"I am anxious that these things should be made public: suppose you write
a brief article, and send it to the 'Times'?"
"I would do so," I answered, "if there were any probability that it
would be published."
"I will try to arrange that," said he. "I know Mr. ----," (one of the
editors,) "and will call upon him at once. I will ask for the
publication of your letter as a personal favor to myself."
We parted at the door of a club-house, to meet again the same afternoon,
when Thackeray hoped to have the matter settled as he desired. He did
not, however, succeed in finding Mr. ----, but sent him a letter. I
thereupon went to work the next day, and prepared a careful, cold,
dispassionate statement, so condensed that it would have made less than
half a column of the "Times." I sent it to the editor, referring him to
Mr. Thackeray's letter in my behalf, and that is the last I ever heard
of it.
All of Thackeray's American friends will remember the feelings of pain
and regret with which they read his "Roundabout Paper" in the "Cornhill
Magazine," in (February, I think) 1862,--wherein he reproaches our
entire people as being willing to confiscate the stocks and other
property owned in this country by Englishmen, out of spite for their
disappointment in relation to the Trent affair, and directs his New-York
bankers to sell out all his investments, and remit the proceeds to
London, without delay. It was not his fierce denunciation of such
national dishonesty that we deprecated, but his apparent belief in its
possibility. We felt that he, of all Englishmen, should have understood
us better. We regretted, for Thackeray's own sake, that he had permitted
himself, in some spleenful moment, to commit an injustice, which would
sooner or later be apparent to his own mind.
Three months afterwards, (in May, 1862,) I was again in London. I had
not heard from Thackeray since the publication of the "Roundabout"
letter to his bankers, and was uncertain how far his evident ill-temper
on that occasion had subsided; but I owed him too much kindness, I
honored him too profoundly, not to pardon him, unasked, my share of the
offence. I found him installed in the new house he had built in Palace
Gardens, Kensington. He received me with the frank welcome of old, and
when we were alone, in the privacy of his library, made an opportunity
(intentionally, I am sure) of approaching the subject, which, he knew, I
could not have forgotten. I asked him why he wrote the article.
"I was unwell," he answered,--"you know what the moral effects of my
attacks are,--and I was indignant that such a shameful proposition
should be made in your American newspapers, and not a single voice be
raised to rebuke it."
"But you certainly knew," said I, "that the ---- ---- does not represent
American opinion. I assure you, that no honest, respectable man in the
United States ever entertained the idea of cheating an English
stockholder."
"I should hope so, too," he answered; "but when I saw the same thing in
the ---- ----, which, you will admit, is a paper of character and
influence, I lost all confidence. I know how impulsive and excitable
your people are, and I really feared that some such measure might be
madly advocated and carried into effect. I see, now, that I made a
blunder, and I am already punished for it. I was getting eight per cent.
from my American investments, and now that I have the capital here it is
lying idle. I shall probably not be able to invest it at a better rate
than four per cent."
I said to him, playfully, that he must not expect me, as an American, to
feel much sympathy with this loss: I, in common with his other friends
beyond the Atlantic, expected from him a juster recognition of the
national character.
"Well," said he, "let us say no more about it. I admit that I have made
a mistake."
Those who knew the physical torments to which Thackeray was periodically
subject--spasms which not only racked his strong frame, but temporarily
darkened his views of men and things--must wonder, that, with the
obligation to write permanently hanging over him, he was not more
frequently betrayed into impatient or petulant expressions. In his clear
brain, he judged himself no less severely, and watched his own nature no
less warily, than he regarded other men. His strong sense of justice was
always alert and active. He sometimes tore away the protecting drapery
from the world's pet heroes and heroines, but, on the other hand, he
desired no one to set him beside them. He never betrayed the least
sensitiveness in regard to his place in literature. The comparisons
which critics sometimes instituted between himself and other prominent
authors simply amused him. In 1856, he told me that he had written a
play which the managers had ignominiously rejected. "I thought I could
write for the stage," said he; "but it seems I can't. I have a mind to
have the piece privately performed, here at home. I'll take the big
footman's part." This plan, however, was given up, and the material of
the play was afterwards used, I believe, in "Lovel, the Widower."
I have just read a notice of Thackeray, which asserts, as an evidence of
his weakness in certain respects, that he imagined himself to be an
artist, and persisted in supplying bad illustrations to his own works.
This statement does injustice to his self-knowledge. He delighted in the
use of the pencil, and often spoke to me of his illustrations being a
pleasant relief to hand and brain, after the fatigue of writing. He had
a very imperfect sense of color, and confessed that his forte lay in
caricature. Some of his sketches were charmingly drawn upon the block,
but he was often unfortunate in his engraver. The original MS. of "The
Rose and the Ring," with the illustrations, is admirable. He was fond of
making groups of costumes and figures of the last century, and I have
heard English artists speak of his talent in this _genre_: but he never
professed to be more than an amateur, or to exercise the art for any
other reason than the pleasure it gave him.
He enjoyed the popularity of his lectures, because they were out of his
natural line of work. Although he made several very clever after-dinner
speeches, he always assured me that it was accidental,--that he had no
talent whatever for thinking on his feet.
"Even when I am reading my lectures," he said, "I often think to myself,
'What a humbug you are, and I wonder the people don't find it out!'"
When in New-York, he confessed to me that he should like immensely to
find some town where the people imagined that all Englishmen transposed
their _h_s, and give one of his lectures in that style. He was very fond
of relating an incident which occurred during his visit to St. Louis. He
was dining one day in the hotel, when he overheard one Irish waiter say
to another,--
"Do you know who that is?"
"No," was the answer.
"That," said the first, "is the celebrated Thacker!"
"What's _he_ done?"
"D----d if I know!"
Of Thackeray's private relations I would speak with a cautious
reverence. An author's heart is a sanctuary into which, except so far as
he voluntarily reveals it, the public has no right to enter. The shadow
of a domestic affliction which darkened all his life seemed only to have
increased his paternal care and tenderness. To his fond solicitude for
his daughters we owe a part of the writings wherewith he has enriched
our literature. While in America, he often said to me that his chief
desire was to secure a certain sum for them, and I shall never forget
the joyous satisfaction with which he afterwards informed me, in London,
that the work was done. "Now," he said, "the dear girls are provided
for. The great anxiety is taken from my life, and I can breathe freely
for the little time that is left me to be with them." I knew that he had
denied himself many "luxuries" (as he called them) to accomplish this
object. For six years after he had redeemed the losses of a reckless
youthful expenditure, he was allowed to live and to employ an income,
princely for an author, in the gratification of tastes which had been so
long repressed.
He thereupon commenced building a new house, after his own designs. It
was of red brick, in the style of Queen Anne's time, but the internal
arrangement was rather American than English. It was so much admired,
that, although the cost much exceeded his estimate, he could have sold
it for an advance of a thousand pounds. To me the most interesting
feature was the library, which occupied the northern end of the first
floor, with a triple window opening toward the street, and another upon
a warm little garden-plot shut in by high walls.
"Here," he said to me, when I saw him for the last time, "here I am
going to write my greatest work,--a History of the Reign of Queen Anne.
There are my materials,"--pointing to a collection of volumes in various
bindings which occupied a separate place on the shelves.
"When shall you begin it?" I asked.
"Probably as soon as I am done with 'Philip,'" was his answer; "but I am
not sure. I may have to write another novel first. But the History will
mature all the better for the delay. I want to _absorb_ the authorities
gradually, so that, when I come to write, I shall be filled with the
subject, and can sit down to a continuous narrative, without jumping up
every moment to consult somebody. The History has been a pet idea of
mine for years past. I am slowly working up to the level of it, and know
that when I once begin I shall do it well."
It is not likely that any part of this history was ever written. What it
might have been we can only regretfully conjecture: it has perished with
the uncompleted novel, and all the other dreams of that principle of the
creative intellect which the world calls Ambition, but which the artist
recognizes as Conscience.
That hour of the sunny May-day returns to memory as I write. The quiet
of the library, a little withdrawn from the ceaseless roar of London;
the soft grass of the bit of garden, moist from a recent shower, seen
through the open window; the smoke-strained sunshine, stealing gently
along the wall; and before me the square, massive head, the prematurely
gray hair, the large, clear, sad eyes, the frank, winning mouth, with
its smile of boyish sweetness, of the man whom I honored as a master,
while he gave me the right to love him as a friend. I was to leave the
next day for a temporary home on the Continent, and he was planning how
he could visit me, with his daughters. The proper season, the time, and
the expense were carefully calculated: he described the visit in
advance, with a gay, excursive fancy; and his last words, as he gave me
the warm, strong hand I was never again to press, were, "_Auf
wiedersehen_!"
What little I have ventured to relate gives but a fragmentary image of
the man whom I knew. I cannot describe him as the faithful son, the
tender father, the true friend, the man of large humanity and lofty
honesty he really was, without stepping too far within the sacred circle
of his domestic life. To me, there was no inconsistency in his nature.
Where the careless reader may see only the cynic and the relentless
satirist, I recognize his unquenchable scorn of human meanness and
duplicity,--the impatient wrath of a soul too frequently disappointed in
its search for good. I have heard him lash the faults of others with an
indignant sorrow which brought the tears to his eyes. For this reason he
could not bear that ignorant homage should be given to men really
unworthy of it. He said to me, once, speaking of a critic who blamed the
scarcity of noble and lovable character in his novels,--"Other men can
do that. I know what I can do best; and if I do good, it must be in my
own way."
The fate which took him from us was one which he had anticipated. He
often said that his time was short, that he could not certainly reckon
on many more years of life, and that his end would probably be sudden.
He once spoke of Irving's death as fortunate in its character. The
subject was evidently familiar to his thoughts, and his voice had
always a tone of solemn resignation which told that he had conquered its
bitterness. He was ready at any moment to answer the call; and when, at
last, it was given and answered,--when the dawn of the first Christmas
holiday lighted his pale, moveless features, and the large heart
throbbed no more forever in its grand scorn and still grander
tenderness,--his released spirit could have chosen no fitter words of
farewell than the gentle benediction his own lips have breathed:--
"I lay the weary pen aside,
And wish you health and love and mirth,
As fits the solemn Christmas-tide.
As fits the holy Christmas birth,
Be this, good friends, our carol still,--
Be peace on earth, be peace on earth,
To men of gentle will!"