THE MOST ACCOMPLISHED WRITER OF HIS CENTURY--TENDER PATHOS
UNDER AN AFFECTATION OF CYNICISM AND GREAT ART IN STYLE AND
CHARACTERS.
Of all modern English authors, Thackeray is my favorite. Humor,
pathos, satire, ripe culture, knowledge of the world and of the human
heart, instinctive good taste and a style equaled by none of his
fellows in its clearness, ease, flexibility and winning charm--these
are some of the traits that make the author of _Vanity Fair_ and
_Esmond_ incomparably the first literary artist as well as the
greatest writer of his age. Whether he would have been as fine a
writer had he been given a happy life is a question that no one can
answer. But to my mind it has always seemed as though the dark shadow
that rested on his domestic life for thirty years made him
infinitely tender to the grief and pain of others. Probably it came
as a shock to most lovers of Thackeray to read in a news item from
London only three or four years ago that the widow of Thackeray was
dead, at the great age of ninety years. She had outlived her famous
husband nearly a full half century, but of her we had heard nothing in
all this time. When a beautiful young Irish girl she was married to
the novelist, and she made him an ideal wife for a few years. Then her
mind gave way, and the remainder of her long career was spent within
the walls of a sanatorium--more lost to her loved ones than if she had
been buried in her grave. The knowledge of her existence, which was a
ghastly death in life, the fact that it prevented him from giving his
three young girls a real home, as well as barred him under the English
law from marrying again--all these things to Thackeray were an
ever-present pain, like acid on an open wound. It was this sorrow,
from which he could never escape that gave such exquisite tenderness
to his pathos; and it was this sorrow, acting on one of the most
sensitive natures, that often sharpened his satire and made it
merciless when directed against the shams and hypocrisies of life.
[Illustration: WILLIAM MAKEPEACE THACKERAY FROM A DRAWING BY
SAMUEL LAURENCE, ENGRAVED BY J.C. ARMYTAGE]
Thackeray's fame rests mainly on two great books--_Vanity Fair_ and
_Henry Esmond_. The first has been made very real to thousands of
readers by the brilliant acting of Mrs. Fiske in Becky Sharp. The
other is one of the finest historical novels in the language and the
greatest exploit in bringing over into our century the style, the mode
of thought, the very essence of a previous age. Thackeray was
saturated with the literature of the eighteenth century, and in
_Esmond_ he reproduced the time of Addison and Steele as perfectly as
he made an imitation of a number of the SPECTATOR. This literary _tour
de force_ was made the more noteworthy by the absolute lack of all
effort on the novelist's part. The style of Queen Anne's age seemed a
part of the man, not an assumed garment. While in the heroine of
_Vanity Fair_ Thackeray gave the world one of the coldest and most
selfish of women, he atoned for this by creating in _Esmond_ the
finest gentleman in all English literature, with the single exception
of his own Colonel Newcome.
Strict injunctions Thackeray left against any regulation biography,
and the result is that the world knows less of his life before fame
came to him than it does of any other celebrated author of his age.
The scanty facts show that he was born in Calcutta in 1811; that he
was left a fortune of $100,000 by his father, who died when he was
five years old; that, like most children of Anglo-Indians, he was sent
to school in England; that he was prepared for college at the old
Charter House School; that he was graduated from Trinity College,
Cambridge, and that while in college he showed much ability as a
writer of verse and prose, although he took no honors and gained no
prizes. After reading law he was moved to become an artist and spent
some time in travel on the Continent.
[Illustration: TITLE-PAGE TO "VANITY FAIR" DRAWN BY THACKERAY, WHO
FURNISHED THE ILLUSTRATIONS FOR MANY OF HIS EARLIER EDITIONS]
But this delightful life was rudely cut short by the loss of his
fortune and he was forced to earn his living by literature and
journalism. Under various pseudonyms he soon gained a reputation as a
satirist and humorist, his first success being _The Great Hoggarty
Diamond_. Then years of work for PUNCH and other papers followed
before he won enduring fame by _Vanity Fair_, which he styled "a novel
without a hero."
Charlotte Brontë, who gained a great reputation by _Jane Eyre_, added
to Thackeray's vogue by dedicating to him in rarely eloquent words the
second edition of her novel, against which preachers fulminated
because of what they called its immoral tendencies. Then in rapid
succession Thackeray wrote _Pendennis_, _Henry Esmond_, _The
Newcomes_, _The Virginians_, _Lovel the Widower_ and _The Adventures
of Philip_. All these are masterpieces of wit, satire and humor, cast
in a perfect style that never offends the most fastidious taste, yet
they are neglected to-day mainly because they do not furnish exciting
incidents.
Thackeray, like Dickens in his readings, made a fortune by his
lectures, first on "The English Humorists," and later on "The Four
Georges," and, like Dickens, he received the heartiest welcome and the
largest money returns from this country.
He died alone in his room on Christmas eve in the fine new home in
London which he had recently made for himself and his three daughters.
Thackeray was a giant physically, with a mind that worked easily, but
he was indolent and always wrote under pressure, with the printer's
devil waiting for his "copy." He was a thorough man of the world, yet
full of the freshness of fancy and the tenderness of heart of a little
child. All children were a delight to him, and he never could refrain
from giving them extravagant tips. The ever-present grief that could
not be forgotten by fame or success made him very tender to all
suffering, especially the suffering of the weak and the helpless. Yet,
like many a sensitive man, he concealed this kindness of heart under
an affectation of cynicism, which led many unsympathetic critics to
style him hard and ferocious in his satire.
Like Dickens, Thackeray was one of the great reporters of his day,
with an eye that took in unconsciously every detail of face, costume
or scene and reproduced it with perfect accuracy. The reader of his
novels is entertained by a series of pen pictures of men and women and
scenes in high life and life below stairs that are photographic in
their clearness and fidelity. Dickens always failed when he came to
depict British aristocratic life; but Thackeray moved in drawing-rooms
and brilliant assemblages with the ease of a man familiar from youth
with good society, and hence free from all embarrassment, even in the
presence of royalty.
Thackeray's early works are written in the same perfect, easy,
colloquial style, rich in natural literary allusions and frequently
rhythmic with poetic feeling, which marked his latest novel. He also
had perfect command of slang and the cockney dialect of the Londoner.
No greater master of dialogue or narrative ever wrote than he who
pictured the gradual degradation of Becky Sharp or the many
self-sacrifices of Henry Esmond for the woman that he loved.
Howells and other critics have censured Thackeray severely because of
his tendency to preach, and also because he regarded his characters as
puppets and himself as the showman who brought out their
peculiarities. There is some ground for this criticism, if one regards
the art of the novelist as centered wholly in realism; but such a hard
and fast rule would condemn all old English novelists from Richardson
to Thackeray.
It ought not to disturb any reader that Defoe turns aside and gives
reflections on the acts of his characters, for these remarks are the
fruit of his own knowledge of the world. In the same way Thackeray
keeps up a running comment on his men and women, and these bits of
philosophy make his novels a storehouse of apothegms, which may be
read again and again with great profit and pleasure. The modern novel,
with its comparative lack of thought and feeling, its insistence
upon the absolute effacement of the author, is seldom worth reading a
second time. Not so with Thackeray. Every reading reveals new beauties
of thought or style. An entire book has been made up of brief extracts
from Thackeray's novels, and it is an ideal little volume for a pocket
companion on walks, as Thackeray fits into any mood and always gives
one material for thought.
[Illustration: WILLIAM MAKEPEACE THACKERAY A CARICATURE DRAWN BY
HIMSELF]
Of all Thackeray's novels _Vanity Fair_ is the best known and most
popular. It is a remarkable picture of a thoroughly hard, selfish
woman whom even motherhood did not soften; but it is something more
than the chronicle of Becky Sharp's fortunes. It is a panoramic sketch
of many phases of London life; it is the free giving out by a great
master of fiction of his impressions of life. Hence _Vanity Fair_
alone is worth a hundred books filled merely with exciting adventures,
which do not make the reader think. The problems that Thackeray
presents in his masterpiece are those of love, duty, self-sacrifice;
of high aims and many temptations to fall below those aspirations; of
sordid, selfish life, and of fine, noble, generous souls who light up
the world and make it richer by their presence.
Thackeray, in _Vanity Fair_, has sixty characters, yet each is drawn
sharply and clearly, and the whole story moves on with the ease of
real life. Consummate art is shown in the painting of Becky's gradual
rise to power and the great scene at the climax of her success, when
Rawdon Crawley strikes down the Marquis of Steyne, is one of the
finest in all fiction. Though Becky knows that this blow shatters her
social edifice, she is still woman enough to admire her husband in the
very act that marks the beginning of the decadence of her fortunes.
_Vanity Fair_, read carefully a half-dozen times, is a liberal
education in life and in the art of the novelist.
Personally, I rank _Pendennis_ next to _Vanity Fair_ for the pleasure
to be derived from it. From the time when the old Major receives the
letter from his sister telling of young Arthur's infatuation for the
cheap actress, Miss Fotheringay, the story carries one along in the
leisurely way of the last century. All the people are a delight, from
Captain Costigan to Fowker, and from the French chef, who went to the
piano for stimulus in his culinary work, to Blanche Amory and her
amazing French affectations. But _Pendennis_ is not popular.
Nor is _Henry Esmond_ popular, although it is worthy to rank with _The
Cloister and the Hearth_, _Adam Bede_ and _Tess of the D'Urbervilles_.
There is little relief of humor in _Esmond_, but the story has a
strong appeal to any sympathetic reader, and it is the one supreme
achievement in all fiction in which the hero tells his own story.
Thackeray's art is flawless in this tale, and it sometimes rises to
great heights, as in the scenes following the death of Lord
Castlewood, the exposure of the Prince's perfidy, the selfishness of
Beatrice and the great sacrifice of Esmond.
Space is lacking to take up Thackeray's other works, but it is safe to
say if you read the three novels here hastily sketched you cannot go
amiss among his minor works. Even his lighter sketches and his essays
will be found full of material that is so far above the ordinary level
that the similar work of to-day seems cheap and common. Happy is the
boy or girl who has made Thackeray a chosen companion from childhood.
Such a one has received unconsciously lessons in life and in culture
that can be gained from few of the great authors of the world.