Before Thackeray died, he had become as familiar a figure in the West End
of London as Dr. Johnson was in Fleet street and its tributary courts and
lanes. Any one who did not know him might have supposed him to be an
indolent man about town; and those who could identify him generally knew
where to find him, if they wished to show the great author to a friend
from the country. He was usually present in the Park at the fashionable
hour; and if the Pall Mall of his day is ever painted, his face and form
will be as inseparable from a truthful picture as the mammoth bulk of the
testy lexicographer is from the contemporaneous prints of old Temple Bar.
Pall Mall is the street of gentlemen, as Fleet Street was the street of
the ragged literary mendicants, whose wretched lot has been drawn in
vivid colours by Macauley. The people one meets in it are daintily
booted, gloved and hatted; a lady is not often seen among them. It is,
as Thackeray himself said, “the social exchange of London:” the main
artery of Clubland, where civilized man has set up for himself all the
adjuncts of luxurious celibacy, and congregates to discuss, undisturbed
by the impertinencies of feminine lack-logic, the news, the politics and
the scandal of the hour. It is old and historic, haunted by the shadows
of many odd and famous persons, who reshape themselves unbidden in the
memory of those who know its annals. The reminiscences bring out a
motley tenancy from the houses—Culloden, Cumberland and Gainsborough side
by side, pretty Eleanor Gwynn and Queen Caroline, Sarah Marlborough and
genial Walter Scott, George Selwyn and Dick Steele, Sheridan and William
Pitt, Walpole and Joseph Addison, and Fox and the Prince Regent! The
greensward at the south end of the Athenæum Club was a part of the site
of Carlton House, the residence of the royal scapegrace, and we see
Thackeray, as he has described himself, a frilled and petticoated urchin
in his nurse’s care, peeping through the colonnade at the guards, as they
pace before the palace, and salute the royal chariots coming in and out.
Before he reached manhood the palace had disappeared, and many of the old
buildings in Pall Mall had been pulled down to make room for the
magnificent club houses, which now give the street its distinctive
character. Not one of the new faces that appeared with the alterations
was more familiar to the men of his time than his, and among all the
princes, dandies, politicians, and scholars who filed through the street
and nodded to one another from their club windows, there was not one to
whom the reading part of this generation reverts with greater fondness
than to Thackeray.
Those who appreciate his books—a constantly increasing number—find it
difficult to understand how the author can be so misinterpreted as to be
accused of any narrowness of view or harshness of judgment. To them
every line is testimony of a fatherly tenderness which grieves at the
necessity of its own rebuke, and though he is incapable of an apathetic
acquiescence in human weakness, and does not view mankind with the lazy
good nature of a neutral temper, the pervading spirit of his criticism
springs from a deep-welled charitableness.
One of the few stories told of him which would dispute his invariable
kindliness is of two friends who were walking in the West End when they
saw Thackeray approaching them from the opposite direction. One of them
had met him before, and the other had not. The former made a
demonstrative salutation, which the author barely acknowledged as he
loftily passed along. “You wouldn’t believe that he sat up with us
drinking punch and singing _Dr. Martin Luther_ until three o’clock this
morning,” said the person, who felt aggrieved at his chilling reception,
to his friend. Now supposing that the story is authentic—that two
friends did meet him under those circumstances, and that one of them had
been a sharer of his conviviality in the small hours, a further claim on
his recognition was not necessarily justified, and he did not violate any
rule of good breeding in discouraging it. But there are some who feel
emboldened by the smallest politeness of a great man to consider
themselves intimate with him, and who once having seen him come down from
his pedestal to smoke a cutty pipe in a miscellaneous company ever
afterwards look upon him as a comrade.
The loveableness of his character is well remembered at the Athenæum
Club, and the old servants, especially, speak of his kindness to them.
The club house is at the corner of Waterloo Place and Pall Mall—a
drab-coloured, sedate, classic building, with a wide frieze under the
cornice—in a line with the Guards, the Oxford and Cambridge, the Reform,
the Traveller’s, and many other clubs. Opposite to it is the United
Service Club, midway is the memorial column to the Duke of York, and only
a few yards away are Carlton Terrace and the steps leading into St.
James’s Park. Marlborough House, the home of the Prince of Wales, and
unpalatial St. James’s Palace, are close by.
Thackeray’s name appears on the roll of the Athenæum as that of a
barrister; but he was elected in 1851 as “author of _Vanity Fair_,
_Pendennis_, and other well-known works of fiction.”
He was elected under Rule II., which is worth quoting, as it is designed
to preserve the character of the Club. “It being essential to the
maintenance of the Athenæum, in conformity with the principles upon which
it was originally founded, that the annual introduction of a certain
number of persons of distinguished eminence in Science, Literature or the
Arts, or for Public Services, should be secured, a limited number of
persons of such qualifications shall be elected by the Committee. The
number so elected shall not exceed Nine each year . . . The Club intrust
this privilege to the Committee, in the entire confidence that they will
only elect persons who have attained to distinguished eminence in
Science, Literature, or the Arts, or for Public Services.”
He used the club both for work and pleasure, and there are two corners of
the building to which his name has become attached, on account of his
association with them. The dining-room is on the first floor, at the
left-hand side of the spacious entrance; and he usually sat at a table in
the nearest corner, where the sun shines plenteously through the high
windows, and makes rainbows on the white cloth in striking the glasses.
Theodore Hook had used the same table, and uncorked his wit with his wine
at it; but it was in a kindlier strain than the author of _Jack Brag_ was
capable of that Thackeray enlivened the friends who gathered around him.
From the Club window he probably saw many of his own characters going
along Pall Mall: little Barnes Newcome; Fred Bayham, with his big
whiskers; cumbrous Rawdon Crawley; the sinister Marquis of Steyne;
stylish little Foker; neat Major Pendennis; homely William Dobbin, and
the dashing Dr. Brand Firmin, as he drove up or down the Haymarket to or
from Old Parr street. Most of them belonged to the fashionable or
semi-fashionable world, and the men were sure to be members of some of
the clubs in this neighbourhood. No doubt he also saw Arthur Pendennis,
Clive Newcome, and Philip Firmin; but it is likely that they appeared
with the greatest distinctness when the blinds were drawn and the
reflection of his own face was visible in the darkened windows.
He was a _bon vivant_: fond of a nice little dinner, a connoisseur of
wines, the devotee of a good cigar, a willing receiver of many little
pleasures which an ascetic judgment would pronounce wasteful and
slothful. He was inclined to be indolent and luxurious. Had he not lost
his fortune, and been urged by necessity to write, it is to be feared
that his splendid gifts would never have been exercised, and that his
genius would have borne no more fruit than an unworked store of
unformulated and unanalysed mental impressions, known only to himself.
But his liking for choice little dinners was not wholly accountable to
his relish of the food or to the satisfaction of thus gratifying the
senses. No reproach of excess or grossness of any kind attaches to his
character. Though perhaps he was self-indulgent, he was not a
voluptuary. His pleasure was as innocent as that of Colonel Newcome when
he visited the smoky depths of Bohemia with young Clive, and the dinner
was but the means of sociability and hospitality, the preparation for a
more intellectual treat, a key to the fetters which keep some hearts and
minds in this oddly-constituted and misgiving world from the openness and
confidence of brotherhood.
It was not a cold or formal honour that was conferred upon those who sat
with him. When they were taken into his confidence, no friend could be
more jovial or unrestrained than he was. The simplicity of the man was
one of his greatest charms. He could not endure affectations and
mannerisms. He talked without effort, without hesitation, and without
any of the elaborateness which comes of egotistic cogitation, and the
desire to present oneself in the most favourable light. He was one of
the most “natural” of men, if the word is taken as meaning the absence of
self-disguise; and at these little dinners and in the smoke-room,
figuratively speaking, he usually had his slippers on, and his feet
stretched out on the hearth-rug. {72}
The modern smoking-room of the Club is under the garden, upon which the
dining room of Carlton House once stood; but in Thackeray’s time a very
small apartment near the top of the building, served for those addicted
to the dreamy weed, and he was among them. He was not a great smoker,
though he usually had a cigar at hand; he coquetted with it, puffed at it
awhile and watched the blue wreaths vanishing towards the ceiling, and
then put it down, or let it go out. He did not apply himself to it with
the constancy and caressing intentness of complete enjoyment, but was
fitful, as if the pleasure he derived was dubious.
Much of the pleasure of his life was dubious. We have here seen but one
side of his character, the geniality which was unextinguished by an
inherent sadness of temperament: the comfortableness of his hours of
relaxation. But he was not a happy man, even when he had achieved
success, and his powers had been fully recognized. Self-confidence is an
ingredient of genius which was lacking in him. He was always in doubt
about his work, he trusted his judgment when he discovered defects in it,
but never felt sure of its merits. More distressing than all else was
his procrastination: the heart-breaking and peace-destroying spectre of
postponed work was too often before him, and he was often crippled by his
hesitation and despair.
The south-west corner of the South library, on the second floor of the
Club, is filled with books of English history, and some of his work was
done there. Therefrom, no doubt, some of the material of the lectures on
the Georges was drawn; he could look out of the window on the very site
of Carlton House, now a square of grass and flowers; and probably on
these shelves he found some help in completing _Esmond_ and developing
_The Virginians_. He often left the library looking fatigued and
troubled, and he was sometimes heard complaining of the perplexity he
found in disposing of this character or that, and asserting that he knew
that what he was writing would fail.
He divided his time between the Athenæum Club, the Reform, and the
Garrick. Contiguous to the first two is the neighborhood of St. James’s,
which principally consists of clubs, bachelors’ chambers, and fashionable
shops, and is associated with many of Thackeray’s characters. At No. 88
St. James’s street, in a building now demolished, he himself once
occupied chambers, and there began and finished _Barry Lyndon_. Major
Pendennis had chambers in Bury street, a narrow lane coming from
Piccadilly parallel with St. James’s street; and it was in them that the
famous scene took place between the shrewd old soldier and Mr. Morgan, in
which that rebellious flunky was brought whining to his knees by the
strategic courage of his master. We have searched the neighbourhood for
the “Wheel of Fortune” public-house, which Mr. Morgan frequented to
discuss with other gentlemen’s gentlemen, gentlemen’s affairs. It is not
to be found; and Bury street has scarcely a house in it that looks old
enough to have been the Major’s. But St. James’s Church is here—a gloomy
old building of smoky brick with lighter trimmings of stone; and the
reader may remember how, one day, Esmond and Dick Steele were walking
along Jermyn street after dinner at the Guards’, when they espied a fair,
tall man in a snuff-coloured suit, with a plain sword, very sober, and
almost shabby in appearance, who was poring over a folio volume at a
book-shop close by the church; and how Dick, shining in scarlet and gold
lace, rushed up to the student and took him in his arms and hugged him;
and how the object of these demonstrations proved to be Addison, who
invited Steele and Esmond to his chambers in the Haymarket, where he read
verses of the _Campaign_ to them, and regaled them with pipes and
Burgundy. I never walk through Jermyn street, or past the old church,
without seeing these three figures, and they are no more like shadows
than any in the nineteenth century throng which fills the street.
Willis’s Rooms, formerly Almack’s, are in King street, which is parallel
to Jermyn street, and it was in them, that Thackeray gave his lectures.