The literary career of William Makepeace Thackeray has not a few
special features of its own that it is interesting to note at once. Of
all the more eminent writers of the Victorian Age, his life was the
shortest: he died in 1863 at the age of fifty-two, the age of
Shakespeare. His literary career of twenty-six years was shorter than
that of Carlyle, of Macaulay, Disraeli, Dickens, Trollope, George
Eliot, Froude, or Ruskin. It opened with the reign of the Queen,
almost in the very year of _Pickwick_, whose author stood beside his
grave and lived and wrote for some years more. But these twenty-six
years of Thackeray's era of production were full of wonderful activity,
and have left us as many volumes of rich and varied genius. And the
most striking feature of all is this--that in these twenty-six full
volumes in so many modes, prose, verse, romance, parody, burlesque,
essay, biography, criticism, there are hardly more than one or two
which can be put aside as worthless and as utter failures; very few
fail in his consummate mastery of style; few can be said to be irksome
to read, to re-read, and to linger over in the reading.
This mastery over style--a style at once simple, pure, nervous,
flexible, pathetic, and graceful--places Thackeray amongst the very
greatest masters of English prose, and undoubtedly as the most certain
and faultless of all the prose writers of the Victorian Age. Without
saying that he has ever reached quite to the level of some lyrical and
apocalyptic descants that we may find in Carlyle and in Ruskin,
Thackeray has never fallen into the faults of violence and turgidity
which their warmest admirers are bound to confess in many a passage
from these our two prose-poets. Carlyle is often grotesque; Macaulay
can be pompous; Disraeli, Bulwer, Dickens, are often slovenly and
sometimes bombastic; George Eliot is sometimes pedantic, and Ruskin has
been stirred into hysterics. But Thackeray's English, from the first
page of his first volume to the last page of his twenty-sixth volume,
is natural, scholarly, pure, incisive, and yet gracefully and easily
modulated--the language of an English gentleman of culture, wit,
knowledge of the world, and consummate ease and self-possession. It is
the direct and trenchant language of Swift: but more graceful, more
flexible, more courteous.
And what is a truly striking fact about Thackeray's mastery of style is
this--that it was perfectly formed from the beginning; that it hardly
ever varied, or developed, or waned in the whole course of his literary
career; that his first venture as a very young man is as finished and
as ripe as his very latest piece, when he died almost in the act of
writing the words--"_and his heart throbbed, with an exquisite bliss_."
This prodigious precocity in style, such uniform perfection of exact
composition, are perhaps without parallel in English literature. At
the age of twenty-six Thackeray wrote _The History of Samuel Titmarsh_
and the _Great Hoggarty Diamond_. It was produced under very
melancholy conditions, in the most unfavourable form of publication,
and it was mangled by editorial necessities. And yet it can still be
read and re-read as one of Thackeray's masterpieces, trifling and
curtailed as it is (for it may be printed in one hundred pages); it is
as full of wit, humour, scathing insight, and fine pathos in the midst
of burlesque, as is _Vanity Fair_ itself. It is already Thackeray in
all his strength, with his "Snobs," his "Nobs," his fierce satire, and
his exquisite style.
Modern romance has no purer, more pathetic, or simpler page than the
tale of the death of poor Samuel Titmarsh's first child. Though it is,
as it deserves to be, a household word, the passage must be quoted here
as a specimen of faultless and beautiful style.
It was not, however, destined that she and her child should inhabit
that little garret. We were to leave our lodgings on Monday morning;
but on Saturday evening the child was seized with convulsions, and all
Sunday the mother watched and prayed for it: but it pleased God to take
the innocent infant from us, and on Sunday, at midnight, it lay a
corpse in its mother's bosom. Amen. We have other children, happy and
well, now round about us, and from the father's heart the memory of
this little thing has almost faded; but I do believe that every day of
her life the mother thinks of her first-born that was with her for so
short a while: many and many a time she has taken her daughters to the
grave, in Saint Bride's, where he lies buried; and she wears still at
her neck a little, little lock of gold hair, which she took from the
head of the infant as he lay smiling in his coffin. It has happened to
me to forget the child's birthday, but to her never; and often in the
midst of common talk, comes something that shows she is thinking of the
child still,--some simple allusion that is to me inexpressibly
affecting.
Could words simpler, purer, more touching be found to paint a terrible,
albeit very common sorrow! Not a needless epithet, not a false note,
not a touch over-wrought! And this is the writing of an unknown,
untried youth!
This exquisitely simple, easy, idiomatic, and nervous style marks all
Thackeray's work for his twenty-six years of activity, and is equally
perfect for whatever purpose it is used, and in whatever key he may
choose to compose. It naturally culminates in _Vanity Fair_, written
just in the middle of his literary career. Here not a word is wasted:
the profoundest impressions are made by a quiet sentence or a dozen
plain words that neither Swift nor Defoe could have surpassed. I know
nothing in English literature more powerful than those last lines of
the thirty-second chapter of _Vanity Fair_. For thirty-two chapters we
have been following the loves, sorrows, and anxieties of Amelia Sedley
and George Osborne. For four chapters the story has pictured the scene
in Brussels on the eve of Waterloo. The women and non-combatants are
trembling with excitement, anxiety, fear; the men are in the field,
whilst the cannon roar all day in the distance--Amelia half distracted
with love, jealousy, and foreboding. And the wild alternations of
hope, terror, grief, and agony are suddenly closed in the last
paragraph of Chapter XXXII.
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.
Take all the great critical scenes in the book, and note how simple,
and yet how full of pathos and of power, is the language in which they
are described. There is the last parting of George and Amelia as the
bugle rings to arms.
George came in and looked at her again, entering still more softly. By
the pale night-lamp he could see her sweet, pale face--the purple
eyelids were fringed and closed, and one round arm, smooth and white,
lay outside of the coverlet. Good God! how pure she was; how gentle,
how tender, and how friendless! and he, how selfish, brutal, and black
with crime! Heart-stained and shame-stricken, he stood at the bed's
foot, and looked at the sleeping girl. How dared he--who was he, to
pray for one so spotless! God bless her! God bless her! He came to
the bed-side, and looked at the hand, the little soft hand, lying
asleep; and he bent over the pillow noiselessly towards the gentle pale
face.
The whole tragedy of their lives is given in miniature in this touching
scene; and yet how natural and commonplace are all the effects of which
it is composed, how few and simple the words which describe such love
and such remorse. It is hard to judge in _Vanity Fair_ which are the
more perfect in style, the pathetic and tragic scenes or those which
are charged with humour and epigram.
And the scene after George's marriage, when old Osborne burns his will
and erases his son's name from the family Bible--and the scene when
Osborne receives his son's last letter--"Osborne trembled long before
the letter from his dead son"--"His father could not see the kiss
George had placed on the superscription of his letter. Mr. Osborne
dropped it with the bitterest, deadliest pang of balked affection and
revenge. His son was still beloved and unforgiven." And the scene of
"the widow and mother," when young Georgy is born, and the wonderful
scene when Sir Pitt proposes marriage to the little green-eyed
governess and she is scared into confessing her great secret, and the
most famous scene of all, when Rawdon Crawley is released from the
sponging-house and finds Lord Steyne with Rebecca alone. It is but a
single page. The words spoken are short, brief, plain--not five
sentences pass--"I am innocent," said she--"Make way, let me pass,"
cried My Lord--"You lie, you coward and villain!" said Rawdon. There
is in all fiction no single scene more vivid, more true, more burnt
into the memory, more tragic. And with what noble simplicity, with
what incisive reticence, with what subtle anatomy of the human heart,
is it recorded.
_Vanity Fair_ was written, it is true, under the strain of serial
publication, haste, and anxiety, but it is perhaps, even in style, the
most truly complete. The wonderful variety, elasticity, and freshness
of the dialogue, the wit of the common scenes, the terrible power of
the tragic scenes, the perfection of the _mise-en-scène_--the rattle,
the fun, the glitter of the Fair, are sustained from end to end, from
the first words of the ineffable Miss Pinkerton to the _Vanitas
Vanitatum_ when the showman shuts up his puppets in their box. There
is not in all _Vanity Fair_ a single dull page that we skip, not a bit
of padding, no rigmarole of explanation whilst the action stands still.
Of what other fiction can this be said? Richardson and even Fielding
have their _longueurs_. Miss Austen is too prone to linger over the
tea-table beyond all human patience. And even Scott's descriptions of
his loved hills grow sometimes unreadable, especially when they are
told in a flaccid and slovenly style. But _Vanity Fair_ is kept up
with inexhaustible life and invention, with a style which, for purity
and polish, was beyond the reach of Fielding, Richardson, or Scott.
_Esmond_ was composed with even greater care than _Vanity Fair_, and in
the matter of style is usually taken to be Thackeray's greatest
masterpiece. Its language is a miracle of art. But it is avowedly a
_tour de force_--an effort to reproduce an entire book in the form and
speech of a century and a half preceding. As a _tour de force_ it is
wonderful; but in so long a book the effort becomes at last too
visible, and undoubtedly it somewhat cramps the freedom of the author's
genius. Thackeray was not a born historical romancist, as were Scott
and Dumas; nor was he a born historian at all. And when he undertook
to produce an elaborate romance in the form and with the colouring of a
past age, like George Eliot, he becomes rather too learned, too
conscientious, too rigidly full of his authorities; and if as an
historian he enters into rivalry with Macaulay, he somewhat loses his
cunning as a novelist. Thackeray's force lay in the comedy of manners.
In the comedy of manners we have nothing but _Tom Jones_ to compare
with _Vanity Fair_. And though Thackeray is not equal to the "prose
Homer of human nature," he wrote an English even finer and more racy.
In _Esmond_ we are constantly pausing to admire the wonderful ingenuity
and exquisite grace of the style, studying the language quite apart
from the story; and we feel, as we do when we read Milton's Latin poems
or Swinburne's French sonnets, that it is a surprising imitation of the
original. But at the same time _Esmond_ contains some of the noblest
passages that Thackeray ever wrote, scenes and chapters which in form
have no superior in English literature. That sixth chapter of the
second book, in the cathedral, when Henry Esmond returns to his
mistress on the 29th of December, on his birthday. "Here she was
weeping and happy. She took his hand in both hers; he felt her tears.
It was a rapture of reconciliation"--"so for a few moments Esmond's
beloved mistress came to him and blessed him." To my mind, there is
nothing in English fiction which has been set forth in language of such
exquisite purity and pathos.
_Esmond_, too, which may be said to be one prolonged parody of the
great Queen-Anne essayists, contains that most perfect of all parodies
in the English language--"The paper out of the _Spectator_"--in chapter
third of the third book. It is of course not a "parody" in the proper
sense, for it has no element of satire or burlesque, and imitates not
the foibles but the merits of the original, with an absolute illusion.
The 341st number of the _Spectator_, dated Tuesday, April 1, 1712, is
so absolutely like Dick Steele at his best, that Addison himself would
have been deceived by it. Steele hardly ever wrote anything so bright
and amusing. It is not a "parody": it is a forgery; but a forgery
which required for its execution the most consummate mastery over all
the subtleties and mysteries of style.
In parody of every kind, from the most admiring imitation down to the
most boisterous burlesque, Thackeray stands at the head of all other
imitators. The _Rejected Addresses_ of James and Horace Smith (1812)
is usually regarded as the masterpiece in this art; and Scott
good-humouredly said that he could have mistaken the death of
Higginbottom for his own verses. But Thackeray's _Novels by Eminent
Hands_ are superior even to the _Rejected Addresses_. _Codlingsby_,
the parody of Disraeli's _Coningsby_, may be taken as the most
effective parody in our language: intensely droll in itself, it
reproduces the absurdities, the affectations, the oriental imagination
of Disraeli with inimitable wit. Those ten pages of irrepressible
fooling are enough to destroy Disraeli's reputation as a serious
romancer. No doubt they have unfairly reacted so as to dim our sense
of Disraeli's real genius as a writer. When we know _Codlingsby_ by
heart, as every one with a sense of humour must do, it is impossible
for us to keep our countenance when we take up the palaver about
Sidonia and the Chosen Race. The _Novels by Eminent Hands_ are all
good: they are much more than parodies; they are real criticism, sound,
wise, genial, and instructive. Nor are they in the least unfair. If
the balderdash and cheap erudition of Bulwer and Disraeli are covered
with inextinguishable mirth, no one is offended by the pleasant
imitations of Lever, James, and Fenimore Cooper.
All the burlesques are good, and will bear continual re-reading; but
the masterpiece of all is _Rebecca and Rowena_, the continuation in
burlesque of _Ivanhoe_. It is one of the mysteries of literature that
we can enjoy both, that the warmest admirers of Scott's glorious
genius, and even those who delight in _Ivanhoe_, can find the keenest
relish in _Rebecca and Rowena_, which is simply the great romance of
chivalry turned inside out. But Thackeray's immortal burlesque has
something of the quality of Cervantes' _Don Quixote_--that we love the
knight whilst we laugh, and feel the deep pathos of human nature and
the beauty of goodness and love even in the midst of the wildest fun.
And this fine quality runs through all the comic pieces, ballads,
burlesques, pantomimes, and sketches. What genial fun in the _Rose and
the Ring_, in _Little Billee_, in _Mrs. Perkins' Ball_, in the _Sketch
Book_, in _Yellowplush_. It is only the very greatest masters who can
produce extravaganzas, puerile tomfooleries, drolleries to delight
children, and catchpenny songs, of such a kind that mature and
cultivated students can laugh over them for the fiftieth time and read
them till they are household words. This is the supreme merit of _Don
Quixote_, of _Scapin_, of _Gulliver_, of _Robinson Crusoe_. And this
quality of immortal truth and wit we find in _Rebecca and Rowena_, in
the _Rose and the Ring_, in _Little Billee_, in _Codlingsby_, and
_Yellowplush_. The burlesques have that Aristophanic touch of beauty,
pathos, and wisdom mingled with the wildest pantomime.
A striking example of Thackeray's unrivalled powers of imitation may be
seen in the letters which are freely scattered about his works. No one
before or since ever wrote such wonderfully happy illustrations of the
epistolary style of boy or girl, old maid or illiterate man. There
never were such letters as those of George Osborne in _Vanity
Fair_--that letter from school describing the fight between Cuff and
Figs is a masterpiece--the letters of Becky, of Rawdon, of Amelia--all
are perfect reproductions of the writer, as are scores of letters
scattered up and down the twenty-six volumes. Nor must we omit, as
part of the style, the author's own illustrations. They are really
part of the book; they assist us to understand the characters; they are
a very important portion of the writer's method. None of our great
writers ever had this double instrument: and Thackeray has used it with
consummate effect. The sketches in _Vanity Fair_ and in _Punch_,
especially the minor thumb-nail drolleries, are delightful--true
caricatures--real portraits of character. It is true they are ill
drawn, often impossible, crude, and almost childish in their
incorrectness and artlessness. But they have in them the soul of a
great caricaturist. They have the Hogarthian touch of a great comic
artist.
One is tempted to enlarge at length on the merits of Thackeray's style,
because it is in his mastery over all the resources of the English
language that he surpasses contemporary prose writers. And it is a
mastery which is equally shown in every form of composition. There is
a famous bit of Byron's about Sheridan to the effect that he had
written the best comedy, made the finest speech, and invented the
drollest farce in the English language. And it is hardly extravagant
to say of Thackeray that, of all the Englishmen of this century, he has
written the best comedy of manners, the best extravaganza, the best
burlesque, the best parody, and the best comic song. And to this some
of his admirers would add--the best lectures, and the best critical
essays. It is of course true that he has never reached or attempted to
reach the gorgeous rhapsodies of De Quincey or the dithyrambic melodies
of Ruskin. But these heaven-born Pegasi cannot be harnessed to the
working vehicles of our streets. The marvel of Thackeray's command
over language is this--that it is unfailing in prose or in verse, in
pathos or in terror, in tragedy or in burlesque, in narrative, in
repartee, or in drollery: and that it never waxes or flags in force and
precision throughout twenty-six full volumes.
Of Thackeray's style--a style that has every quality in perfection:
simplicity, clearness, ease, force, elasticity, and grace--it is
difficult to speak but in terms of unstinted admiration. When we deal
with the substance and effective value of his great books we see that,
although Thackeray holds his own with the best writers of this century,
he cannot be said to hold the same manifest crown of supremacy. One of
his strongest claims is the vast quantity and variety of his best work,
and the singularly small proportion of inferior work. Fielding himself
wrote pitiful trash when he became, as he said, a mere "hackney
writer"; Richardson's _Grandison_ overcomes most readers; Scott at last
broke down; Carlyle, Disraeli, Dickens, and Ruskin have written many
things which "we do not turn over by day and turn over by night," to
put it as gently as one can. But Thackeray is hardly ever below
himself in form, and rarely is he below himself in substance.
_Pendennis_ is certainly much inferior to _Vanity Fair_, and _Philip_
is much inferior to _Pendennis_. _The Virginians_ is far behind
_Esmond_. But of the more important books not one can be called in any
sense a failure unless it be _Lovel the Widower_, and _The Adventures
of Philip_.
Thackeray's masterpiece beyond question is _Vanity Fair_--which as a
comedy of the manners of contemporary life is quite the greatest
achievement in English literature since _Tom Jones_. It has not the
consummate plot of _Tom Jones_; it has not the breadth, the
Shakespearean jollity, the genial humanity of the great "prose Homer";
it has no such beautiful character as Sophia Western. It is not the
overflowing of a warm, genial, sociable soul, such as that of Henry
Fielding. But _Vanity Fair_ may be put beside _Tom Jones_ for variety
of character, intense reality, ingenuity of incident, and profusion of
wit, humour, and invention. It is even better written than _Tom
Jones_; has more pathos and more tragedy; and is happily free from the
nauseous blots into which Harry Fielding was betrayed by the taste of
his age. It is hard to say what scene in _Vanity Fair_, what part,
what character, rests longest in the memory. Is it the home of the
Sedleys and the Osbornes, is it Queen's Crawley, or the incidents at
Brussels, or at Gaunt House:--is it George Osborne, or Jos, or Miss
Crawley, the Major or the Colonel,--is it Lord Steyne or Rebecca? All
are excellent, all seem perfect in truth, in consistency, in contrast.
The great triumph of _Vanity Fair_--the great triumph of modern
fiction--is Becky Sharp: a character which will ever stand in the very
foremost rank of English literature, if not with Falstaff and Shylock,
then with Squire Western, Uncle Toby, Mr. Primrose, Jonathan Oldbuck,
and Sam Weller. There is no character in the whole range of literature
which has been worked out with more elaborate completeness. She is
drawn from girlhood to old age, under every conceivable condition, and
is brought face to face with all kinds of persons and trials. In all
circumstances Becky is true to herself; her ingenuity, her wit, her
selfishness, her audacity, her cunning, her clear, cool, alert brain,
even her common sense, her spirit of justice, when she herself is not
concerned, and her good-nature, when it could cost her nothing--all
this is unfailing, inimitable, never to be forgotten. Some good people
cry out that she is so wicked. Of course she is wicked: so were Iago
and Blifil. The only question is, if she be real? Most certainly she
is, as real as anything in the whole range of fiction, as real as
Tartuffe, or Gil Blas, Wilhelm Meister, or Rob Roy. No one doubts that
Becky Sharps exist: unhappily they are not even very uncommon. And
Thackeray has drawn one typical example of such bad women with an
anatomical precision that makes us shudder.
And if Becky Sharp be the masterpiece of Thackeray's art amongst the
characters, the scene of her husband's encounter with her paramour is
the masterpiece of all the scenes in _Vanity Fair_, and has no
superior, hardly any equal, in modern fiction. Becky, Rawdon Crawley,
and Lord Steyne--all are inimitably true, all are powerful, all are
fearful in their agony and rage. The uprising of the poor rake almost
into dignity and heroism, and his wife's outburst of admiration at his
vengeance, are strokes of really Shakespearean insight. It was with
justice that Thackeray himself felt pride in that touch. "_She stood
there trembling before him. She admired her husband, strong, brave,
victorious_." It is these touches of clear sight in Becky, her respect
for Dobbin, her kindliness to Amelia apart from her own schemes, which
make us feel an interest in Becky, loathsome as she is. She is always
a woman, and not an inhuman monster, however bad a woman, cruel,
heartless, and false.
There remains always the perpetual problem if _Vanity Fair_ be a
cynic's view of life, the sardonic grin of a misanthrope gloating over
the trickery and meanness of mankind. It is well to remember how many
are the scenes of tenderness and pathos in _Vanity Fair_, how
powerfully told, how deeply they haunt the memory and sink into the
heart. The school life of Dobbin, the ruin of old Sedley and the
despair of Amelia, the last parting of Amelia and George, Osborne
revoking his will, Sedley broken down, Rawdon in the sponging-house,
the birth and boyhood of Georgy Osborne, the end of old Sedley, the end
of old Osborne, are as pathetic and humane as anything in our
literature. Mature men, who study fiction with a critical spirit and a
cool head, admit that the only passages in English romance that they
can never read again without faltering, without a dim eye and a
quavering voice, are these scenes of pain and sorrow in _Vanity Fair_.
The death of old Sedley, nursed by his daughter, is a typical
piece--perfect in simplicity, in truth, in pathos.
One night when she stole into his room, she found him awake, when the
broken old man made his confession. "O, Emmy, I've been thinking we
were very unkind and unjust to you," he said, and put out his cold and
feeble hand to her. She knelt down and prayed by his bed-side, as he
did too, having still hold of her hand. When our turn comes, friend,
may we have such company in our prayers.
And this is the arch-cynic and misanthrope, grinning at all that is
loveable and tender!
It is too often forgotten that _Vanity Fair_ is not intended to be
simply the world: it is society, it is fashion, the market where
mammon-worship, folly, and dissipation display and barter their wares.
Thackeray wrote many other books, and has given us many worthy
characters. Dobbin, Warrington, Colonel Newcome, Ethel Newcome, Henry
Esmond are generous, brave, just, and true. Neither _Esmond_, nor _The
Newcomes_, nor _The Virginians_ are in any sense the work of a
misanthrope. And where Thackeray speaks in his own person, in the
lectures on the _English Humourists_, he is brimful of all that is
genial, frank, lenient, and good-hearted. What we know of the man, who
loved his friends and was loved by them, and who in all his critical
and personal sketches showed himself a kindly, courteous, and
considerate gentleman, inclines us to repel this charge of cynicism.
We will not brand him as a mere satirist, and a cruel mocker at human
virtue and goodness.
This is, however, not the whole of the truth. The consent of mankind,
and especially the consent of women, is too manifest. There is
something ungenial, there is a bitter taste left when we have enjoyed
these books, especially as we lay down _Vanity Fair_. It is a long
comedy of roguery, meanness, selfishness, intrigue, and affectation.
Rakes, ruffians, bullies, parasites, fortune-hunters, adventurers,
women who sell themselves, and men who cheat and cringe, pass before us
in one incessant procession, crushing the weak, and making fools of the
good. Such, says our author, is the way of Vanity Fair--which we are
warned to loathe and to shun. Be it so:--but it cannot be denied that
the rakes, ruffians, and adventurers fill too large a canvas, are too
conspicuous, too triumphant, too interesting. They are more
interesting than the weak and the good whom they crush under foot: they
are drawn with a more glowing brush, they are far more splendidly
endowed. They have better heads, stronger wills, richer natures than
the good and kind ones who are their butts. Dobbin, as the author
himself tells us, "is a spooney." Amelia, as he says also, "is a
little fool." Peggy O'Dowd, dear old goody, is the laughing-stock of
the regiment, though she is also its grandmother. _Vanity Fair_ has
here and there some virtuous and generous characters. But we are made
to laugh at every one of them to their very faces. And the evil and
the selfish characters bully them, mock them, thrust them aside at
every page--and they do so because they are more the stuff of which men
and women of any mark are made.
There are evil characters in Shakespeare, in Fielding, in Goldsmith, in
Scott: we find ruffians, rakes, traitors, and parasites. But they are
not paramount, not universal, not unqualified. Iago is utterly
overshadowed by Othello, Blifil by Alworthy, Tom Jones by Sophia
Western, Squire Thornhill by Dr. Primrose, the reprobate Staunton by
the good angel Jeanie Deans. Shakespeare, Fielding, Goethe, Scott draw
noble and generous natures quite as well as they paint the evil
natures: indeed they paint them better; they enjoy the painting of them
more; they make us enjoy them more. Take this test: if we run over the
characters of Shakespeare or of Scott we have to reflect before we find
the villains. If we run over the characters in Thackeray, it is an
effort of memory to recall the generous and the fine natures.
Thackeray has given us some loveable and affectionate men and women;
but they all have qualities which lower them and tend to make them
either tiresome or ridiculous. Henry Esmond is a high-minded and
almost heroic gentleman, but he is glum, a regular kill-joy, and, as
his author admitted, something of a prig. Colonel Newcome is a noble
true-hearted soldier; but he is made too good for this world and
somewhat too innocent, too transparently a child of nature.
Warrington, with all his sense and honesty, is rough; Pendennis is a
bit of a puppy; Clive Newcome is not much of a hero; and as for Dobbin
he is almost intended to be a butt.
A more serious defect is a dearth in Thackeray of women to love and to
honour. Shakespeare has given us a gallery of noble women; Fielding
has drawn the adorable Sophia Western; Scott has his Jeanie Deans. But
though Thackeray has given us over and over again living pictures of
women of power, intellect, wit, charm, they are all marred by atrocious
selfishness, cruelty, ambition, like Becky Sharp, Beatrix Esmond, and
Lady Kew; or else they have some weakness, silliness, or narrowness
which prevents us from at once loving and respecting them. Amelia is
rather a poor thing and decidedly silly; we do not really admire Laura
Pendennis; the Little Sister is somewhat colourless; Ethel Newcome runs
great risk of being a spoilt beauty; and about Lady Castlewood, with
all her love and devotion, there hangs a certain sinister and unnatural
taint, which the world cannot forgive, and perhaps ought not to
forgive. The sum of all this is, that in all these twenty-six volumes
and hundreds of men and women portrayed, there is not one man or one
woman having at once a noble character, perfect generosity, powerful
mind, and loveable nature; not one man or one woman of tender heart and
perfect honour, but has some trait that tends to make him or her either
laughable or tedious. It is not so with the supreme masters of the
human heart. And the world does not condone this, and it is right in
not condoning it.
But to say this, is not to condemn Thackeray as a cynic. With these
many scenes of exquisite tenderness and pathos, with men and women of
such loving hearts and devoted spirits, with the profusion of gay,
kindly, childlike love of innocent fun, that we find all through
Thackeray's work, he does not belong to the order of the Jonathan
Swifts, the Balzacs, the Zolas, the gruesome anatomists of human vice
and meanness. On the other hand he does not belong to the order of the
Shakespeares, Goethes, and Scotts, to whom human virtue and dignity
always remain in the end the supreme forces of human life. Thackeray,
with a fine and sympathetic soul, had a creative imagination that was
far stronger on the darker and fouler sides of life than it was on the
brighter and pure side of life. He saw the bright and pure side: he
loved it, he felt with it, he made us love it. But his artistic genius
worked with more free and consummate zest when he painted the dark and
the foul. His creative imagination fell short of the true equipoise,
of that just vision of _chiaroscuro_, which we find in the greatest
masters of the human heart. This limitation of his genius has been
visited upon Thackeray with a heavy hand. And such as it is, he must
bear it.
The place of Thackeray in English literature will always be determined
by his _Vanity Fair_: which will be read, we may confidently predict,
as long as _Tom Jones_, _Clarissa_, _Tristram Shandy_, _The Antiquary_,
and _Pickwick_. But all the best of his pieces, even the smaller _jeux
d'esprit_, may be read with delight again and again by young and old.
And of the best are--_Esmond_, _The Newcomes_, _Barry Lyndon_, the
_Book of Snobs_, the _Hoggarty Diamond_, some of the _Burlesques_ and
_Christmas Books_, and the _English Humourists_. Of these, _Esmond_
has every quality of a great book, except its artificial form, its
excessive elaboration of historical colouring, and its unsavoury plot.
Beatrix Esmond is almost as wonderful a creation as Becky Sharp;
though, if formed on a grander mould, she has less fascination than
that incorrigible minx. The _Newcomes_, if in some ways the most
genial of the longer pieces, is plainly without the power of _Vanity
Fair_. And if _Barry Lyndon_ has this power, it is an awful picture of
cruelty and meanness. The _Book of Snobs_ and the _Hoggarty Diamond_
were each a kind of prelude to _Vanity Fair_, and both contain some of
its essential marks of pathos and of power. It is indeed strange to us
now to remember that both of these books, written with such finished
mastery of hand and full of such passages of wit and insight, could
have been published for years before the world had recognised that it
had a new and consummate writer before it. The _Book of Snobs_ indeed
may truly be said to have seriously improved the public opinion of the
age, and to have given a death-blow to many odious forms of sycophancy
and affectation which passed unrebuked in England fifty years ago. And
the _Burlesque Romances_ and the _English Humourists_ have certainly
assisted in forming the public taste and in promoting a sound criticism
of our standard fiction.
Charlotte Brontë dedicated her _Jane Eyre_, in 1847, to William
Makepeace Thackeray, as "the first social regenerator of the day."
Such language, though interesting as coming from a girl of singular
genius and sincerity, however ignorant of real life, was excessive.
But we may truly assert that he has enriched our literature with some
classical masterpieces in the comedy of contemporary manners.