In the absence of any complete biography of the late William Makepeace
Thackeray, every anecdote regarding him has a certain value, in so far as
it throws a light on his personal character and methods of work. Read in
this light and this spirit, all the tributes to his memory are valuable
and interesting. Glancing over some memoranda connected with the life of
the novelist, contained in a book which has come under our notice,
entitled "Anecdote Biographies." we gain a ready insight into his
character. And from the materials thus supplied, we now offer a few
anecdotes treasured up in these too brief memorials of his life.
Thackeray was born at Calcutta in 1811. While still very young, he was
sent to England; on the homeward voyage he had a peep at the great
Napoleon in his exile-home at St. Helena. He received his education at the
Charterhouse School and at Cambridge, leaving the latter without a degree.
His fortune at this time amounted to twenty thousand pounds; this he
afterwards lost through unfortunate speculations, but not before he had
travelled a good deal on the continent, and acquainted himself with French
and German everyday life and literature. His first inclination was to
follow the profession of an artist; and curious to relate, he made
overtures to Charles Dickens to illustrate his earliest book. Thackeray
was well equipped both in body and mind when his career as an author
began; but over ten years of hard toil at newspaper and magazine writing
were undergone before he became known as the author of "Vanity Fair," and
one of the first of living novelists. He lectured with fair if not with
extraordinary success both in England and America, when the sunshine of
public favour had been secured. His career of successful novel-writing
terminated suddenly on 24th December 1863, and like Dickens, he had an
unfinished novel on hand.
One morning Thackeray knocked at the door of Horace Mayhew's chambers in
Regent Street, crying from without: 'It's no use, Horry Mayhew; open the
door.' On entering, he said cheerfully: 'Well, young gentleman, you'll
admit an old fogy.' When leaving, with his hat in his hand, he remarked:
'By-the-by, how stupid! I was going away without doing part of the
business of my visit. You spoke the other day of poor George.
Somebody--most unaccountably--has returned me a five-pound note I lent him
a long time ago. I didn't expect it. So just hand to George; and tell him,
when his pocket will bear it, to pass it on to some poor fellow of his
acquaintance. By-bye.' He was gone! This was one of Thackeray's delicate
methods of doing a favour; the recipient was asked to _pass it on_.
One of his last acts on leaving America after a lecturing tour, was to
return twenty-five per cent. of the proceeds of one of his lectures to a
young speculator who had been a loser by the bargain. While known to hand
a gold piece to a waiter with the remark: 'My friend, will you do me the
favour to accept a sovereign?' he has also been known to say to a visitor
who had proffered a card: 'Don't leave this bit of paper; it has cost you
two cents, and will be just as good for your next call.' Evidently aware
that money when properly used is a wonderful health-restorer, he was found
by a friend who had entered his bedroom in Paris, gravely placing some
napoleons in a pill-box, on the lid of which was written: 'One to be taken
occasionally.' When asked to explain, it came out that these strange pills
were for an old person who said she was very ill, and in distress; and so
he had concluded that this was the medicine wanted. 'Dr. Thackeray,' he
remarked, 'intends to leave it with her himself. Let us walk out
together.' To a young literary man afterwards his amanuensis, he wrote
thus, on hearing that a loss had befallen him: 'I am sincerely sorry to
hear of your position, and send the little contribution which came so
opportunely from another friend whom I was enabled once to help. When you
are well-to-do again, I know you will pay it back; and I daresay somebody
else will want the money, which is meanwhile most heartily at your
service.'
When enjoying an American repast at Boston in 1852, his friends there,
determined to surprise him with the size of their oysters, had placed six
of the largest bivalves they could find, on his plate. After swallowing
number one with some little difficulty, his friend asked him how he felt.
'Profoundly grateful,' he gasped; 'and as if I had swallowed a little
baby.' Previous to a farewell dinner given by his American intimates and
admirers, he remarked that it was very kind of his friends to give him a
dinner, but that such things always set him trembling. 'Besides,' he
remarked to his secretary, 'I have to make a speech, and what am I to say?
Here, take a pen in your hand and sit down, and I'll see if I can hammer
out something. It's hammering now, I'm afraid it will be stammering
by-and-by.' His short speeches, when delivered, were as characteristic and
unmistakable as anything he ever wrote. All the distinct features of his
written style were present.
It is interesting to remark the sentiments he entertained towards his
great rival Charles Dickens. Although the latter was more popular as a
novelist, than he could ever expect to become, he expressed himself in
unmistakable terms regarding him. When the conversation turned that way,
we would remark: 'Dickens is making ten thousand a year. He is very angry
at me for saying so; but I will say it, for it is true. He doesn't like
me. He knows that my books are a protest against his--that if the one set
are true, the other must be false. But "Pickwick" is an exception; it is a
capital book. It is like a glass of good English ale.' When "Dombey and
Son" appeared in the familiar paper cover, number five contained the
episode of the death of little Paul. Thackeray appeared much moved in
reading it over, and putting number five in his pocket, hastened with it
to the editor's room in "Punch" office. Dashing it down on the table in
the presence of Mark Lemon, he exclaimed! 'There's no writing against such
power as this; one has no chance! Read that chapter describing young
Paul's death; it is unsurpassed--it is stupendous!'
In a conversation with his secretary previous to his American trip, he
intimated his intention of starting a magazine or journal on his return,
to be issued in his own name. This scheme eventually took shape, and the
result was the now well known "Cornhill Magazine." This magazine proved a
great success, the sale of the first number being one hundred and ten
thousand copies. Under the excitement of this great success, Thackeray
left London for Paris. To Mr. Fields, the American publisher, who met him
by appointment at his hotel in the Rue de la Paix, he remarked: 'London is
not big enough to contain me now, and I am obliged to add Paris to my
residence. Good gracious!' said he, throwing up his long arms, 'where will
this tremendous circulation stop? Who knows but that I shall have to add
Vienna and Rome to my whereabouts? If the worst come to the worst, New
York also may fall into my clutches, and only the Rocky Mountains may be
able to stop my progress.' His spirits continued high during this visit to
Paris, his friend adding that some restraint was necessary to keep him
from entering the jewellers' shops and ordering a pocketful of diamonds
and 'other trifles; for,' said he, 'how can I spend the princely income
which Smith[64] allows me for editing "Cornhill," unless I begin instantly
somewhere!' He complained too that he could not sleep at nights 'for
counting up his subscribers.' On reading a contribution by his young
daughter to the "Cornhill," he felt much moved, remarking to a friend;
'When I read it, I blubbered like a child; it is so good, so simple, and
so honest; and my little girl wrote it, every word of it.'
Dickens in the tender memorial which he penned for the "Cornhill
Magazine," remarks on his appearance when they dined together. 'No one,'
he says, 'can ever have seen him more genial, natural, cordial, fresh, and
honestly impulsive than I have seen him at those times. No one can be
surer than I of the greatness and goodness of the heart that had then
disclosed itself.'
Beneath his 'modestly grand' manner, his seeming cynicism and bitterness,
he bore a very tender and loving heart. In a letter written in 1854, and
quoted in James Hannay's sketch, he expresses himself thus. 'I hate
Juvenal,' he says. 'I mean I think him a truculent fellow; and I love
Horace better than you do, and rate Churchill much lower; and as for
Swift, you haven't made me alter my opinion. I admire, or rather admit,
his power as much as you do; but I don't admire that kind or power so much
as I did fifteen years ago, or twenty shall we say. Love is a higher
intellectual exercise than hatred; and when you get one or two more of
those young ones you write so pleasantly about, you'll come over to the
side of the kind wags, I think, rather than the cruel ones.' The pathetic
sadness visible in much that he wrote sprung partly from temperament and
partly from his own private calamities. Loss of fortune was not the only
cause. When a young man in Paris, he married; and after enjoying domestic
happiness for several years, his wife caught a fever from which she never
afterwards sufficiently recovered to be able to be with her husband and
children. She was henceforth intrusted to the care of a kind family, where
every comfort and attention was secured for her. The lines in the ballad
of the "Bouillabaisse" are supposed to refer to this early time of
domestic felicity:
Ah me! how quick the days are flitting!
I mind me of a time that's gone,
When here I'd sit as now I'm sitting,
In this place--but not alone.
A fair young form was nestled near me,
A dear, dear face looked fondly up,
And sweetly spoke and smiled to cheer me--
There's no one now to share my cup.
In dictating to his amanuensis during the composition of the lectures on
the "Four Georges," he would light a cigar, pace the room for a few
minutes, and then resume his work with increased cheerfulness, changing
his position very frequently, so that he was sometimes sitting, standing,
walking, or lying about. His enunciation was always clear and distinct,
and his words and thoughts were so well weighed that the progress of
writing was but seldom checked. He dictated with calm deliberation, and
shewed no risible feeling even when he had made a humorous point. His
whole literary career was one of unremitting industry; he wrote slowly,
and like 'George Eliot,' gave forth his thoughts in such perfect form,
that he rarely required to retouch his work. His handwriting was neat and
plain, often very minute; which led to the remark, that if all trades
failed, he would earn sixpences by writing the Lord's Prayer and the Creed
in the size of one. Unlike many men of less talent, he looked upon
caligraphy as one of the fine arts. When at the height of his fame he was
satisfied when he wrote six pages a day, generally working during the day,
seldom at night. An idea which would only be slightly developed in some of
his shorter stories, he treasured up and expanded in some of his larger
works.
While Alfred Tennyson the future Laureate received the gold medal at
Cambridge given by the Chancellor of the university for the best English
poem, the subject being "Timbuctoo," we find Thackeray satirising the
subject in a humorous paper called "The Snob." Here are a few lines from
his clever skit on the prize poem:
There stalks the tiger--there the lion roars,
Who sometimes eats the luckless blackamoors;
All that he leaves of them the monster throws
To jackals, vultures, dogs, cats, kites and crows;
His hunger thus the forest monster gluts,
And then lies down 'neath trees called cocoa-nuts.
The personal appearance of Thackeray has been frequently described. His
nose through an early accident, was misshapen; it was broad at the bridge,
and stubby at the end. He was near-sighted: and his hair at forty was
already gray, but massy and abundant--his keen and kindly eyes twinkled
sometimes through and sometimes over his spectacles. A friend remarked
that what he 'should call the predominant expression of the countenance
was courage--a readiness to face the world on its own terms.' Unlike
Dickens, he took no regular walking exercise, and being regardless of the
laws of health, suffered in consequence. In reply to one who asked him if
he had ever received the best medical advice, his reply was: 'What is the
use of advice if you don't follow it? They tell me not to drink, and I
_do_ drink. They tell me _not_ to smoke, and I do smoke. They tell me not
to eat, and I do eat. In short, I do everything that I am desired _not_ to
do--and therefore, what am I to expect?' And so one morning he was found
lying, like Dr. Chalmers, in the sleep of death with his arms beneath his
head, after one of his violent attacks of illness--to be mourned by his
mother and daughters, who formed his household, and by a wider public
beyond, which, had learned to love him through his admirable
works.--_Chambers's Journal._