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FRASER'S MAGAZINE AND PUNCH 62

VANITY FAIR 90

PENDENNIS AND THE NEWCOMES 108

ESMOND AND THE VIRGINIANS 122

THACKERAY'S BURLESQUES 139

THACKERAY'S LECTURES 154

THACKERAY'S BALLADS 168

THACKERAY'S STYLE AND MANNER OF WORK 184

THACKERAY

BIOGRAPHICAL.

We can imagine how his mind had worked, how he had declared to himself that, as by those loving hands into which his letters, his notes, his little details,--his literary remains, as such documents used to be called,--might naturally fall, truth of his foibles and of his shortcomings could not be told, so should not his praises be written, or that flattering portrait be limned which biographers are wont to produce. Acting upon these instructions, his daughters,--while there were two living, and since that the one surviving,--have carried out the order which has appeared to them to be sacred. Such being the case, it certainly is not my purpose now to write what may be called a life of Thackeray. In this preliminary chapter I will give such incidents and anecdotes of his life as will tell the reader perhaps all about him that a reader is entitled to ask. I will tell how he became an author, and will say how first he worked and struggled, and then how he worked and prospered, and became a household word in English literature;--how, in this way, he passed through that course of mingled failure and success which, though the literary aspirant may suffer, is probably better both for the writer and for the writings than unclouded early glory. The suffering no doubt is acute, and a touch of melancholy, perhaps of indignation, may be given to words which have been written while the heart has been too full of its own wrongs; but this is better than the continued note of triumph which is still heard in the final voices of the spoilt child of literature, even when they are losing their music. Then I will tell how Thackeray died, early indeed, but still having done a good life's work. Something of his manner, something of his appearance I can say, something perhaps of his condition of mind; because for some few years he was known to me. But of the continual intercourse of himself with the world, and of himself with his own works, I can tell little, because no record of his life has been made public.

William Makepeace Thackeray was born at Calcutta, on July 18, 1811. His father was Richmond Thackeray, son of W. M. Thackeray of Hadley, near Barnet, in Middlesex. A relation of his, of the same name, a Rev. Mr. Thackeray, I knew well as rector of Hadley, many years afterwards. Him I believe to have been a second cousin of our Thackeray, but I think they had never met each other. Another cousin was Provost of Kings at Cambridge, fifty years ago, as Cambridge men will remember. Clergymen of the family have been numerous in England during the century, and there was one, a Rev. Elias Thackeray, whom I also knew in my youth, a dignitary, if I remember right, in the diocese of Meath. The Thackerays seem to have affected the Church; but such was not at any period of his life the bias of our novelist's mind.

His father and grandfather were Indian civil servants. His mother was Anne Becher, whose father was also in the Company's service. She married early in India, and was only nineteen when her son was born. She was left a widow in 1816, with only one child, and was married a few years afterwards to Major Henry Carmichael Smyth, with whom Thackeray lived on terms of affectionate intercourse till the major died. All who knew William Makepeace remember his mother well, a handsome, spare, gray-haired lady, whom Thackeray treated with a courtly deference as well as constant affection. There was, however, something of discrepancy between them as to matters of religion. Mrs. Carmichael Smyth was disposed to the somewhat austere observance of the evangelical section of the Church. Such, certainly, never became the case with her son. There was disagreement on the subject, and probably unhappiness at intervals, but never, I think, quarrelling. Thackeray's house was his mother's home whenever she pleased it, and the home also of his stepfather.

He was brought a child from India, and was sent early to the Charter House. Of his life and doings there his friend and schoolfellow George Venables writes to me as follows;

"My recollection of him, though fresh enough, does not furnish much material for biography. He came to school young,--a pretty, gentle, and rather timid boy. I think his experience there was not generally pleasant. Though he had afterwards a scholarlike knowledge of Latin, he did not attain distinction in the school; and I should think that the character of the head-master, Dr. Russell, which was vigorous, unsympathetic, and stern, though not severe, was uncongenial to his own. With the boys who knew him, Thackeray was popular; but he had no skill in games, and, I think, no taste for them.... He was already known by his faculty of making verses, chiefly parodies. I only remember one line of one parody on a poem of L. E. L.'s, about 'Violets, dark blue violets;' Thackeray's version was 'Cabbages, bright green cabbages,' and we thought it very witty. He took part in a scheme, which came to nothing, for a school magazine, and he wrote verses for it, of which I only remember that they were good of their kind. When I knew him better, in later years, I thought I could recognise the sensitive nature which he had as a boy.... His change of retrospective feeling about his school days was very characteristic. In his earlier books he always spoke of the Charter House as Slaughter House and Smithfield. As he became famous and prosperous his memory softened, and Slaughter House was changed into Grey Friars where Colonel Newcome ended his life."

In Africa,--a quarter of the world,-- Men's skins are black; their hair is crisped and curled; And somewhere there, unknown to public view A mighty city lies, called Timbuctoo.

I see her tribes the hill of glory mount, And sell their sugars on their own account; While round her throne the prostrate nations come, Sue for her rice, and barter for her rum.

Whose taste it is our privilege to follow, Whose virtue it is our duty to imitate, Whose presence it is our interest to avoid."

It was thus that he lost his money; and then, not having prospered very well with his drawing lessons in Paris or elsewhere, he was fain to take up literature as a profession. It is a business which has its allurements. It requires no capital, no special education, no training, and may be taken up at any time without a moment's delay. If a man can command a table, a chair, pen, paper, and ink, he can commence his trade as literary man. It is thus that aspirants generally do commence it. A man may or may not have another employment to back him, or means of his own; or,--as was the case with Thackeray, when, after his first misadventure, he had to look about him for the means of living,--he may have nothing but his intellect and his friends. But the idea comes to the man that as he has the pen and ink, and time on his hand, why should he not write and make money?

It is an idea that comes to very many men and women, old as well as young,--to many thousands who at last are crushed by it, of whom the world knows nothing. A man can make the attempt though he has not a coat fit to go out into the street with; or a woman, though she be almost in rags. There is no apprenticeship wanted. Indeed there is no room for such apprenticeship. It is an art which no one teaches; there is no professor who, in a dozen lessons, even pretends to show the aspirant how to write a book or an article. If you would be a watchmaker, you must learn; or a lawyer, a cook, or even a housemaid. Before you can clean a horse you must go into the stable, and begin at the beginning. Even the cab-driving tiro must sit for awhile on the box, and learn something of the streets, before he can ply for a fare. But the literary beginner rushes at once at the top rung of his ladder;--as though a youth, having made up his mind to be a clergyman, should demand, without preliminary steps, to be appointed Bishop of London. That he should be able to read and write is presumed, and that only. So much may be presumed of everyone, and nothing more is wanted.

The temptation is irresistible, and thousands fall into it. How is a man to know that he is not the lucky one or the gifted one? There is the table and there the pen and ink. Among the unfortunate he who fails altogether and from the first start is not the most unfortunate. A short period of life is wasted, and a sharp pang is endured. Then the disappointed one is relegated to the condition of life which he would otherwise have filled a little earlier. He has been wounded, but not killed, or even maimed. But he who has a little success, who succeeds in earning a few halcyon, but, ah! so dangerous guineas, is drawn into a trade from which he will hardly escape till he be driven from it, if he come out alive, by sheer hunger. He hangs on till the guineas become crowns and shillings,--till some sad record of his life, made when he applies for charity, declares that he has worked hard for the last year or two and has earned less than a policeman in the streets or a porter at a railway. It is to that that he is brought by applying himself to a business which requires only a table and chair, with pen, ink, and paper! It is to that which he is brought by venturing to believe that he has been gifted with powers of imagination, creation, and expression.

The young man who makes the attempt knows that he must run the chance. He is well aware that nine must fail where one will make his running good. So much as that does reach his ears, and recommends itself to his common sense. But why should it not be he as well as another? There is always some lucky one winning the prize. And this prize when it has been won is so well worth the winning! He can endure starvation,--so he tells himself,--as well as another. He will try. But yet he knows that he has but one chance out of ten in his favour, and it is only in his happier moments that he flatters himself that that remains to him. Then there falls upon him,--in the midst of that labour which for its success especially requires that a man's heart shall be light, and that he be always at his best,--doubt and despair. If there be no chance, of what use is his labour?

Were it not better done as others use, To sport with Amaryllis in the shade,

and amuse himself after that fashion? Thus the very industry which alone could give him a chance is discarded. It is so that the young man feels who, with some slight belief in himself and with many doubts, sits down to commence the literary labour by which he hopes to live.

I can understand all the disquietude of his heart when that warning, as to the too great length of his story, was given to him. He was not a man capable of feeling at any time quite assured in his position, and when that occurred he was very far from assurance. I think that at no time did he doubt the sufficiency of his own mental qualification for the work he had taken in hand; but he doubted all else. He doubted the appreciation of the world; he doubted his fitness for turning his intellect to valuable account; he doubted his physical capacity,--dreading his own lack of industry; he doubted his luck; he doubted the continual absence of some of those misfortunes on which the works of literary men are shipwrecked. Though he was aware of his own power, he always, to the last, was afraid that his own deficiencies should be too strong against him. It was his nature to be idle,--to put off his work,--and then to be angry with himself for putting it off. Ginger was hot in the mouth with him, and all the allurements of the world were strong upon him. To find on Monday morning an excuse why he should not on Monday do Monday's work was, at the time, an inexpressible relief to him, but had become deep regret,--almost a remorse,--before the Monday was over. To such a one it was not given to believe in himself with that sturdy rock-bound foundation which we see to have belonged to some men from the earliest struggles of their career. To him, then, must have come an inexpressible pang when he was told that his story must be curtailed.

Gilb. Foliot, Ep. lxxxvii. .

At the close of the year Henry determined to go and see for himself the truth of these strange rumours. The negotiations concerning the papal question had detained him on the continent throughout the summer; in the end both he and Louis gave a cordial welcome to Alexander, and a general pacification was effected in a meeting of the two kings and the Pope which took place late in the autumn at Chouzy on the Loire. Compelled by contrary winds to keep Christmas at Cherbourg instead of in England as he had hoped, the king landed at Southampton on S. Paul's day. Thomas, still accompanied by the little Henry, was waiting to receive him; the two friends met with demonstrations of the warmest affection, and travelled to London together in the old intimate association. One subject of disagreement indeed there was; Thomas had actually been holding for six months the archdeaconry of Canterbury together with the archbishopric, and this Henry, after several vain remonstrances, now compelled him to resign. They parted however in undisturbed harmony, the archbishop again taking his little pupil with him.

Rob. Torigni, a. 1162.

Herb. Bosh. , p. 252. The date is given by R. Diceto , vol. i. p. 308.

R. Diceto, as above.

Herb. Bosh. , p. 253.

The first joint work of king and primate was the translation of Gilbert Foliot from Hereford to London. Some of those who saw its consequences in after-days declared that Henry had devised the scheme for the special purpose of securing Gilbert's aid against the primate; but it is abundantly clear that no such thought had yet entered his mind, and that the suggestion of Gilbert's promotion really came from Thomas himself. Like every one else, he looked upon Gilbert as the greatest living light of the English Church; he expected to find in him his own most zealous and efficient fellow-worker in the task which lay before him as metropolitan, as well as his best helper in influencing the king for good. Gilbert was in fact the man who in the natural fitness of things had seemed marked out for the primacy; failing that, it was almost a matter of necessity that he should be placed in the see which stood next in dignity, and where both king and primate could benefit by his assistance ever at hand, instead of having to seek out their most useful adviser in the troubled depths of the Welsh marches. The chapter of London, to whom during the pecuniary troubles and long illness of their late bishop Gilbert had been an invaluable friend and protector, were only too glad to elect him; and his world-wide reputation combined with the pleadings of Henry to obtain the Pope's consent to his translation, which was completed by his enthronement in S. Paul's cathedral on April 28, 1163.

Will. Fitz-Steph. , p. 46.

R. Diceto , vol. i. p. 309.

The king spent the early summer in subduing South-Wales; the primate, in attending a council held by Pope Alexander at Tours. From the day of his departure to that of his return Thomas's journey was one long triumphal progress; Pope and cardinals welcomed him with such honours as had never been given to any former archbishop of Canterbury, hardly even to S. Anselm himself; and the request which he made to the Pope for Anselm's canonization may indicate the effect which they produced on his mind--confirming his resolve to stand boldly upon his right of opposition to the secular power whenever it clashed with ecclesiastical theories of liberty and justice. The first opportunity for putting his resolve in practice arose upon a question of purely temporal administration at a council held by Henry at Woodstock on July 31, after his return from Wales. The Welsh princes came to swear fealty to Henry and his heir; Malcolm of Scotland came to confirm his alliance with the English Crown by doing homage in like manner to the little king. Before the council broke up, however, Henry met the sharpest constitutional defeat which had befallen any English sovereign since the Norman conquest, and that at the hands of his own familiar friend.

Ep. xxiii. .

R. Diceto , vol. i. p. 311.

"L'A?de al Vescunte." Garnier, as above.

How the debate ended we are not told; but one thing we know: from that time forth the hated name of "Danegeld" appeared in the Pipe Rolls no more. It seems therefore that, for the first time in English history since the Norman conquest, the right of the nation's representatives to oppose the financial demands of the Crown was asserted in the council of Woodstock, and asserted with such success that the king was obliged not merely to abandon his project, but to obliterate the last trace of the tradition on which it was founded. And it is well to remember, too, that the first stand made by Thomas of Canterbury against the royal will was made in behalf not of himself or his order but of his whole flock;--in the cause not of ecclesiastical privilege but of constitutional right. The king's policy may have been really sounder and wiser than the primate's; but the ground taken by Thomas at Woodstock entitles him none the less to a place in the line of patriot-archbishops of which Dunstan stands at the head.

The next few weeks were occupied with litigation over the alienated lands of the metropolitan see. A crowd of claims put in by Thomas and left to await the king's return now came up for settlement, the most important case being that of Earl Roger of Clare, whom Thomas had summoned to perform his homage for Tunbridge at Westminster on July 22. Roger answered that he held the entire fief by knight-service, to be rendered in the shape of money-payment, of the king and not of the primate. As Roger was connected with the noblest families in England, king and barons were strongly on his side. To settle the question, Henry ordered a general inquisition to be made throughout England to ascertain where the service of each land-holder was lawfully due. The investigation was of course made by the royal justiciars; and when they came to the archiepiscopal estates, one at least of the most important fiefs in dispute was adjudged by them to the Crown alone.

"Publicis pensionibus persolvendis." R. Diceto , vol. i. p. 311.

And had moreover "the fairest sister in the whole kingdom," adds Will. Fitz-Steph. , p. 43.

R. Diceto , vol. i. p. 311.

Meanwhile a dispute on a question of church patronage arose between the primate and a tenant-in-chief of the Crown, named William of Eynesford. Thomas excommunicated his opponent without observing the custom which required him to give notice to the king before inflicting spiritual penalties on one of his tenants-in-chief. Henry indignantly bade him withdraw the sentence; Thomas refused, saying "it was not for the king to dictate who should be bound or who loosed." The answer was indisputable in itself; but it pointed directly to the fatal subject on which the inevitable quarrel must turn: the relations and limits between the two powers of the keys and the sword.

Will. Fitz-Steph. as above.

Almost from his accession Henry seems to have been in some degree contemplating and preparing for those great schemes of legal reform which were to be the lasting glory of his reign. His earliest efforts in this direction were merely tentative; the young king was at once too inexperienced and too hard pressed with urgent business of all kinds, at home and abroad, to have either capacity or opportunity for great experiments in legislation. Throughout the past nine years, however, the projects which floated before his mind's eye had been gradually taking shape; and now that he was at last freed for a while from the entanglements of politics and war, the time had come when he might begin to devote himself to that branch of his kingly duties for which he probably had the strongest inclination, as he certainly had the highest natural genius. He had by this time gained enough insight into the nature and causes of existing abuses to venture upon dealing with them systematically and in detail, and he had determined to begin with a question which was allowed on all hands to be one of the utmost gravity: the repression of crime in the clergy.

The origin of this difficulty was in the separation--needful perhaps, but none the less disastrous in some of its consequences--made by William the Conqueror between the temporal and ecclesiastical courts of justice. In William's intention the two sets of tribunals were to work side by side without mutual interference save when the secular power was called in to enforce the decisions of the spiritual judge. But in practice the scheme was soon found to involve a crowd of difficulties. The two jurisdictions were constantly coming into contact, and it was a perpetual question where to draw the line between them. The struggle for the investitures, the religious revival which followed it, the vast and rapid developement of the canon law, with the increase of knowledge brought to bear upon its interpretation through the revived study of the civil law of Rome, gave the clergy a new sense of corporate importance and strength, and a new position as a distinct order in the state; the breakdown of all secular administration under Stephen tended still further to exalt the influence of the canonical system which alone retained some vestige of legal authority, and to throw into the Church-courts a mass of business with which they had hitherto had only an indirect concern, but which they alone now seemed capable of treating. Their proceedings were conducted on the principles of the canon law, which admitted of none but spiritual penalties; they refused to allow any lay interference with the persons over whom they claimed sole jurisdiction; and as these comprised the whole clerical body in the widest possible sense, extending to all who had received the lowest orders of the Church or who had taken monastic vows, the result was to place a considerable part of the population altogether outside the ordinary law of the land, and beyond the reach of adequate punishment for the most heinous crimes. Such crimes were only too common, and were necessarily fostered by this system of clerical immunities; for a man capable of staining his holy orders with theft or murder was not likely to be restrained by the fear of losing them, which a clerical criminal knew to be the worst punishment in store for him; and moreover, it was but too easy for the doers of such deeds to shelter themselves under the protection of a privilege to which often they had no real title. The king's justiciars declared that in the nine years since Henry's accession more than a hundred murders, besides innumerable robberies and lesser offences, had gone unpunished because they were committed by clerks, or men who represented themselves to be such. The scandal was acknowledged on all hands; the spiritual party in the Church grieved over it quite as loudly and deeply as the lay reformers; but they hoped to remedy it in their own way, by a searching reformation and a stringent enforcement of spiritual discipline within the ranks of the clergy themselves. The subject had first come under Henry's direct notice in the summer of 1158, when he received at York a complaint from a citizen of Scarborough that a certain dean had extorted money from him by unjust means. The case was tried, in the king's presence, before the archbishop of the province, two bishops, and John of Canterbury the treasurer of York. The dean failed in his defence; and as it was proved that he had extorted the money by a libel, an offence against which Henry had made a special decree, some of the barons present were sent to see that the law had its course. John of Canterbury, however, rose and gave it as the decision of the spiritual judges that the money should be restored to the citizen and the criminal delivered over to the mercy of his metropolitan; and despite the justiciar's remonstrances, they refused to allow the king any rights in the matter. Henry indignantly ordered an appeal to the archbishop of Canterbury; but he was called over sea before it could be heard, and had never returned to England until now, when another archbishop sat in Theobald's place.

Will. Newb., l. ii. c. 16 .

Will. Fitz-Steph. , vol. iii. pp. 43-45.

In July occurred a typical case which brought matters to a crisis. A clerk named Philip de Broi had been tried in the bishop of Lincoln's court for murder, had cleared himself by a legal compurgation, and had been acquitted. The king, not satisfied, commanded or permitted the charge to be revived, and the accused to be summoned to take his trial at Dunstable before Simon Fitz-Peter, then acting as justice-in-eyre in Bedfordshire, where Philip dwelt. Philip indignantly refused to plead again in answer to a charge of which he had been acquitted, and overwhelmed the judge with abuse, of which Simon on his return to London made formal complaint to the king. Henry was furious, swore his wonted oath "by God's Eyes" that an insult to his minister was an insult to himself, and ordered the culprit to be brought to justice for the contempt of court and the homicide both at once. The primate insisted that the trial should take place in his own court at Canterbury, and to this Henry was compelled unwillingly to consent. The charge of homicide was quickly disposed of; Philip had been acquitted in a Church court, and his present judges had no wish to reverse its decision. On the charge of insulting a royal officer they sentenced him to undergo a public scourging at the hands of the offended person, and to forfeit the whole of his income for the next two years, to be distributed in alms according to the king's pleasure. Henry declared the punishment insufficient, and bitterly reproached the bishops with having perverted justice out of favour to their order. They denied it; but a story which came up from the diocese of Salisbury and another from that of Worcester tended still further to shew the helplessness of the royal justice against the ecclesiastical courts under the protection of the primate; and the latter's blundering attempts to satisfy the king only increased his irritation. Not only did Thomas venture beyond the limits of punishment prescribed by the canon law by causing a clerk who had been convicted of theft to be branded as well as degraded, but he actually took upon himself to condemn another to banishment. He hoped by these severe sentences to appease the king's wrath; Henry, on the contrary, resented them as an interference with his rights; what he wanted was not severe punishment in isolated cases, but the power to inflict it in the regular course of his own royal justice. At last he laid the whole question before a great council which met at Westminster on October 1.

Will. Fitz-Steph. as above.

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