
 which presents the whole scene without the waste of a 
 word. " The lights twinkle in the booths under the 
 pretty lime avenues," — thus the passage runs. "The 
 hum of distant voices is heard ; the gambling palace 
 is all in a blaze ; it is an assembly night ; and from the 
 doors of the Conversation Rooms, as they open and close, 
 escape gusts of harmony. Behind on the little hill the 
 darkling woods lie calm, the edges of the fir-trees cut 
 sharp against the sky, which is clear with a crescent 
 moon." Again there is a keen sense of the open air 
 in the passage which describes Esmond's departure from 
 Newgate, and Temple Garden looking " like the garden 
 of Eden," and "the busy shining scene of the Thames 
 swarming with boats and barges " ; and, best of all, there 
 is the picture of Clavering, drawn with careful discrim- 
 ination, and the artist's eye on the object. For the rest, 
 Thackeray is more deeply interested in his characters 
 than in their environment ; and though his reticence is 
 vastly preferable to the ill-considered picturesqueness 
 nowadays so popular, we would gladly have exchanged
 
 THE WRITER AND THE MAN. 25 1 
 
 a hundred of his sermons for one deft sketch of an 
 EngHsh countryside or foreign watering-place. 
 
 It has been said more than once that Thackeray was • 
 impervious to the influences of his time. He never had 
 the Hterary measles ; he never submitted to the dictation 
 of coteries. He did not find himself by the sedulous 
 imitation of others. What he was at the beginning he 
 was at the end, — a man of letters, to whom time and 
 experience gave not a new style, but merely a better 
 control of his material. He lived through the Romantic 
 movement unscathed, and he borrowed not much else 
 from Balzac than a trick of keeping the characters he 
 had once created for another occasion. But he was 
 more intent to preserve their names than their personali- 
 ties, and got little else from the French literature, which 
 he knew well, than a few superfluous Gallicisms. Of his 
 own fancy he had not a high opinion. "One of 
 Dickens' immense superiorities over me," said he, "is 
 the great fecundity of his imagination. Perhaps Bulwer 
 is better than both of us in this quaUty ; his last book 
 written at fifty is fresher than anything he has ever 
 done." This statement hardly does justice to Thackeray's 
 talent. It is true that in such works as Philip he merely 
 repeated himself; but the repetition was the result of 
 fatigue ; and if imagination be anything better than the 
 invention of odd types and strange embroilments, 
 Thackeray had his share of it. To put a plain man 
 upon his legs is (maybe) a more difficult feat of fancy 
 than to depict a brigand, and Thackeray's triumph was
 
 252 THACKERAY. 
 
 won in the field of realism. Not that he practised the 
 method as it has been understood since his day, or that 
 he cared for the arid accumulation of superfluous facts. 
 On the contrary, he could neither suppress himself nor 
 forget the familiar tricks of the fairy story. But he 
 aspired always to be a painter of manners, an historian 
 of his own time, and this creditable aspiration gave an 
 air of reality to his novels. 
 
 His contemporaries believed that he was something 
 more than a novelist. In the simple, trusting view of 
 Charlotte Bronte, for instance, he shone as a social 
 regenerator, and he himself resolutely hoped to better 
 mankind. He complained that Byron never wrote 
 from his heart, and he forgot that the head, not the 
 heart, is the safer place wherefrom to write. So he 
 valued himself and was valued by others, not for his 
 admirable gifts of humorous portraiture, for his care- 
 ful dissection of human foibles, but for the idle work 
 of " social regeneration," which cannot live out its own 
 day, and for many tedious sermons. The truth is, 
 there were always two men in Thackeray, the senti- 
 mental moralist, whose obvious *' lessons " were long 
 since forgotten, and the keen-eyed ironist, for whom 
 life was an amusing game, whose rules were inde- 
 pendent of virtue, and in which the scoundrel was 
 most often victorious. It is this twofold character 
 which explains why the most of Thackeray's work was 
 marred by a kind of uncertainty, and justifies Carlyle's 
 admirable comment, — "a beautiful vein of genius lay
 
 THE WRITER AND THE MAN. 253 
 
 Struggling about in him." The genius never overcame 
 the struggle. When the ironist was disposed to take a 
 large view, the moralist interrupted his vision, and the 
 moralist was so tight bound to the superstitions of his 
 age, that he will probably never appear as great as he 
 did to some of his contemporaries. 
 
 And as the writer was perplexed by a twofold char- 
 acter, so also was the man. It would be easily possible, 
 without suppressing or twisting a single fact, to draw two 
 distinct and opposing Thackerays. The blackest portrait 
 we have of him is Disraeli's St Barbe, which is painted 
 in the darkest colours, and without relief. Now 
 St Barbe, in Endymion's phrase, is " the vainest, most 
 envious, and the most amusing of men." He " snarls 
 over the prosperity of every one in this world except the 
 snarler," He is a misanthrope, " because he finds 
 every one getting on in life except himself." When 
 Seymour Hicks goes to a party, " that fellow gets about 
 in a most extraordinary manner," complains St Barbe. 
 "Is it not disgusting? . . . No lord ever asked me to 
 dinner. But the aristocracy of this country is doomed." 
 When, however, he dines at the Neuchatel's, he takes 
 a frank delight in his host's magnificence, and only 
 regrets that he did not know the great man a year ago, 
 when he might have dedicated his novel to him. That 
 is one portrait — of the malicious, satirical dog — and it is 
 superfluous to say that it is overcharged. The other 
 portrait, painted in lighter colours, represents a man of 
 infinite sensibility, eager only to do good to his less
 
 2 54 THACKERAY. 
 
 fortunate neighbours, — a cynic, whose cynicism is but a 
 cloak for kindliness, a modest gentleman, equally alive 
 to his own defects and to the merits of others. Of 
 course neither portrait is true, because both are in- 
 human, and the truth will be found, as always, between 
 the two. But one thing is certain, if we may judge by 
 the memoirs of the time : Thackeray was not popular. 
 It was generally thought that this David, who had slain 
 many a titled Goliath, took a frank pleasure in the 
 society of the great. He was brusque in speech, and 
 quick in anger. He gave wanton offence to strangers, 
 who would not take the trouble to pierce beneath the 
 surface. When Anthony Trollope was first presented 
 to him, he murmured " How do ? " and turned his back. 
 Trollope, of course, effaced the first impression, but at 
 the time he was justly angry, and declared to George 
 Smith that had he not " been in his house for the first 
 time, he would have walked out of it." 
 
 With Thackeray's dislike of his baser confreres it is 
 possible to sympathise. He loved his craft, but not all 
 his fellow-craftsmen. His vanity was too great to bear 
 the life of Grub Street. From long commerce with 
 those whom he properly deemed his inferiors he was 
 sensitively alive to his own superiority. Though he 
 loved equality as a doctrine, he would permit no 
 equality between himself and his colleagues. "There 
 is a modus in rebus,'" said he wdth perfect justice ; "there 
 are certain lines which must be drawn : and I am only 
 half pleased, for my part, when Bob Bowstreet, whose
 
 THE WRITER AND THE MAN. 255 
 
 connection with letters is through PoHcemen X and Y, 
 and Tom Garbage, who is an esteemed contributor to The 
 Kennel Miscellany, propose to join fellowship as brother 
 literary men, slap me on the back, and call me old boy, 
 or by my Christian name." One can easily imagine how 
 he winced under the infliction of Tom Garbage, but 
 Tom Garbage and his kind are apt to take their revenge, 
 and Thackeray never cared to conciliate them. He 
 knew perfectly well that he was not a favourite. " All 
 people do not like me as you do," he wrote to Elwin. 
 " I sometimes think I am deservedly unpopular, and in 
 some cases I rather like it. Why should I want to be 
 liked by Jack and Tom ? . . . I know the Thackeray 
 that those fellows have imagined to themselves — a very 
 selfish, heartless, artful, morose, and designing man."^ 
 
 Indeed, it was in these colours that Thackeray too 
 often presented himself to the world. He appeared 
 morose, and even insolent, to many who had but a 
 superficial acquaintance with him. He was a big man 
 — he stood six feet two — who sometimes behaved like a 
 big boy. For him the world was still Greyfriars, with 
 himself head of the sixth form, and he did not 
 
 ^ It is unnecessary to discuss the dispute between Thackeray and 
 Edmund Yates further than to say that in this pubUc encounter 
 with Grub Street Thackeray seems to have been in the right. 
 It is true that Thackeray himself had not scrupled to hold up certain 
 of his contemporaries to ridicule. But fiction and the newspaper 
 should be tried by different standards. Moreover, five-and-forty 
 years ago personal journalism was not yet omnipotent, and 
 Thackeray had no resource but to protest against vi'hat he be- 
 lieved a breach of private confidence.
 
 256 THACKERAY. 
 
 scruple to bully the youngsters. It is not strange, 
 therefore, that he was disliked. Even Lord Houghton 
 admits an "inequality and occasional perversity in his 
 conduct," which, however, he attributes to illness. On 
 the other hand, he was naturally a man of quick feeling 
 and deep affection. But as irony and morals conflicted 
 in his novels, so superiority and amiability fought in his 
 .character. He would, an he could, have been at peace 
 with mankind. " Love," he said, " is a higher intel- 
 lectual exercise than hatred." When, in 1849, Lady 
 Blessington's treasures were sold by auction, the valet 
 wrote to his mistress in these terms : " M. Thackeray est 
 venu aussi, et avait les larmes aux yeux en partant. 
 C'est, peut-etre, la seule personne que j'ai vu reellement 
 affectee a votre depart." There is an unsolicited testi- 
 monial, the significance of which cannot be overlooked. 
 Moreover, Thackeray was often generous both in deed 
 and thought. His many acts of charity he was stern to 
 conceal, but he did not hide his appreciation of those 
 whom the people called his rivals. 
 
 How, then, shall we harmonise the conflicting 
 opinions ? John Blackwood, who knew and loved 
 him well, declared that he was a mixture of " bitterness 
 and warm feeling," which seems no more than the 
 truth. To this one he showed his bitterness, to that 
 his warm feeling, and each went off with his own story. 
 Nor is Mrs Ritchie's explanation incompatible. " He 
 was a diffident man," she says, " sensitive and easily
 
 THE WRITER AND THE MAN. 257 
 
 wounded, especially by any one for whom he had a 
 regard," and every one knows how easily diffidence 
 may be mistaken for pride, sensitiveness for ill- 
 temper. Thackeray, moreover, had fits of arrogance, 
 which may well have astounded the Philistine, and 
 nothing more clearly illustrates his twofold character 
 than an episode to be found in Lord Tennyson's Life. 
 Thackeray and Tennyson had dined together — it was 
 in 1846 — and Thackeray, full of confidence in his 
 own powers, had said of Catullus : " I do not rate 
 him highly. I could do better myself." The morrow 
 brought a more modest reflection. " My dear Alfred," 
 he wrote the next day, " I woke at two o'clock " — it 
 was the other Thackeray who woke — "and in a sort 
 of terror at a certain speech I had made about Catullus. 
 When I have dined, sometimes I believe myself to be 
 equal to the greatest painters and poets. That delusion 
 goes off, and then I know what a small fiddle mine is, 
 and what small tunes I play upon it. It was very 
 generous of you to give me an opportunity of recalling 
 a silly speech ; but at the time I thought I was making 
 a perfectly simple and satisfactory observation. Thus 
 far I must unbosom myself: though why should I be 
 uneasy at having made a conceited speech? It is 
 conceited not to wish to seem conceited." It is a 
 pleasant story, which illustrates both sides of Thackeray's 
 temperament, and helps us to resolve the riddle of his 
 character. 
 
 R
 
 258 THACKERAY. 
 
 His contemporaries, then, were compelled to judge 
 him with half the facts before them, and it is the 
 greater pity because many admirable qualities mitigated 
 the stern view taken by his enemies. He was liberally 
 endowed with the rare and simple virtues. He did not 
 always take himself and his art too seriously. " As for 
 posterity," he once said, " be sure that it will have its 
 own authors to read, and I know one who has very 
 little anxiety about its verdict." And though a belief in 
 immortality was no compensation to him, he faced the 
 adversity of his early years with conspicuous courage, 
 content to do his day's work, and win its reward, a 
 reward which would seem paltry in these days of 
 avarice. He never stooped to win an advantage by 
 vain advertisement, nor to achieve success by any 
 means derogatory to his high calling. But when pros- 
 perity came he delighted in it with the candour 
 of a big boy who had won a prize ; and nothing 
 could exceed the pleasure which he showed in his 
 house at Kensington, or in the immediate triumph of 
 The Cornhill. Early and late he liked to pose as 
 a man of the world, and that he was a haunter of 
 clubs is essential both to his life and work. Indeed, 
 it was this fact, coupled with an inverted snobbishness, 
 that exposed him to the charge of cynicism. Yet of 
 the two men, the cynic and the sentimentalist, who 
 made up Thackeray, one would have thought that 
 the sentimentalist most often predominated. And let 
 it be remembered, that if he turned the cold shoulder
 
 THE WRITER AND THE MAN. 259 
 
 to the passing stranger, the best of his contemporaries 
 — Alfred Tennyson and Edward FitzGerald — knew him 
 and loved him well. "A big mass of a soul, but 
 not strong in proportion " — such was Carlyle's verdict, 
 which we may accept in sympathy and understanding.
 
 INDEX. 
 
 America, Thackeray's visit to, 176 
 
 et seq. 
 An?iual Register, The, zyj. 
 Anti- Corn- Law Circular, The, 
 
 216. 
 
 Rack Kitchen, the, 21 et seq., 149. 
 Beauchamfs Career, 213. 
 Becher, Anne, mother of W. M. 
 
 Thackeray, i. 
 Blackwood's Magazine, 26, 229. 
 Book of Snobs, The, 79, 80, 8t, 84, 
 
 107, 121, 133. 
 Boszvell, Croker's, 26. 
 
 Capers and Anchovies, 36 n. 
 
 Carmichael-Smyth, Major, Thack- 
 eray's stepfather, 3, 16, 199 n. 
 
 Catherine, 33 and n., 34, 59, 6r. 
 
 Catherine Hayes, 34 et seq., 36 n. 
 
 Caution to Travellers, A, 45 11. 
 
 Cave of Harmony, the, 21 et seq., 
 200, 203. 
 
 Charterhouse School, Tiiackeray 
 at, 3 et seq. 
 
 Chimcera, The, 9. 
 
 Chronicle, The, 125, 154. 
 
 Codlingsby, 249. 
 
 Comic Tales and Sketches, 38 n. 
 
 Confessions of the Countess of 
 Strathinore, The, 73 and n. 
 
 Coningsby, 106, 109, 115, 119, 120. 
 
 Constitutional, The, 16, 17, 216. 
 
 Contrast, The, 24. 
 
 Conversations with Lord Byron, 
 151 n. 
 
 Corn hill. The, 229, 230 and n., 
 
 2321 233, 239, 258. 
 Cupid and Psyche, 38, 
 
 Dandies, the, 20, 24. 
 
 De Finibus, 142, 143. 
 
 De Juventute, 6. 
 
 Denis Duval, 236-238, 
 
 Devil's Wager, The, 15. 
 
 Diary of C. Jeames de la Pliiche, 
 
 38 and n. 
 Directions to Servants, 37. 
 
 East, Thackeray's travels in the, 
 
 57 et seq. 
 Edinburgh Review, The, 26, 27, 
 
 91, 229. 
 Elizabeth Brownrigge : a Tale, 
 
 28. 
 English Humourists of the Eigh- 
 teenth Century, The, 163-176, 
 
 179, 220, 247. 
 Esmond, 179-193, 220, 222, 223, 
 
 236, 244, 246. 
 Essay on Thunder and Small 
 
 Beer, 248. 
 Ethel Churchill, 24, 25, 28. 
 Examiner, The, 125, 154. 
 
 Fancy, The, 100 n. 
 
 FitzGerald, Edward, references to, 
 7, 10, 13, 54, ss, 231, 239, 241, 
 242, 259 — Letters of, 18, 29 n., 
 
 43- 
 Four Georges, The, 175, 179, 220. 
 Framley Parsonage, 231, 235.
 
 INDEX. 
 
 261 
 
 Eraser's Magazine, 11, 12, 13, 15, 
 25, 26, 27 n., 28, 32, 36, 38 n., 
 39. 40 n., 45 n., 62, 148, 153. 
 
 Galignant s Messenger, 17. 
 
 Germany, Thackeray's visit to, 10 
 et seq. 
 
 Gilbert Gurney, 152. 
 
 Gownsman, The, 9 and n. 
 
 Gronow's Renwiiscences, 114 n. 
 
 Grub Street, Thackeray's picture 
 of, in Pendennis, 146 et seq. — 
 his dislike of, 254, 255 and n. 
 
 History of Jonathan Wild the 
 Great, 33, 59, 61, 72. 
 
 History of Punch, 90 n. 
 
 History of Samuel Titmarsh and 
 the Great Hoggarty Diaj?iond, 
 The, 40 and n., 42, 43. 
 
 Hitherto Unidentified Contribu- 
 tions of VV. M. Thackeray to 
 ' Punch,' 217 n. 
 
 Hoggarty Diamond, The, 124. 
 
 Howell's Letters, 248. 
 
 Incognito, The, or Sins and Pecca- 
 dillos, 24. 
 
 India, Thackeray's early impres- 
 sions of, 2 et seq. 
 
 Ireland Sixty Years Since, 74 n. 
 
 Irish Sketch Book, The, 54, 56. 
 
 La Quinzaine Angloise d, Paris, 
 ou PArt de s'y rtii?ier en feu de 
 terns, 45 n. 
 
 Legend of Jawbrahim Heraudee, 
 The, 79. 
 
 L'Empire, ou dix ans sotts Na- 
 poleon, 66 n. 
 
 Letters of W, M. Thackeray, The, 
 162 n. 
 
 Letters to the Literati, 36. 
 
 Little Poinsinet, 45 n. 
 
 Lovel the Widower, 231, 235. 
 
 Luck of Barry Lyndon, The, 34, 
 56, 57, 59-76, 157, 236. 
 
 Matilda, 24. 
 
 Melmoth the Wanderer, 12. 
 Memoir of Lama 71 Blanchard, 157. 
 Mimoires of Casanova, the, 67, 74. 
 Mes Larmes, 126, 140. 
 Miscellanies, 39 n. 
 
 Mississippi Bubble, A, 178. 
 Miss Shum's Husband, 38. 
 Miss 'J'ickletoby's Lectures upon 
 
 English History, 79. 
 Modest Proposal, The, 170. 
 Monthly Mirror, The, 152. 
 Morning Chronicle, The, 36 n. 
 Morning Post, The, 37, 79. 
 Mr Brown's Letters to his Nephew, 
 
 88. 
 Mr Deuceace's Amours, 38. 
 Mrs Perkins's Ball, 91, 143. 
 Museum, The, 15. 
 
 Nation, The, 218. 
 
 National Standard, The, 13-16, 
 
 41, 45 n. 
 Newcoities, The, 194-216, 245, 250. 
 Newgate Calendar, The, 34. 
 New Monthly, The, 32. 
 New York Evening Post, The, 
 
 162 n. 
 Notes of a Journey from Cornhill 
 
 to Cairo, 57. 
 Novels by Eminent Hands, The, 
 
 On Haifa Loaf, 179. 
 0)1. Ribbons, 240. 
 
 On Screens in Dining-Rooms, 241. 
 On Some Late G?rat I'ictories, 232. 
 Oxford and Cambridge Magazine, 
 The, 194. 
 
 Pall Mall Gazette, The, 147, 150, 
 
 152, 205, 206. 
 Paris Sketch Book, The, 15, 45 and 
 
 n-, 52, 54- 
 Paris, Thackeray's residence in, 46 
 
 et seq. 
 Pelham, 138. 
 Pendennis, 4, 10, 36 n,, 122, 125- 
 
 154, IS9, 160, 195. 
 Philip, 32, 40, 235, 251. 
 Pickwick, 23. 
 
 Pictorial Ti7?ies, The, 106. 
 Plurality of Worlds, The, 7. 
 Punch, 38 n., 57, 77-79, 87-90, 
 
 217. 
 
 Quarterly Review, The, 26, 90, 117 
 and n., 119, 194, 229. 
 
 Recollections of Germany, 11.
 
 262 
 
 INDEX. 
 
 Red Herrings, the, 20, 11 1. 
 Rcgina, 28, 157. 
 Revolt of Islam, The, 9. 
 Rose and the Ring, The, 249. 
 Roundabout Papers, The, 52, 
 231 n., 239, 241, 247, 249. 
 
 " Sam Hall," 200 and n. 
 
 Second Funeral 0/ Napoleon, The, 
 
 50 and n. 
 Shabby Genteel Story, A, 32, 39 
 
 and n., 40, 41. 
 Sharp, John W., 22 and n. 
 Sheep in Wolf's Clothing, A, 235. 
 Sketches by Boz, 23, 46. 
 Snob, origin of the word, 8 n., 80, 
 
 81 and n., 87. 
 Snob Papers, The, 7, 86, 87. 
 Snob, The, 8 and n. 
 Spectator, The, 175. 
 Spiritual Quixote, The, 248. 
 Swift, Thackeray's portrait of, 165- 
 
 171, 184 n. 
 
 Tancred, 139. 
 
 Tatler, The, 184 and n. 
 
 Tennyson, Lord, references to, 7, 
 
 8, 13. 259— Z?7(f of, 257. 
 Thackeray, Richmond, father of 
 
 W. M. Thackeray, i. 
 Timbuctoo, parody of a prize 
 
 poem, 8, 
 Times, The, 17, 80 n. , 248. 
 Tobias Correspondence, The, 153. 
 Town, The, 131. 
 Travels in London, The, 88. 
 Tremendotis Adventures of Major 
 
 Gahagan, The, 36. 
 
 Vanity Fair, 13, 90-120, 124-126, 
 132, 133. 157. 182, 19s, 246. 
 
 Virginians, The, a Tale oj the 
 Last Century, 220-229, 248. 
 
 Way of the World, The, 93. 
 
 Yellowplush Papers, The, 36, 38 n. 
 
 THE END. 
 
 PRINTED BY WILLIAM BLACKWOOD AND SONS.
 
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