With _Vanity Fair_ begins what some one has called the _quadrilateral_
on which Thackeray’s larger fame rests. The three other pillars are,
_Henry Esmond_, _Pendennis_, and _The Newcomes_. Which is the greatest of
these four novels? On this question there is dispute among critics, and
difference of opinion, even among avowed Thackerayans, who confess that
they “like everything he wrote.” Why try to settle the question? Why not
let the interesting, illuminating _causerie_ run on? In these furious
days when the hysteria of world-problems vexes us, it is good to have
some subjects on which we can dispute without ranting or raving.
For my part, I find _Vanity Fair_ the strongest, _Pendennis_ the most
intimate, _The Newcomes_ the richest and in parts the most lovable, and
_Henry Esmond_ the most admirable and satisfying, among Thackeray’s
novels. But they all have this in common: they represent a reaction from
certain false fashions in fiction which prevailed at that time. From the
spurious romanticism of G. P. R. James and Harrison Ainsworth, from
the philosophic affectation of Bulwer, from the gilding and rococo-work
of the super-snob Disraeli—all of them popular writers of their
day—Thackeray turned away, not now as in his earlier period to satirize
and ridicule and parody them, but to create something in a different
_genre_, closer to the facts of life, more true to the reality of human
nature.
We may read in the preface to _Pendennis_ just what he had in mind and
purpose:
“Many ladies have remonstrated and subscribers left me, because, in the
course of the story, I described a young man resisting and affected by
temptation. My object was to say, that he had the passions to feel, and
the manliness and generosity to overcome them. You will not hear—it is
best to know it—what moves in the real world, what passes in society, in
the clubs, colleges, mess-rooms—what is the life and talk of your sons.
A little more frankness than is customary has been attempted in this
story; with no bad desire on the author’s part, it is hoped, and with no
ill consequence to any reader. If truth is not always pleasant, at any
rate truth is best, from whatever chair—from those whence graver writers
or thinkers argue, as from that at which the story-teller sits as he
concludes his labour, and bids his kind reader farewell.”
[Illustration: WILLIAM MAKEPEACE THACKERAY.
_Reproduced from the Kensington Edition of Thackeray’s Works._]
It is amusing, in this age of art undressed, to read this modest
defense of frankness in fiction. Its meaning is very different
from the interpretation of it which is given by disciples of the
“show-everything-without-a-fig-leaf” school.
Thackeray did not confuse reality with indecency. He did not think it
needful to make his hero cut his toe-nails or take a bath in public
in order to show him as a real man. The ordinary and common physical
details of life may be taken for granted; to obtrude them is to
exaggerate their importance. It is with the frailties and passions,
the faults and virtues, the defeats and victories of his men and women
that Thackeray deals. He describes Pendennis tempted without making
the description a new temptation. He brings us acquainted with Becky
Sharp, _enchanteresse_, without adding to her enchantment. We feel that
she is capable of anything; but we do not know all that she actually
did,—indeed Thackeray himself frankly confessed that even he did not
know, nor much care.
The excellence of his character-drawing is that his men and women are not
mere pegs to hang a doctrine or a theory on. They have a life of their
own, independent of, and yet closely touching his. This is what he says
of them in his essay “_De Finibus_”:
“They have been boarding and lodging with me for twenty months.... I know
the people utterly,—I know the sound of their voices.”
Fault has been found with him (and that by such high authority as Mr.
Howells) for coming into his own pages so often with personal comment
or, “a word to the reader.” It is said that this disturbs the narrative,
breaks the illusion, makes the novel less convincing as a work of art.
Frankly, it does not strike me that way. On the contrary, it adds to the
verisimilitude. These men and women are so real to him that he cannot
help talking to us about them as we go along together. Is it not just
so in actual life, when you go with a friend to watch the passing show?
Do you think that what Thackeray says to you about Colonel Newcome,
or Captain Costigan, or Helen Pendennis, or Laura, or Ethel, or George
Warrington, makes them fade away?
Yes, I know the paragraphs at the beginning and end of _Vanity Fair_
about the showman and the puppets and the box. But don’t you see what the
parable means? It is only what Shakespeare said long ago:
All the world’s a stage,
And all the men and women merely players.
Nor would Thackeray have let this metaphor pass without adding to it
Pope’s fine line:
Act well your part, there all the honour lies.
Of course, there is another type of fiction in which running personal
comment by the author would be out of place. It is illustrated in Dickens
by _A Tale of Two Cities_, and in Thackeray by _Henry Esmond_. The
latter seems to me the most perfect example of a historical novel in all
literature. More than that,—it is, so far as I know, the best portrayal
of the character of a gentleman.
The book presents itself as a memoir of Henry Esmond, Esq., a colonel in
the service of her Majesty, Queen Anne, written by himself. Here, then,
we have an autobiographical novel, the most difficult and perilous of all
modes of fiction. If the supposed author puts himself in the foreground,
he becomes egotistical and insufferable; if he puts himself in the
background, he becomes insignificant, a mere Chinese “property-man” in
the drama. This dilemma Thackeray avoids by letting Esmond tell his own
story in the third person—that is to say, with a certain detachment of
view, such as a sensible person would feel in looking back on his own
life.
Rarely is this historic method of narration broken. I recall one
instance, in the last chapter, where Beatrix, after that tremendous scene
in the house of Castlewood with the Prince, reveals her true nature and
quits the room in a rage. The supposed author writes:
“Her keen words gave no wound to Mr. Esmond; his heart was too hard. As
he looked at her, he wondered that he could ever have loved her....
The Prince blushed and bowed low, as she gazed at him and quitted the
chamber. _I have never seen her from that day._”
Thackeray made this slip on purpose. He wanted us to feel the reality of
the man who is trying to tell his own story in the third person.
This, after all, is the real value of the book. It is not only a
wonderful picture of the Age of Queen Anne, its ways and customs, its
manner of speech and life, its principal personages—the red-faced queen,
and peremptory Marlborough, and smooth Atterbury, and rakish Mohun, and
urbane Addison, and soldier-scholar Richard Steele—appearing in the
background of the political plot. It is also, and far more significantly,
a story of the honour of a gentleman—namely, Henry Esmond—carried through
a life of difficulty, and crowned with the love of a true woman, after a
false one had failed him.
Some readers profess themselves disappointed with the dénouement of the
love-story. They find it unnatural and disconcerting that the hero should
win the mother and not the daughter as the guerdon of his devotion. Not
I. Read the story more closely.
When it opens, in the house of Castlewood, Esmond is a grave, lonely
boy of twelve; Lady Castlewood, fair and golden-haired, is in the first
bloom of gracious beauty, twenty years old; Beatrix is a dark little minx
of four years. Naturally, Henry falls in love with the mother rather
than with the daughter, grows up as her champion and knight, defends
her against the rakishness of Lord Mohun, resolves for her sake to give
up his claim to the title and the estate. Then comes the episode of his
infatuation by the wonderful physical beauty of Beatrix, the vixen. That
madness ends with the self-betrayal of her letter of assignation with the
Prince, and her subsequent conduct. Esmond returns to his first love, his
young love, his true love, Lady Castlewood. Of its fruition let us read
his own estimate:
“That happiness which hath subsequently crowned it, cannot be written in
words; it is of its nature sacred and secret, and not to be spoken of,
though the heart be ever so full of thankfulness, save to Heaven and the
One Ear alone—to one fond being, the truest and tenderest and purest wife
ever man was blessed with.”