he writes a lying platitude. In the eighteenth century, and in the
twentieth, honor and fame do rise from condition. Now in the presence of
the supreme tragic emotions, of death, of suffering, all men are equal.
But this social inequality is the region of the comedy of manners, and
that is the region in which Thackeray’s comedy moves—the _comédie
mondaine_, if not the full _comédie humaine_. It is a world of
convention, and he is at home in it, in the world and a citizen of the
world. Of course it is not primitively human. Manners are a convention:
but so are morals, laws, society, the state, the church. I suppose it is
because Thackeray dwelt contentedly in these conventions and rather
liked them although he laughed at them, that Shaw calls him an enslaved
mind. At any rate, this is what Mr. Howells means when he writes: “When
he made a mock of snobbishness, I did not know but snobbishness was
something that might be reached and cured by ridicule. Now I know that
so long as we have social inequality we shall have snobs: we shall have
men who bully and truckle, and women who snub and crawl. I know that it
is futile to spurn them, or lash them for trying to get on in the world,
and that the world is what it must be from the selfish motives which
underlie our economic life. . . . This is the toxic property of all
Thackeray’s writing. . . . He rails at the order of things, but he
imagines nothing different.” In other words, Thackeray was not a
socialist, as Mr. Shaw is, and Mr. Howells, and as we are all coming
measurably to be. Meanwhile, however, equality is a dream.
All his biographers are agreed that Thackeray was honestly fond of
mundane advantages. He liked the conversation of clever, well-mannered
gentlemen, and the society of agreeable, handsome, well-dressed women.
He liked to go to fine houses: liked his club, and was gratified when
asked to dine with Sir Robert Peel or the Duke of Devonshire. Speaking
of the South and of slavery, he confessed that he found it impossible to
think ill of people who gave you such good claret.
This explains his love of Horace. Venables reports that he would not
study his Latin at school. But he certainly brought away with him from
the Charterhouse, or from Trinity, a knowledge of Horace. You recall
what delightful, punning use he makes of the lyric Roman at every turn.
It is _solvuntur rupes_ when Colonel Newcome’s Indian fortune melts
away; and _Rosa sera moratur_ when little Rose is slow to go off in the
matrimonial market. Now Horace was eminently a man of the world, a man
about town, a club man, a gentle satirist, with a cheerful, mundane
philosophy of life, just touched with sadness and regret. He was the
poet of an Augustan age, like that English Augustan age which was
Thackeray’s favorite; social, gregarious, urban.
I never saw Thackeray. I was a boy of eight when he made his second
visit to America, in the winter of 1855–56. But Arthur Hollister, who
graduated at Yale in 1858, told me that he once saw Thackeray walking up
Chapel Street, a colossal figure, six feet four inches in height,
peering through his big glasses with that expression which is familiar
to you in his portraits and in his charming caricatures of his own face.
This seemed to bring him rather near. But I think the nearest that I
ever felt to his bodily presence was once when Mr. Evarts showed me a
copy of Horace, with inserted engravings, which Thackeray had given to
Sam Ward and Ward had given to Evarts. It was a copy which Thackeray had
used and which had his autograph on the flyleaf.
And this mention of his Latin scholarship induces me to close with an
anecdote that I find in Melville’s “Life.” He says himself that it is
almost too good to be true, but it illustrates so delightfully certain
academic attitudes, that I must give it, authentic or not. The novelist
was to lecture at Oxford and had to obtain the license of the
Vice-Chancellor. He called on him for the necessary permission and this
was the dialogue that ensued:
_V. C._ Pray, sir, what can I do for you?
_T._ My name is Thackeray.
_V. C._ So I see by this card.
_T._ I seek permission to lecture within your precincts.
_V. C._ Ah! You are a lecturer: what subjects do you undertake,
religious or political?
_T._ Neither. I am a literary man.
_V. C._ Have you written anything?
_T._ Yes, I am the author of “Vanity Fair.”
_V. C._ I presume, a dissenter—has that anything to do with
Jno. Bunyan’s book?
_T._ Not exactly: I have also written “Pendennis.”
_V. C._ Never heard of these works, but no doubt they are proper
books.
_T._ I have also contributed to “Punch.”
_V. C._ “Punch.” I have heard of that. Is it not a ribald
publication?
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[3] Unquestionably Lady Jane pronounced it wīnds.