Though in the east end of the town and in the south, Thackeray has left
few footsteps, for us to follow, in ancient and comfortable Bloomsbury,
and the region to the west of it and north of Oxford street (called De
Quincey’s step-mother), we find much to remind us of him. It was in
Russell Square that the Sedleys lived in the time of their prosperity,
and thence, on the evening after the arrival of gentle Amelia from the
boarding school at Chiswick, a messenger was sent for George Osborne,
whose house was No. 96. Russell Square is the largest and handsomest of
the chain of squares which extend, almost without a break, from Oxford
street to the New Road—Bloomsbury Square, Woburn Square, Gordon Square,
Tavistock Square, and Euston Square. The neighbourhood has seen many
strange shifts of fortune, and some of the finest of its mansions are
debased to the uses of common boarding-houses and private hotels. There
are streets and streets of houses with white cards in the windows
announcing “Lodgings to let.” Sombre old houses they are, built of
brick, with flat, uninteresting fronts, the sooty darkness of which is
sometimes relieved by a yellowish portico, freshly painted, or a plaster
shell of a drab colour reaching from the basement to the second story.
The cheeriness of the spreading trees in the little parks, the flowering
shrubs, the shining fountains, and the grass, are only a partial
alleviation. Russell Square has deteriorated less than some of the other
places in the neighbourhood, however, and the houses around it would not
be beneath the inclinations of a prosperous merchant such as old Sedley
was. We look in vain for 96; the numbers do not go as high as that; but
we have no difficulty in singling out the respectable dwelling on the
western side in which poor Amelia sighed for her selfish lover, and Becky
Sharp set her cap at the corpulent Mr. Jos.
How sad the story of the Sedleys is!—the unrequited love of Amelia—the
untimely death of George at Waterloo—the failure of old Sedley, and the
cold-heartedness of the elder Osborne! The decayed merchant musing over
all sorts of fatuous schemes by which he hopes to recover his position,
and sitting in the dark corner of a coffee-house with his letters spread
out before him—letters relating to a make-believe and visionary
business—which he is anxious to read to every friend, is the most
touching picture, after the death of Colonel Newcome, which Thackeray has
drawn.
“What guest at Dives’s table can pass the familiar house without a
sigh?—the house of which the lights used to shine so cheerfully at seven
o’clock—of which the hall doors opened so readily—of which the obsequious
servants, as you passed up the comfortable stairs, sounded your name from
landing to landing, until it reached the apartment where jolly old Dives
welcomed his friends! What a number of them he had! What a noble way of
entertaining them! . . . How changed is the house, though! The front is
patched over with bills, setting forth the particulars of the furniture
in staring capitals. They have hung a shred of carpet out of the
upstairs window—a half dozen of porters are lounging on the dirty
steps—the hall swarms with dingy guests of oriental countenance, who
thrust printed cards into your hands, and offer to bid. Old women and
amateurs have invaded the upper apartments, pinching the bed curtains,
poking the feathers, shampooing the mattresses, and clapping the wardrobe
drawers to and fro. . . . O Dives, who would have thought, as we sat
round the broad table sparkling with plate and spotless linen, to have
such a dish at the head of it as that roaring auctioneer?”
Among the bidders was a six-foot, shy-looking military gentleman, who
bought a piano, and sent it without any message to the little house—St.
Adelaide Villa, Anna Maria Road, West—to which the Sedleys had retired
after their downfall, and there, as the reader no doubt remembers, Amelia
received it with great gladness, believing that it came from her
well-beloved George.
It was years before she discovered that it was not her faithless lover,
but simple, brave, tender-hearted Captain Dobbin, to whom she should have
been grateful. It was in Hart street, two blocks nearer Oxford street
than Russell Square, that little George Osborne went to school at the
house of the Rev. Laurence Veal, domestic chaplain to the Earl of
Bareacres, who prepared young noblemen and gentlemen for the
universities, the senate, and the learned professions, whose system did
not embrace the degrading corporal severities still practiced at the
ancient places of education, and in whose family the pupils found the
elegancies of refined society, and the confidence and affection of a
home. Thither came poor Amelia, walking all the way from Brompton to
catch a glimpse of her darling boy, who had been taken away from her by
his obdurate grandfather.
Great Russell street is next to Hart street, and on it fronts the classic
portico of the British Museum, in the splendid reading-room of which
Thackeray was often seen. It was in Great Coram street, adjoining the
celebrated foundling hospital, that he lived, when, one evening, he
called on a young man who had chambers in Furnival’s Inn, and offered to
illustrate the works which were beginning to make “Boz” famous; and we
can see him coming back to his lodgings in low spirits over the rejection
of his proposal, for at that time Thackeray was poor, and neither
literature nor art, which he loved the better, would support him.
About half a mile farther north, across Tottenham Court Road, is Fitzroy
Square; and when we look for 120, we find that 40 is the highest number
which the Square includes. Though the little circular garden which it
incloses is prettily laid out, and is one of the leafiest of the oases
between Euston and Bloomsbury, Fitzroy has degenerated more than some of
the other squares in the neighborhood. It was not very fashionable when
Colonel Newcome took No. 120 with James Binnie, and it is not fashionable
at all now. One side is badly out of repair. There are two or three
doctors’ houses in it, several houses with announcements of apartments to
let, and a private hotel. The particular house occupied by the Colonel
and his old Indian friend cannot be easily identified by Thackeray’s
description. “The house is vast, but, it must be owned, melancholy. Not
long since, it was a ladies’ school in an unprosperous condition. The
scar left by Madame Latour’s brass plate may still be seen on the tall
black door, cheerfully ornamented in the style of the end of the last
century, with a funereal urn in the centre of the entry and garlands, and
the skulls of rams at each corner.” We fancy that it was on the south
side of the square, near the middle of a row of heavy sepulchral houses
built of stone, which, first blackened by the London smoke, have since
been unevenly calcined by the atmosphere, so that, as in many other
buildings, they look as if a quantity of dirty whitewash had been allowed
to trickle down them. Some of the ornaments have been removed, but the
urn is still over the door.
The days spent here were the happiest in the lives of the good old
Colonel and his son. The Colonel had just returned from India full of
honors and riches, and with his old chum, James Binnie, he kept house
with lavish hospitality, and much originality. “The Colonel was great at
making hot-pot, curry, and pillau,” Pendennis tells us. “What cozy pipes
did we not smoke in the dining-room, in the drawing-room, or where we
would! What pleasant evenings did we not have with Mr. Binnie’s books
and Schiedam! Then there were solemn state dinners, at most of which the
writer of this biography had a corner.” The guests at these
entertainments were not selected for their social position or their
worldly prosperity, and it mattered not whether they were rich or poor,
well dressed or shabby, if they were friends. Old Indian Officers were
among them, and young artists with unkempt ways from Newman street and
Berners street; the genial F. B. waltzed with elderly houris and paid
them compliments; Professor Gandish talked about art with many misplaced
h’s, and the Rev. Charles Honeyman sighed and posed and meekly received
the adulation of the women.
Despite the failure of the Bundlecomb Bank, the later part of the history
of the Newcomes would have been less sad but for that accident to Mr.
Binnie, in which he fell from his horse and was so much injured that Mrs.
Mackenzie—the “awful” campaigner—was called in to nurse him with the aid
of poor little Rosey. Fitzroy Square is so old that its gloomy houses
must have known much sorrow; but we doubt if any of them has seen
anything more pitiable than the humiliation of Colonel Newcome, or
anything crueller than the remorseless tyranny of the “campaigner” and
her fierce temper—the “campaigner,” who was all smiles, coquetry, and
amiability, until prosperity fled from those who had been her
benefactors, when she suddenly revealed all the pettiness and harshness
of her termagant soul.
Three streets away from the Square is Howland street, to which Clive
removed with his weak little wife and his spiteful mother-in-law when
disaster fell upon him; and every reader of Thackeray will remember how
Pendennis, Clive, and Boy went out to meet the broken-hearted old man as
he came along Guilford street and Russell Square, from the Charterhouse
to eat his last Christmas dinner.
When we close the history of Colonel Newcome we ask ourselves if any man
who moves our hearts as Thackeray does, could be a cynic? Cynicism is a
withering of the heart, the exhaustion of a shallow moral nature, the
self-consciousness of an ignoble mind. But what pathos is so
spontaneous, so genuine, so lasting as Thackeray’s—so free from the
literary trickery which may produce tears in youth, but only provokes a
smile when age has dulled the feelings and opened the eyes to artifice.
Among all English authors the writer of this little book, at least, does
not recognize one who is more unaffectedly tender than this great Social
preacher, who speaks with unflinching candour of evil, but glorifies all
good, and reads with unfeigned pity the lessons of life.