THE COLLECTOR OF SNOBS
Emerson, commenting upon the old saying that “No man is a hero to his
valet,” put the question: “What hero ever had a valet?” This goes to
prove that Emerson was not a reader of popular fiction; for if he had
been following the novels of William Makepeace Thackeray in “Fraser’s
Magazine,” he would have known that it is impossible for any hero to be
without a valet. In Dickens we enter into the lives of the poor, and in
Thackeray we enter into the lives of the rich, and it is hard for us to
decide which class has the greater claim to our pity.
Thackeray was bom in India, his father being a government official. They
tried to educate him at Cambridge, but it didn’t take, because he was
incorrigibly desultory, a big, good-natured fellow who loved eating and
drinking and gambling and good fellowship--everything, in short, but
hard work. He early lost his fortune, trying to publish a paper; then he
had to work, and became a contributor to “Punch,” and developed a
faculty for burlesque verses and satiric sketches.
In my youth there was general complaint that Thackeray was “a cynic.”
Let us settle that question at the outset; he was one of the most
sentimental souls that ever walked about the world in trousers. But he
had a pair of eyes, and he saw in the fashionable society around him a
hundred different varieties of snobs; he collected them into a “Book of
Snobs”--each one like a butterfly stuck on a pin. He went on to write a
series of novels, full of scoldings varied by ridicule of human vanity
and folly.
His first great work remains entirely neglected by the critics. “Barry
Lyndon” is a marvelous piece of sustained irony, the story of a capable
scoundrel, who makes his way in the great world by being just a little
sharper than the people he meets, and a little more honest with himself.
You recall how Milton, a devout and orthodox Puritan, could not refrain
from making Satan heroic, because Satan was a rebel and Milton was
another. We notice the same phenomenon in this case of Barry Lyndon, who
does every kind of rascal thing; yet the fact remains, he is living by
his wits, he is surviving in a world of privilege and power, and
Thackeray is secretly thrilled by him. That doubtless accounts for the
unpopularity of the story; for the average novel reader likes to have
his villains labeled, and not to mix his blacks and his whites.
The instinctive rebel in Thackeray shows himself still more plainly in
“Vanity Fair.” This time the villain is Becky Sharp, an utterly
heartless intriguer, selling her sex for money and power. Nevertheless,
she is a woman “on her own,” a little tiger-cat backed into a corner,
with all the world poking sticks at her; she fights back, and gets the
best of her enemies, and Thackeray cannot help making her the most
interesting figure in the book.
As a respectable Victorian sentimentalist, he did his best to provide us
with a foil for Becky, giving us Amelia Sedley, the perfect, submissive,
adoring female. The daughter of a wealthy merchant, Amelia has never had
a moment’s discomfort in her life. She is a model of the Victorian
virtues; she honors and serves the male members of her family, no matter
how selfish and worthless they may be. She has the brains of a
medium-sized rabbit, and after we have got to know her, we understand
why Victorian gentlemen sought refuge in interesting mistresses.
It has been said that in Thackeray’s novels all the good people are
fools and all the evil people are clever. Beatrix Esmond, the one woman
who rivals Becky Sharp in interest, is a cold, proud beauty, without
even Becky’s excuse of poverty; she schemes to marry a duke, and when he
is killed in a duel, she seeks to become the mistress of a prince, and
ends ignominously as the wife of a tutor and the widow of a bishop. The
Anti-Socialist Union of Great Britain, which exists to fight the “Reds,”
should begin its labors by excluding from all libraries these
devastating pictures of the manners and morals of the ruling classes.
I do not mean by this that Thackeray was consciously a Socialist; quite
the contrary. As a member of the ruling classes, he pleads with them to
be worthy of their high and agreeable destiny. How completely he
believed in the “gentleman” you can see by the treatment he gives to his
hero, Pendennis, a perfectly worthless young idler, and to Major
Pendennis, a cynical and depraved old rascal. Thackeray condones the
former and loves and pities the latter, and expects us to weep over the
closing picture of the old martinet, having lost his fortune, obliged to
dwell in a charity home with other indigent parasites. I speak for one
reader, who could have borne with entire equanimity to see the major at
work on the rock-pile, accompanied by all the other idle clubmen of
London.
Thackeray in his writings rebelled against some conventions of his
world, but in his every-day life he was as helpless as Amelia Sedley.
His wife became insane, so he fell victim of that superstition which
condemns the innocent partner in such a marriage to life-long celibacy.
Thackeray, enduring this infliction, seemed heroic to his friends, and
pitiful to us. He left it to a woman novelist, George Eliot, to set the
precedent of defiance to this especially idiotic tribal taboo. George
Eliot loved George Henry Lewes, who had an insane wife, and she went and
lived with Lewes for twenty-four years, until his death, and told all
the world about it. Thus we have one pleasant detail to record
concerning Victorian England.
In his early days Thackeray had lived poorly, because he had to; but
later he acquired a taste for expensive food, and especially drink, and
thereby ruined his health and died at the age of fifty-two. This, of
course, was devoutly concealed by his daughters, and explains the fact
that no biography was published. Like other conventional gentlemen, he
felt bound to provide incomes for these daughters, so he wasted his
time trying to get some government sinecure, first in the post office,
and then in the diplomatic service--the very kind of thing he exposed in
his stories. He took to lecturing, following in the foot-steps of
Dickens, but not enjoying the work, because he had nothing of the
showman in him, but on the contrary the English gentleman’s intense
reserve.
All this is what is called “gossip,” and is supposed to have nothing to
do with the works of a great writer. I record my belief, that the
character and life experiences of an artist make his works of art, in
the same way that a mold makes the image out of the liquid metal. The
quickest route to the understanding of any novelist or poet is to know
these personal details about him; and above all, his relationship to
those who paid him the money which kept him alive from day to day.
Whether he conforms, or whether he rebels, these money-forces condition
a man’s life.