Harry eyed her with such a rapture as the
first lover is described as having by Milton.
first lover is described as having by Milton.
Warner - World's Best Literature - v25 - Tas to Tur
He is rather to be defended from the
reproach of sentimentality. But excess in the matter of sentiment
is something that different people will determine differently. Intel-
lectual rectitude distinguished him conspicuously; but he was notably
a man of heart, and exercised his great powers in the service of the
affections. He may be said to have taken the sentimental view of
things, if not to do so implies the dispassionate and detached atti-
tude towards them. He was extremely sensitive, and chafed greatly
under the frequent ascription of cynicism that he had to endure. He
found the problem of reconciling a stoic philosophy and an epicurean
temperament no easier and no harder, probably, than many others to
whom it has been assigned; and his practice was, as usual, a succes-
sion of alternations of indulgence and restraint. But he hoodwinked
himself no more than he was deceived by others; and if few men of
his intellectual eminence - which is the one thing about him we can
now perceive as he could hardly do himself-have been so open to
his particular temptations, few men of his temperament, on the other
hand, have steadfastly and industriously carved for themselves so
splendid a career. He was at the same time the acutest of observers
and eminently a man of the world. He was even in some sense a
man about town. The society he depicted so vividly had marked.
attractions for him. He was equally at home in Bohemia and in
Belgravia,- enough so in the latter to lead the literal to ascribe to
him the snobbishness he made so large a portion of his subject. As
he pointed out, however, no one is free from some touch of this, and
denunciation of it is in peculiar peril from its contagion; and Thack-
eray had the courage of his tastes in valuing what is really valuable
in the consideration which society bestows. On its good side this
## p. 14665 (#239) ##########################################
WILLIAM MAKEPEACE THACKERAY
14665
consideration is certainly to be prized by any one not a snob; for it
means a verdict often more impartial and independent than that of
any other tribunal. Society is a close corporation; and petty as are
many of its standards, and vulgar as is much of its application of
them, it has its ideal of the art of life: and what it really worships
is real power,-power that is independent of talent, accomplishment,
or worth, often, very likely; but power that, adventitious or other,
is almost an automatic measure of an individual's claims upon it.
Really to contribute to the life of society implies a special, disinter-
ested, and æsthetic talent like another; and Thackeray's gift in this
respect is properly to be associated with his literary and more largely
human ones.
At all events it aided him to handle his theme of
"manners" with a competence denied to most writers, and helped
to fuse in him the dual temperament of the artist and satirist with
distinguished results.
This combination of the artist and the satirist is the ideal one for
the novelist; and Thackeray's genius, varied as it is, is pre-eminently
the genius of the born novelist. It is singular, but it is doubtless
characteristic of a temperament destined to such complete matur-
ity, that he should have waited so long before finding his true field
of effort, and that he should not have begun the work upon which
his fame rests until he had reached an age at which that of not a
few men of genius has ended: he was thirty-six before his first great
work was published. He was born July 18th, 1811, in Calcutta; and
was sent home to England to school, upon his father's death when
he was five years old. From 1822 to 1828 he was at Charterhouse
School, the famous "Grey Friars" of The Newcomes. ' He spent
two years at Cambridge, leaving without a degree to travel abroad,
where he visited the great European capitals, and saw Goethe at
Weimar. He traveled in the real sense, and used perceptive faculties
such as are given to few observers, to the notable ends subsequently
witnessed in his books. He was from the first always of the world
as well as in it, and understood it with as quick sympathy in one
place as in another. At Weimar he meditated translating Schiller;
but- no doubt happily-nothing came of the rather desultory design.
In 1831 he went into chambers in the Temple; but not taking kindly
to law, and losing a small inherited fortune, he followed his native
bent, which led him into journalism, literature, and incidentally into
art. He began his serious literary work as a contributor to Fra-
ser's Magazine in 1835, after some slight preliminary experience; and
thenceforth wrote literary miscellany of extraordinary variety — sto-
ries, reviews, art criticisms, foreign correspondence, burlesques, bal-
lads for all sorts of periodicals.
In 1836 he made an effort to obtain work as an illustrator, but
without success,- one of his failures being with Dickens, whose refusal
--
-
--
## p. 14666 (#240) ##########################################
14666
WILLIAM MAKEPEACE THACKERAY
was certainly justified. In 1838 he illustrated Jerrold's 'Men of
Character'; but in the main he was forced to content himself with
his own works in this respect, and most of these he did illustrate.
Pictorial art was clearly not his vocation. His drawings have plenty
of character; and it is not unfortunate, perhaps, that we have his
pictorial presentment rather than another's, of so many of his person-
ages.
But he not only lacked the skill that comes of training,- he
had no real gift for representation, and for the plastic expression of
beauty he had no faculty; the element of caricature is prominent in
all his designs. He did them with great delight and ease, whereas
literary work was always drudgery to him; but of course this is the
converse of witness to their merit.
His poetry, which he wrote at intervals, and desultorily through-
out his career, is on a decidedly higher plane. It is of the kind
that is accurately called "verses," but it is as plainly his own as his
prose; and some of it will always be read, probably, for its feeling
and its felicity. It is the verse mainly but not merely of the impro-
visatore. It never oversteps the modesty becoming the native gift
that expresses itself in it. Most of it could not have been as well
said in prose; and its title is clear enough, however unpretentious.
Metrically and in substance the 'Ballads' are excellent balladry. They
never rise to Scott's level of heroic bravura, and though the contem-
plative ones are deeper in feeling than any of Scott's, they are poet-
ically more summary and have less sweep; one hardly thinks of the
pinions of song at all in connection with them. Prose was distinctly
Thackeray's medium more exclusively than it was Scott's. But com-
pare the best of the 'Ballads' with Macaulay's 'Lays,' to note the
difference in both quality and execution between the verse of a writer
with a clear poetic strain in his temperament, and that of a pure
rhetorician whose numbers make one wince. The White Squall' is
a tour de force of rhyme and rhythm, the Ballad of Bouillabaisse '
has a place in every reader's affections, Mr. Moloney's Account of the
Ball' is a perpetual delight, even 'The Crystal Palace' is not merely
clever; and 'The Pen and the Album' and notably the Vanitas
Vanitatum' verses have an elevation that is both solemn and moving,
— a sustained note of genuine lyric inspiration chanting gravely the
burden of all the poet's prose.
He joined the staff of Punch almost immediately upon its estab-
lishment, and was long one of its strongest contributors. The following
year, 1843, he went to Ireland, and published his 'Irish Sketch-Book. '
In 1844 he made the Eastern journey chronicled in 'From Cornhill
to Grand Cairo,' and published 'Barry Lyndon' in Fraser. In 1846
'The Book of Snobs' appeared; and the next year 'Vanity Fair,'
which made him famous and the fashion. Pendennis' followed
in 1848-49. Next came The English Humorists of the Eighteenth
## p. 14667 (#241) ##########################################
WILLIAM MAKEPEACE THACKERAY
14667
Century' (1851), delivered with great success to the exacting London
world of society and letters; 'Henry Esmond,' and his first trip to
America (1852), where he repeated the lectures, and where he was
greeted universally with a friendliness he thoroughly returned; The
Newcomes (1853-5); his second American trip (1855), when he first
read his lectures on 'The Four Georges'; 'The Virginians' (1857-9);
the establishment of the Cornhill Magazine with Thackeray as editor
(1860), and the publication in its pages during his last three years
of the 'Roundabout Papers,' 'Lovel the Widower,' 'Philip,' and the
beginning of the unfinished 'Denis Duval. ' In 1857 he had contested
a seat in Parliament for Oxford in the Liberal interest, but had been
defeated by a vote of 1018 to 1085 for his opponent. His health had
been far from good for some years; and during the night of Decem-
ber 23d, 1863, he died in his sleep.
Loosely speaking, his work may be said to be divided into two
classes, miscellany and novels, by the climacteric date of his career-
January 1847 - when the first number of 'Vanity Fair' appeared. No
writer whose fame rests, as Thackeray's larger fame does, on nota-
ble works of fiction, has written miscellaneous literature of the qual-
ity of his. Taken in connection with the novels, it ranks him as the
representative English man of letters of his time. There is extraor-
dinarily little "copy" in it. It is the lighter work of a man born
for greater things, and having therefore in its quality something
superior to its genre. In the first place, it has the style which in its
maturity led Carlyle to say, "Nobody in our day wrote, I should say,
with such perfection of style;" and as Thackeray observes of Gib-
bon's praise of Fielding, "there can be no gainsaying the sentence
of this great judge» in such a matter. It has too his qualities of
substance, which were to reach their full development later. The
Great Hoggarty Diamond' is rather small-beer, but it communi-
cates that sense of reality which is to be sought for in vain among
its contemporaries: compare the consummate Brough in this respect
with one of Dickens's ideal hypocrites. The 'Sketch-Books' will
always be good reading. The Book of Snobs' enlarged the con-
fines of literature by the discovery and exploration of a new domain.
'Barry Lyndon' is a masterpiece of irony comparable with Swift and
'Jonathan Wild' alone, and to be ranked rather among the novels.
Such burlesques as 'Rebecca and Rowena' and the 'Novels by Emi-
nent Hands' of Punch, the various essays in polite literature of Mr.
Yellowplush, the delightful extravagance The Rose and the Ring,'
the admirable account of 'Mrs. Perkins's Ball,' and many other trifles
which it is needless even to catalogue here, illustrate in common a
quality of wit, of unexpectedness, of charm, as conspicuous as their
remarkable variety. And as to the later 'Lectures' on the Queen
## p. 14668 (#242) ##########################################
14668
WILLIAM MAKEPEACE THACKERAY
Anne humorists and the Georges, and the inimitable Roundabout
Papers,' nothing of the kind has ever been done on quite the same
plane.
It is, however, to the elaborate and exquisitely commented picture
of life which the novels present, that Thackeray owes his fellow-
ship with the very greatest figures of literature outside the realm
of poetry. The four most important,-'Vanity Fair,' 'Pendennis,'
'Henry Esmond,' and 'The Newcomes,'-especially, enable him
to take his place among these with the ease of equality. Vanity
Fair' perhaps expresses his genius in its freest spontaneity. Thack-
eray himself spoke of it-to Dr. Merriman -as his greatest work.
And though he declared 'Henry Esmond'— which, as the dedicator
states, "copies the manners and language of Queen Anne's time” —
"the very best that I can do," the two remarks are not inconsistent:
they aptly distinguish between his most original substance and his
most perfect form. 'Pendennis' and 'The Newcomes' are social
pictures on a larger scale, of less dramatic and more epic interest.
'The Virginians' is only less important; but it loses something of
the relief which the remoteness of its epoch gives 'Henry Esmond,'
and something of the actuality that its other predecessors owe to
their modernness. 'Lovel the Widower' is an admitted failure,
largely though not splendidly redeemed by Philip' which followed
it. But the beginnings of Denis Duval' are enough to show that
the level of The Virginians,' at least, might have been reached
again; and make the writer's death at fifty-two indisputably and
grievously premature.
Charlotte Bronté, who dedicated the second edition of Jane Eyre'
to Thackeray, maintaining that "No commentator upon his writings.
has yet found the comparison that suits him, the terms which rightly
characterize his talent," spoke of him as "the first social regenerator
of the day. " She had herself, however, correctly divined his talent:
it was at once social and moral. She objected to his association
with Fielding, whom she declared he resembled "as an eagle does
a vulture," and charged Fielding with having "stooped on carrion. "
Fielding was undoubtedly his model. He regretted that he had not
read him more in early years. And Fielding is undoubtedly a writer
of both social and moral quality. But his moral range is narrow,
and there is a grave lack in his equipment considered as that of a
great writer, he lacks spirituality altogether. And spirituality is a
quality that Thackeray possessed in a distinguished degree. It is
his spirituality that Charlotte Bronté really had in mind in contrast-
ing him in her trenchant, passionate way with his predecessor. The
difference is fundamental. It is far deeper than mere choice of
material. Thackeray himself says regretfully, in the preface to
## p. 14669 (#243) ##########################################
WILLIAM MAKEPEACE THACKERAY
14669
'Pendennis': "Since the author of 'Tom Jones' was buried, no writer
of fiction among us has been permitted to depict to his utmost power
a man. We must drape him, and give him a certain conventional
simper. " He would have liked, clearly, a wider range and a freer
hand; and Charlotte Bronté would have been less pleased with him
had he enjoyed them. But he would never have "sunk with his sub-
ject," because his imagination had so strong a spiritual side.
On the other hand, what distinguishes him from such a novelist as
George Eliot is the preoccupation of his imagination with the heart
rather than the mind. Instinctively his critics agree in characteriz-
ing his dominant faculty as "insight into the human heart. " There
is no question anywhere as to the depth and keenness of this insight
in him, at all events,- however one regards the frequent statement
that it was deeper and keener than that of any other writer, “Shake-
speare and Balzac perhaps excepted. " The exception of Shakespeare
is surely as sound as it is mechanical. That of Balzac may be
disputed. Balzac's insight proceeds from his curiosity, that of Thack-
eray from his sympathy. If always as keen, Balzac's is never quite
as deep. It is perhaps wider. Curiosity in the artist means an
unlimited interest in men and things; which it regards as all, and
more or less equally, material. Sympathy necessarily selects — sympa-
thy, or even antipathy if one chooses; but in selecting it concentrates.
'La Comédie Humaine' is a wonderful structure. It parallels the exist-
ing world, one may almost say. The psychologist, the sociologist,
the specialist of nearly any description, may study it with zest and
ponder it profitably. It is a marvelously elaborate framework filled
in with an astonishing variety of both types and individuals. One
may seek in it not vainly for an analogue of almost anything act-
ual. But though less multifarious, Thackeray's world is far more real.
His figures are far more alive. Their inner springs are divined, not
studied. They make the story themselves, not merely appear in it.
We have no charts of their minds and qualities, but we know them
as we know our friends and neighbors.
This sense of reality and vitality, in which the personages of
Thackeray excel those of any other prose fiction, proceeds from that
unusual association in the author's own personality of the spiritual
and sentimental qualities with great intellectual powers- to which
I have already referred. For character - the subject par excellence
of the great writers of fiction as distinguished from the pure roman-
ticists depends upon the heart. It is comparatively independent
of psychology. For a period so given over to science as our own,
so imbued with the scientific spirit, and so concentrated upon the
scientific side of even spiritual things, psychological fiction - such
as George Eliot's inevitably possesses a special, an almost esoteric,
――――――
## p. 14670 (#244) ##########################################
14670
WILLIAM MAKEPEACE THACKERAY
interest. But it is nevertheless true that the elemental, the tempera-
mental, the vital idiosyncrasies of character depend less directly upon
mental than upon moral qualities. Men are what they are through
their feeling, not through their thinking except in so far as their
thinking modifies their feeling. At the same time it is to be borne
in mind that Thackeray does not neglect the mental constitution of
his characters. It cannot be said of his Rebecca, for example, as
Turgénieff is said to have observed of Zola's Gervaise Coupeau, that
"he tells us how she feels, never what she thinks. " We have a
complete enough picture of what is going on in her exceedingly
active mind; only in the main we infer this indirectly from what she
does, as we do in the case of Shakespeare's characters, rather than
from an express scrutiny of her mental mechanism. Her human and
social side is uppermost in her creator's presentation of her, though
she is plainly idiosyncratic enough to reward the study and even the
speculation of the most insistent psychologist.
Mr. Henry James acutely observes of Hawthorne's characters, that
with the partial exception of Donatello in the 'Marble Faun,' there
are no types among them. And it is assuredly for this reason that
they appear to us so entirely the creations of Hawthorne's fancy, so
much a part of the insubstantial witchery of his genius, that they
seem as individuals so unreal. Thackeray, on the other hand, has
been reproached with creating nothing but types. But the truth is
that a character of fiction, in order to make the impression of indivi-
duality, must be presented as a type. It is through its typical quali-
ties that it attains a definition which is neither insubstantial like that
of Hawthorne's personages, nor a caricature like that of so many
of Dickens's. Its typical qualities are those that persuade us of its
truth, and create the convincing illusion of its reality. A type in
fiction is a type in the sense in which the French use the term in
speaking of a real person,- a synthesis of representative traits, more
accentuated than the same characteristics as they are to be found in
general; a person, that is to say, of particularly salient individuality.
Only in this way do real persons who are not also eccentric persons
leave a striking and definite impression on us; and only in this
way do we measure that correspondence of fictitious to real charac-
ter which determines the reality of the former.
-
Of course in thus eschewing psychology and dealing mainly with
types, in occupying himself with those elemental traits of charac-
ter that depend upon the heart rather than the mind,—a realist
like Thackeray renounces a field so large and interesting as justly
to have his neglect of it accounted to him as a limitation. And
Thackeray still further narrows his field by confining himself in the
main to character not merely in its elemental traits, but in its morally
## p. 14671 (#245) ##########################################
WILLIAM MAKEPEACE THACKERAY
14671
significant ones as well. The colorless characters, such as Tom Tul-
liver for a single example, in which George Eliot is so strong, the
irresponsible ones, such as Dickens's Winkles and Swivellers, have
few fellows in his fiction, from which the seriousness of his satiric
strain excludes whatever is not significant as well as whatever is
purely particular. The loss is very great, considering his world as a
comédie humaine. It involves more than the elimination of psychol-
ogy,—it diminishes the number of types; and all types are interesting,
whether morally important or not. But in Thackeray's case it has
two great compensations. In the first place, the greater concentra-
tion it involves notably defines and emphasizes the net impression
of his works. It unifies their effect; and sharply crystallizes the mes-
sage to mankind, which, like every great writer in whatever branch
of literature he may cultivate, it was the main business, the aim
and crown and apology of his life, to deliver. There is no missing
the tenor of his gospel, which is that character is the one thing of
importance in life; that it is tremendously complex, and the easiest
thing in the world to misconceive both in ourselves and in others;
that truth is the one instrument of its perfecting, and the one subject
worthy of pursuit; and that the study of truth discloses littlenesses
and futilities in it at its best for which the only cloak is charity, and
the only consolation and atonement the cultivation of the affections.
It
In the second place, it is his concentration upon the morally sig-
nificant that places him at the head of the novelists of manners.
is the moral and social qualities, of course, that unite men in society,
and make it something other than the sum of the individuals com-
posing it. Far more deeply than Balzac, Thackeray felt the relations
between men that depend upon these qualities; and consequently
his social picture is, if less comprehensive and varied, far more vivid
and real. It is painted directly, and lacks the elaborate structural
machinery which makes Balzac's seem mechanical in composition
and artificial in spirit. Thackeray's personages are never portrayed
in isolation. They are a part of the milieu in which they exist, and
which has itself therefore much more distinction and relief than an
environment which is merely a framework. How they regard each
other, how they feel toward and what they think of each other, the
mutuality of their very numerous and vital relations, furnishes an im-
portant strand in the texture of the story in which they figure. Their
activities are modified by the air they breathe in common. Their con-
duct is controlled, their ideas affected, even their desires and ambi-
tions dictated, by the general ideals of the society that includes them.
In a more extended sense than Lady Kew intended in reminding
Ethel Newcome of the fact, they "belong to their belongings. " So
far as it goes, therefore,- and it would be easy to exaggerate its
## p. 14672 (#246) ##########################################
14672
WILLIAM MAKEPEACE THACKERAY
limitations, which are trivial in comparison,- Thackeray's picture
of society is the most vivid, as it is incontestably the most real, in
prose fiction. The temperament of the artist and satirist combined,
the preoccupation with the moral element in character,- and in logi-
cal sequence, with its human and social side,-lead naturally to the
next step of viewing man in his relations, and the construction of a
miniature world. And in addition to the high place in literature
won for him by his insight into the human heart, Thackeray's social
picture has given him a distinction that is perhaps unique. In vir-
tue of it, at any rate, the writer who passed his life in rivalry with
Dickens and Bulwer and Trollope and Lever, belongs with Shake-
speare and Molière.
Woe Brownell
BEATRIX ESMOND
From The History of Henry Esmond'
A$
S THEY came up to the house at Walcote, the windows from
within were lighted up with friendly welcome; the supper
table was spread in the oak parlor: it seemed as if for-
giveness and love were awaiting the returning prodigal. Two
or three familiar faces of domestics were on the lookout at the
porch: the old housekeeper was there, and young Lockwood from
Castlewood in my lord's livery of tawny and blue. His dear
mistress pressed his arm as they passed into the hall. Her
eyes beamed out on him with affection indescribable. "Welcome,"
was all she said, as she looked up, putting back her fair curls
and black hood. A sweet rosy smile blushed on her face; Harry
thought he had never seen her look so charming. Her face was
lighted with a joy that was brighter than beauty; she took a
hand of her son, who was in the hall waiting his mother — she
did not quit Esmond's arm.
-
"Here
"Welcome, Harry! " my young lord echoed after her.
we are all come to say so. Here's old Pincot: hasn't she grown
handsome? " and Pincot, who was older and no handsomer than
usual, made a curtsy to the captain, -as she called Esmond,-and
told my lord to "Have done, now. "
"And here's Jack Lockwood. He'll make a famous grenadier,
Jack; and so shall I we'll both 'list under you, cousin. As soon
## p. 14673 (#247) ##########################################
WILLIAM MAKEPEACE THACKERAY
14673
as I am seventeen, I go to the army-every gentleman goes to
the army.
Look! who comes here: ho, ho! " he burst into a
laugh. "Tis Mistress 'Trix, with a new ribbon: I knew she
would put one on as soon as she heard a captain was coming to
supper. "
This laughing colloquy took place in the hall of Walcote
House, in the midst of which is a staircase that leads from
an open gallery, where are the doors of the sleeping-chambers;
and from one of these, a wax candle in her hand and illuminat-
ing her, came Mistress Beatrix,- the light falling indeed upon the
scarlet ribbon which she wore, and upon the most brilliant white
neck in the world.
Esmond had left a child, and found a woman; grown beyond
the common height, and arrived at such a dazzling completeness
of beauty that his eyes might well show surprise and delight
at beholding her. In hers there was a brightness so lustrous and
melting that I have seen a whole assembly follow her as if by
an attraction irresistible; and that night the great duke was at
the playhouse after Ramillies, every soul turned and looked (she
chanced to enter at the opposite side of the theatre at the same
moment) at her, and not at him. She was a brown beauty;
that is, her eyes, hair, and eyebrows and eyelashes were dark, her
hair curling with rich undulations and waving over her shoulders;
but her complexion was as dazzling white as snow in sunshine,
except her cheeks which were a bright red, and her lips which
were of a still deeper crimson. Her mouth and chin, they said,
were too large and full; and so they might be for a goddess.
in marble, but not for a woman whose eyes were fire, whose look
was love, whose voice was the sweetest low song, whose shape
was perfect symmetry, health, decision, activity, whose foot as
it planted itself on the ground was firm but flexible, and whose
motion, whether rapid or slow, was always perfect grace: agile as
a nymph, lofty as a queen,- now melting, now imperious, now
sarcastic, there was no single movement of hers but was beau-
tiful. As he thinks of her, he who writes feels young again, and
remembers a paragon.
―――
So she came holding her dress with one fair rounded arm, and
her taper before her, tripping down the stair to greet Esmond.
"She hath put on her scarlet stockings and white shoes," says
my lord, still laughing. "Oh, my fine mistress! is this the way
you set your cap at the captain? " She approached, shining smiles
XXV-918
## p. 14674 (#248) ##########################################
14674
WILLIAM MAKEPEACE THACKERAY
upon Esmond, who could look at nothing but her eyes. She
advanced, holding forward her head, as if she would have him
kiss her as he used to do when she was a child.
"Stop," she said, "I am grown too big! Welcome, Cousin
Harry," and she made him an arch curtsy, sweeping down to
the ground almost with the most gracious bend, looking up the
while with the brightest eyes and sweetest smile. Love seemed
to radiate from her.
Harry eyed her with such a rapture as the
first lover is described as having by Milton.
"N'est-ce pas ? " says my lady, in a low, sweet voice, still hang-
ing on his arm.
Esmond turned round with a start and a blush, as he met his
mistress's clear eyes. He had forgotten her, rapt in admiration
of the filia pulcrior.
"Right foot forward, toe turned out, so; now drop the
curtsy and show the red stockings, "Trix. They're silver clocks,
Harry. The dowager sent 'em. She went to put 'em on,” cries
my lord.
"Hush, you stupid child! " says miss, smothering her brother
with kisses; and then she must come and kiss her mamma, look-
ing all the while at Harry over his mistress's shoulder. And if
she did not kiss him, she gave him both her hands and said, "O
Harry, we're so, so glad you're come! "
"There are woodcocks for supper," says my lord. « Huzzay!
It was such a hungry sermon. ”
"And it is the 29th of December, and our Harry has come
home. "
་་
Huzzay, old Pincot! " again says my lord; and my dear lady's
lips looked as if they were trembling with prayer. She would
have Harry lead in Beatrix to the supper-room, going herself
with my young Lord Viscount; and to this party came Tom
Tusher directly, whom four at least out of the company of five
wished away. Away he went, however, as soon as the sweet-
meats were put down; and then, by the great crackling fire,-
his mistress, or Beatrix with her blushing glances, filling his glass
for him,- Harry told the story of his campaign, and passed the
most delightful night his life had ever known. The sun was up
long ere he was, so deep, sweet, and refreshing was his slumber.
He woke as if angels had been watching at his bed all night.
I daresay one that was as pure and loving as an angel had
blessed his sleep with her prayers.
## p. 14675 (#249) ##########################################
WILLIAM MAKEPEACE THACKERAY
14675
Next morning the chaplain read prayers to the little household
at Walcote, as the custom was: Esmond thought Mistress Beatrix
did not listen to Tusher's exhortation much; her eyes were wan-
dering everywhere during the service,- at least whenever he
looked up he met them. Perhaps he also was not very attentive
to his reverence the chaplain. "This might have been my life,"
he was thinking; "this might have been my duty from now till
old age. Well, were it not a pleasant one to be with these dear
friends and part from 'em no more? Until- until the destined
lover comes and takes away pretty Beatrix » and the best part
of Tom Tusher's exposition, which may have been very learned
and eloquent, was quite lost to poor Harry by this vision of the
destined lover, who put the preacher out.
All the while of the prayers, Beatrix knelt a little way before
Harry Esmond. The red stockings were changed for a pair
of gray, and black shoes in which her feet looked to the full as
pretty. All the roses of spring could not vie with the brightness
of her complexion; Esmond thought he had never seen anything
like the sunny lustre of her eyes. My lady viscountess looked
fatigued as if with watching, and her face was pale.
Miss Beatrix remarked these signs of indisposition in her
mother, and deplored them.
"I am an old woman," says my
lady with a kind smile: "I cannot hope to look as young as
you do, my dear. "
"She'll never look as good as you do if she lives till she's a
hundred," says my lord, taking his mother by the waist and kiss-
ing her hand.
"Do I look very wicked, cousin? " says Beatrix, turning full
round on Esmond, with her pretty face so close under his chin
that the soft perfumed hair touched it. She laid her finger-tips
on his sleeve as she spoke, and he put his other hand over hers.
"I'm like your looking-glass," says he, "and that can't flatter
you. "
"He means that you are always looking at him, my dear,"
says her mother archly. Beatrix ran away from Esmond at
this, and flew to her mamma, whom she kissed, stopping my lady's
mouth with her pretty hand.
"And Harry is very good to look at," says my lady, with her
fond eyes regarding the young man.
"If 'tis good to see a happy face," says he, "you see that. "
My lady said "Amen" with a sigh; and Harry thought the
## p. 14676 (#250) ##########################################
14676
WILLIAM MAKEPEACE THACKERAY
memory of her dear lord rose up and rebuked her back again
into sadness, for her face lost the smile and resumed its look of
melancholy.
"Why, Harry, how fine we look in our scarlet-and-silver and
our black periwig," cries my lord. "Mother, I am tired of my
own hair. When shall I have a peruke? Where did you get
your steenkirk, Harry? "
"It's some of my lady dowager's lace," says Harry; "she
gave me this and a number of other fine things. "
"My lady dowager isn't such a bad woman," my lord con-
tinued.
"She's not so-so red as she's painted," says Miss Beatrix.
Her brother broke into a laugh. "I'll tell her you said so;
by the Lord, 'Trix, I will," he cries out.
"She'll know that you hadn't the wit to say it, my lord," says
Miss Beatrix.
"We won't quarrel the first day Harry's here, will we,
mother? " said the young lord. "We'll see if we can get on to
the new year without a fight. Have some of this Christmas pie.
And here comes the tankard; no, it's Pincot with the tea. ”
«< Will the captain choose a dish? " asked Mistress Beatrix.
"I say, Harry," my lord goes on, "I'll show thee my horses
after breakfast, and we'll go a-bird-netting to-night; and on
Monday there's a cock-match at Winchester-do you love cock-
fighting, Harry? -between the gentlemen of Sussex and the gen-
tlemen of Hampshire; at £10 the battle and £50 the odd battle,
to show one-and-twenty cocks. "
"And what will you do, Beatrix, to amuse our kinsman ? "
asks my lady.
"I'll listen to him," says Beatrix. "I am sure he has a hun-
dred things to tell us. And I'm jealous already of the Spanish
ladies. Was that a beautiful nun at Cadiz that you rescued from
the soldiers? Your man talked of it last night in the kitchen,
and Mrs. Betty told me this morning as she combed my hair.
And he says you must be in love, for you sat on deck all night
and scribbled verses all day in your table-book. " Harry thought
if he had wanted a subject for verses yesterday, to-day he had
found one; and not all the Lindamiras and Ardelias of the poets
were half so beautiful as this young creature: but he did not say
so, though some one did for him.
## p. 14677 (#251) ##########################################
WILLIAM MAKEPEACE THACKERAY
14677
THE DUKE OF MARLBOROUGH
From The History of Henry Esmond'
ND now, having seen a great march through
A friendly country, the pomps and festivities of more than
one German court, the severe struggle of a hotly contested
battle, and the triumph of victory, Mr. Esmond beheld another
part of military duty: our troops entering the enemy's territory
and putting all around them to fire and sword; burning farms,
wasted fields, shrieking women, slaughtered sons and fathers, and
drunken soldiery, cursing and carousing in the midst of tears,
terror, and murder. Why does the stately Muse of History, that
delights in describing the valor of heroes and the grandeur of
conquest, leave out these scenes, so brutal, mean, and degrading,
that yet form by far the greater part of the drama of war? You
gentlemen of England, who live at home at ease and compliment
yourselves in the songs of triumph with which our chieftains are
bepraised; you pretty maidens that come tumbling down the
stairs when the fife and drum call you, and huzza for the British
Grenadiers,- do you take account that these items go to make
up the amount of triumph you admire, and form part of the
duties of the heroes you fondle ? Our chief, whom England
and all Europe, saving only the Frenchmen, worshiped almost,
had this of the god-like in him: that he was impassible before
victory, before danger, before defeat. Before the greatest obsta-
cle or the most trivial ceremony; before a hundred thousand men
drawn in battalia, or a peasant slaughtered at the door of his
burning hovel, before a carouse of drunken German lords, or
a monarch's court, or a cottage table where his plans were laid,
or an enemy's battery, vomiting flame and death and strewing
corpses round about him,- he was always cold, calm, resolute,
like fate. He performed a treason or a court bow, he told a
falsehood as black as Styx, as easily as he paid a compliment or
spoke about the weather. He took a mistress and left her, he
betrayed his benefactor and supported him, or would have mur-
dered him, with the same calmness always, and having no more
remorse than Clotho when she weaves the thread, or Lachesis
when she cuts it. In the hour of battle I have heard the Prince
of Savoy's officers say the prince became possessed with a sort
of warlike fury: his eyes lighted up; he rushed hither and thither,
## p. 14678 (#252) ##########################################
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WILLIAM MAKEPEACE THACKERAY
raging; he shrieked curses and encouragement, yelling and hark-
ing his bloody war-dogs on, and himself always at the first of
the hunt. Our duke was as calm at the mouth of a cannon as
at the door of a drawing-room. Perhaps he could not have been
the great man he was had he had a heart either for love or
hatred, or pity or fear, or regret or remorse. He achieved the
highest deed of daring, or deepest calculation of thought, as he
performed the very meanest action of which a man is capable;
told a lie or cheated a fond woman or robbed a poor beggar of
a halfpenny, with a like awful serenity, and equal capacity of
the highest and lowest acts of our nature.
His qualities were pretty well known in the army, where
there were parties of all politics, and of plenty of shrewdness
and wit; but there existed such a perfect confidence in him, as
the first captain of the world, and such a faith and admiration
in his prodigious genius and fortune, that the very men whom he
notoriously cheated of their pay, the chiefs whom he used and
injured for he used all men, great and small, that came near
him, as his instruments alike, and took something of theirs, either
some quality or some property: the blood of a soldier, it might
be, or a jeweled hat or a hundred thousand crowns from a king,
or a portion out of a starving sentinel's three farthings; or when
he was young, a kiss from a woman, and the gold chain off her
neck, taking all he could from woman or man, and having, as I
said, this of the godlike in him, that he could see a hero perish
or a sparrow fall with the same amount of sympathy for either.
Not that he had no tears. he could always order up this reserve
at the proper moment to battle; he could draw upon tears or
smiles alike, and whenever need was for using this cheap coin.
He would cringe to a shoeblack, and he would flatter a minister
or a monarch; be haughty, be humble, threaten, repent, weep,
grasp your hand, or stab you whenever he saw occasion — but
yet those of the army who knew him best and had suffered most
from him, admired him most of all; and as he rode along the
lines to battle, or galloped up in the nick of time to a battalion
reeling from before the enemy's charge or shot, the fainting men
and officers got new courage as they saw the splendid calm of
his face, and felt that his will made them irresistible.
-
After the great victory of Blenheim, the enthusiasm of the
army for the duke, even of his bitterest personal enemies in it,
amounted to a sort of rage: nay, the very officers who cursed
## p. 14679 (#253) ##########################################
WILLIAM MAKEPEACE THACKERAY
14679
him in their hearts were among the most frantic to cheer him.
Who could refuse his meed of admiration to such a victory and
such a victor? Not he who writes: a man may profess to be
ever so much a philosopher, but he who fought on that day
must feel a thrill of pride as he recalls it.
THE FAMOUS MR. JOSEPH ADDISON
From The History of Henry Esmond'
THE
HE gentlemen ushers had a table at Kensington, and the Guard
a very splendid dinner daily at St. James's, at either of which
ordinaries Esmond was free to dine. Dick Steele liked the
Guard table better than his own at the gentlemen ushers', where
there was less wine and more ceremony; and Esmond had many
a jolly afternoon in company of his friend, and a hundred times.
at least saw Dick into his chair. If there is verity in wine,
according to the old adage, what an amiable-natured character
Dick's must have been! In proportion as he took in wine he
overflowed with kindness. His talk was not witty so much as
charming. He never said a word that could anger anybody, and
only became the more benevolent the more tipsy he grew. Many
of the wags derided the poor fellow in his cups, and chose him
as a butt for their satire; but there was a kindness about him,
and a sweet playful fancy, that seemed to Esmond far more
charming than the pointed talk of the brightest wits, with their
elaborate repartees and affected severities. I think Steele shone
rather than sparkled. Those famous beaux esprits of the coffee-
houses (Mr. William Congreve, for instance, when his gout and
his grandeur permitted him to come among us) would make
many brilliant hits,-half a dozen in a night sometimes,— but
like sharpshooters, when they had fired their shot they were
obliged to retire under cover till their pieces were loaded again,
and wait till they got another chance at their enemy; whereas
Dick never thought that his bottle companion was a butt to aim
at-only a friend to shake by the hand. The poor fellow had
half the town in his confidence: everybody knew everything about
his loves and his debts, his creditors' or his mistress's obdu-
racy. When Esmond first came on to the town, honest Dick
was all flames and raptures for a young lady, a West India for-
tune, whom he married. In a couple of years the lady was dead,
## p. 14680 (#254) ##########################################
14680
WILLIAM MAKEPEACE THACKERAY
the fortune was all but spent, and the honest widower was as
eager in pursuit of a new paragon of beauty as if he had never
courted and married and buried the last one.
Quitting the Guard table one Sunday afternoon, when by
chance Dick had a sober fit upon him, he and his friend were
making their way down Germain Street, and Dick all of a sud-
den left his companion's arm and ran after a gentleman who was
poring over a folio volume at the book-shop near to St. James's
Church. He was a fair, tall man, in a snuff-colored suit, with a
plain sword, very sober, and almost shabby in appearance - at
least when compared to Captain Steele, who loved to adorn his
jolly round person with the finest of clothes, and shone in scarlet
and gold lace. The captain rushed up then to the student of the
book-stall, took him in his arms, hugged him, and would have
kissed him,- for Dick was always hugging and bussing his friends,
-but the other stepped back with a flush on his pale face, seem-
ing to decline this public manifestation of Steele's regard.
"My dearest Joe, where hast thou hidden thyself this age? "
cries the captain, still holding both his friend's hands: "I have
been languishing for thee this fortnight. "
"A fortnight is not an age, Dick," says the other very good-
humoredly. (He had light-blue eyes, extraordinary bright, and a
face perfectly regular and handsome, like a tinted statue. ) "And
I have been hiding myself - where do you think? "
"What! not across the water, my dear Joe? " says Steele,
with a look of great alarm: "thou knowest I have always—»
"No," says his friend, interrupting him with a smile: " we
are not come to such straits as that, Dick. I have been hiding,
sir, at a place where people never think of finding you — at
my own lodgings, whither I am going to smoke a pipe now, and
drink a glass of sack. Will your Honor come? "
"Harry Esmond, come hither," cries out Dick. "Thou hast
heard me talk over and over again of my dearest Joe, my guard-
ian angel? "
"Indeed," says Mr. Esmond with a bow, "it is not from you
only that I have learnt to admire Mr. Addison. We loved good
poetry at Cambridge as well as at Oxford; and I have some of
yours by heart, though I have put on a red coat.
10
qui canoro blandius Orpheo vocale ducis carmen;'-shall I go
on, sir? " says Mr. Esmond, who indeed had read and loved the
charming Latin poems of Mr. Addison, as every scholar of that
time knew and admired them.
## p. 14681 (#255) ##########################################
WILLIAM MAKEPEACE THACKERAY
14681
"This is Captain Esmond, who was at Blenheim," says Steele.
"Lieutenant Esmond," says the other with a low bow, "at
Mr. Addison's service. "
"I have heard of you," says Mr. Addison with a smile; as
indeed everybody about town had heard that unlucky story about
Esmond's dowager aunt and the duchess.
"We were going to the George to take a bottle before the
play," says Steele: "wilt thou be one, Joe? "
Mr. Addison said his own lodgings were hard by, where he
was still rich enough to give a good bottle of wine to his friends;
and invited the two gentlemen to his apartment in the Hay-
market, whither we accordingly went.
"I shall get credit with my landlady," says he with a smile,
"when she sees two such fine gentlemen as you come up my
stair. " And he politely made his visitors welcome to his apart-
ment, which was indeed but a shabby one, though no grandee
of the land could receive his guests with a more perfect and
courtly grace than this gentleman. A frugal dinner, consisting
of a slice of meat and a penny loaf, was awaiting the owner
of the lodgings. "My wine is better than my meat," says Mr.
Addison. "My Lord Halifax sent me the burgundy. " And he
set a bottle and glasses before his friends, and ate his simple.
dinner in a very few minutes; after which the three fell to, and
began to drink.
"You see," says Mr. Addison, pointing to his writing-table,
whereon was a map of the action at Hochstedt, and several
other gazettes and pamphlets relating to the battle, "that I too
am busy about your affairs, captain. I am engaged as a poeti-
cal gazetteer, to say truth, and am writing a poem on the cam-
paign. ”
So Esmond, at the request of his host, told him what he knew
about the famous battle, drew the river on the table aliquo
mero, and with the aid of some bits of tobacco pipe showed the
advance of the left wing, where he had been engaged.
A sheet or two of the verses lay already on the table beside
our bottles and glasses; and Dick, having plentifully refreshed
himself from the latter, took up the pages of manuscript, writ
out with scarce a blot or correction, in the author's slim, neat
handwriting, and began to read therefrom with great emphasis
and volubility. At pauses of the verse, the enthusiastic reader
stopped and fired off a great salvo of applause.
-
## p. 14682 (#256) ##########################################
14682
WILLIAM MAKEPEACE THACKERAY
Esmond smiled at the enthusiasm of Addison's friend. «You
are like the German burghers," says he, "and the princes on the
Mozelle: when our army came to a halt, they always sent a dep-
utation to compliment the chief, and fired a salute with all their
artillery from their walls. "
"And drunk the great chief's health afterward, did not they? "
says Captain Steele, gayly filling up a bumper: he never was
tardy at that sort of acknowledgment of a friend's merit.
"And the duke, since you will have me act his Grace's
part," says Mr. Addison, with a smile and something of a blush,
"pledged his friends in return. Most Serene Elector of Covent
Garden, I drink to your Highness's health," and he filled him-
self a glass. Joseph required scarce more pressing than Dick to
that sort of amusement: but the wine never seemed at all to
fluster Mr. Addison's brains, it only unloosed his tongue: whereas
Captain Steele's head and speech were quite overcome by a single
bottle.
No matter what the verses were (and to say truth, Mr. Esmond
found some of them more than indifferent), Dick's enthusiasm
for his chief never faltered; and in every line from Addison's
pen, Steele found a master-stroke. By the time Dick had come to
that part of the poem wherein the bard describes, as blandly as
though he were recording a dance at the opera, or a harmless
bout of bucolic cudgeling at a village fair, that bloody and ruth-
less part of our campaign with the remembrance whereof every
soldier who bore a part in it must sicken with shame,- when we
were ordered to ravage and lay waste the Elector's country; and
with fire and murder, slaughter and crime, a great part of his
dominions was overrun;- when Dick came to the lines,—
"In vengeance roused, the soldier fills his hand
With sword and fire, and ravages the land;
In crackling flames a thousand harvests burn,
A thousand villages to ashes burn.
To the thick woods the woolly flocks retreat,
And mixed with bellowing herds confusèd bleat;
Their trembling lords the common shade partake,
And cries of infants sound in every brake.
The listening soldier fixed in sorrow stands,
Loath to obey his leader's just commands.
The leader grieves, by generous pity swayed,
To see his just commands so well obeyed,”.
## p. 14683 (#257) ##########################################
WILLIAM MAKEPEACE THACKERAY
14683
by this time wine and friendship had brought poor Dick to a
perfectly maudlin state, and he hiccoughed out the last line with
a tenderness that set one of his auditors a-laughing.
. "I admire the license of your poets," says Esmond to Mr.
Addison. (Dick, after reading of the verses, was fain to go off,
insisting on kissing his two dear friends before his departure,
and reeling away with his periwig over his eyes. ) "I admire
your art: the murder of the campaign is done to military music,
like a battle at the opera; and the virgins shriek in harmony
as our victorious grenadiers march into their villages. Do you
know what a scene it was? "-by this time, perhaps, the wine
had warmed Mr. Esmond's head too-"what a triumph you are
celebrating? what scenes of shame and horror were enacted, over
which the commander's genius presided, as calm as though he
didn't belong to our sphere? You talk of the 'listening soldier
fixed in sorrow,' the 'leader's grief swayed by generous pity':
to my belief the leader cared no more for bleating flocks than
he did for infants' cries, and many of our ruffians butchered one
or the other with equal alacrity. I was ashamed of my trade
when I saw those horrors perpetrated, which came under every
man's eyes. You hew out of your polished verses a stately image
of smiling Victory: I tell you 'tis an uncouth, distorted, savage
idol; hideous, bloody, and barbarous. The rites performed before
it are shocking to think of. You great poets should show it as
it is, ugly and horrible, not beautiful and serene. Oh, sir, had
you made the campaign, believe me, you never would have sung
it so. "
—
During this little outbreak Mr. Addison was listening, smoking
out of his long pipe, and smiling very placidly. "What would
you have? " says he. "In our polished days, and according to the
rules of art, 'tis impossible that the Muse should depict tortures
or begrime her hands with the horrors of war. These are indi-
cated rather than described; as in the Greek tragedies, that I
daresay you have read (and sure there can be no more elegant
specimens of composition), Agamemnon is slain, or Medea's child-
ren destroyed, away from the scene,-the chorus occupying the
stage and singing of the action to pathetic music. Something of
this I attempt, my dear sir, in my humble way: 'tis a panegyric
I mean to write, and not a satire.
reproach of sentimentality. But excess in the matter of sentiment
is something that different people will determine differently. Intel-
lectual rectitude distinguished him conspicuously; but he was notably
a man of heart, and exercised his great powers in the service of the
affections. He may be said to have taken the sentimental view of
things, if not to do so implies the dispassionate and detached atti-
tude towards them. He was extremely sensitive, and chafed greatly
under the frequent ascription of cynicism that he had to endure. He
found the problem of reconciling a stoic philosophy and an epicurean
temperament no easier and no harder, probably, than many others to
whom it has been assigned; and his practice was, as usual, a succes-
sion of alternations of indulgence and restraint. But he hoodwinked
himself no more than he was deceived by others; and if few men of
his intellectual eminence - which is the one thing about him we can
now perceive as he could hardly do himself-have been so open to
his particular temptations, few men of his temperament, on the other
hand, have steadfastly and industriously carved for themselves so
splendid a career. He was at the same time the acutest of observers
and eminently a man of the world. He was even in some sense a
man about town. The society he depicted so vividly had marked.
attractions for him. He was equally at home in Bohemia and in
Belgravia,- enough so in the latter to lead the literal to ascribe to
him the snobbishness he made so large a portion of his subject. As
he pointed out, however, no one is free from some touch of this, and
denunciation of it is in peculiar peril from its contagion; and Thack-
eray had the courage of his tastes in valuing what is really valuable
in the consideration which society bestows. On its good side this
## p. 14665 (#239) ##########################################
WILLIAM MAKEPEACE THACKERAY
14665
consideration is certainly to be prized by any one not a snob; for it
means a verdict often more impartial and independent than that of
any other tribunal. Society is a close corporation; and petty as are
many of its standards, and vulgar as is much of its application of
them, it has its ideal of the art of life: and what it really worships
is real power,-power that is independent of talent, accomplishment,
or worth, often, very likely; but power that, adventitious or other,
is almost an automatic measure of an individual's claims upon it.
Really to contribute to the life of society implies a special, disinter-
ested, and æsthetic talent like another; and Thackeray's gift in this
respect is properly to be associated with his literary and more largely
human ones.
At all events it aided him to handle his theme of
"manners" with a competence denied to most writers, and helped
to fuse in him the dual temperament of the artist and satirist with
distinguished results.
This combination of the artist and the satirist is the ideal one for
the novelist; and Thackeray's genius, varied as it is, is pre-eminently
the genius of the born novelist. It is singular, but it is doubtless
characteristic of a temperament destined to such complete matur-
ity, that he should have waited so long before finding his true field
of effort, and that he should not have begun the work upon which
his fame rests until he had reached an age at which that of not a
few men of genius has ended: he was thirty-six before his first great
work was published. He was born July 18th, 1811, in Calcutta; and
was sent home to England to school, upon his father's death when
he was five years old. From 1822 to 1828 he was at Charterhouse
School, the famous "Grey Friars" of The Newcomes. ' He spent
two years at Cambridge, leaving without a degree to travel abroad,
where he visited the great European capitals, and saw Goethe at
Weimar. He traveled in the real sense, and used perceptive faculties
such as are given to few observers, to the notable ends subsequently
witnessed in his books. He was from the first always of the world
as well as in it, and understood it with as quick sympathy in one
place as in another. At Weimar he meditated translating Schiller;
but- no doubt happily-nothing came of the rather desultory design.
In 1831 he went into chambers in the Temple; but not taking kindly
to law, and losing a small inherited fortune, he followed his native
bent, which led him into journalism, literature, and incidentally into
art. He began his serious literary work as a contributor to Fra-
ser's Magazine in 1835, after some slight preliminary experience; and
thenceforth wrote literary miscellany of extraordinary variety — sto-
ries, reviews, art criticisms, foreign correspondence, burlesques, bal-
lads for all sorts of periodicals.
In 1836 he made an effort to obtain work as an illustrator, but
without success,- one of his failures being with Dickens, whose refusal
--
-
--
## p. 14666 (#240) ##########################################
14666
WILLIAM MAKEPEACE THACKERAY
was certainly justified. In 1838 he illustrated Jerrold's 'Men of
Character'; but in the main he was forced to content himself with
his own works in this respect, and most of these he did illustrate.
Pictorial art was clearly not his vocation. His drawings have plenty
of character; and it is not unfortunate, perhaps, that we have his
pictorial presentment rather than another's, of so many of his person-
ages.
But he not only lacked the skill that comes of training,- he
had no real gift for representation, and for the plastic expression of
beauty he had no faculty; the element of caricature is prominent in
all his designs. He did them with great delight and ease, whereas
literary work was always drudgery to him; but of course this is the
converse of witness to their merit.
His poetry, which he wrote at intervals, and desultorily through-
out his career, is on a decidedly higher plane. It is of the kind
that is accurately called "verses," but it is as plainly his own as his
prose; and some of it will always be read, probably, for its feeling
and its felicity. It is the verse mainly but not merely of the impro-
visatore. It never oversteps the modesty becoming the native gift
that expresses itself in it. Most of it could not have been as well
said in prose; and its title is clear enough, however unpretentious.
Metrically and in substance the 'Ballads' are excellent balladry. They
never rise to Scott's level of heroic bravura, and though the contem-
plative ones are deeper in feeling than any of Scott's, they are poet-
ically more summary and have less sweep; one hardly thinks of the
pinions of song at all in connection with them. Prose was distinctly
Thackeray's medium more exclusively than it was Scott's. But com-
pare the best of the 'Ballads' with Macaulay's 'Lays,' to note the
difference in both quality and execution between the verse of a writer
with a clear poetic strain in his temperament, and that of a pure
rhetorician whose numbers make one wince. The White Squall' is
a tour de force of rhyme and rhythm, the Ballad of Bouillabaisse '
has a place in every reader's affections, Mr. Moloney's Account of the
Ball' is a perpetual delight, even 'The Crystal Palace' is not merely
clever; and 'The Pen and the Album' and notably the Vanitas
Vanitatum' verses have an elevation that is both solemn and moving,
— a sustained note of genuine lyric inspiration chanting gravely the
burden of all the poet's prose.
He joined the staff of Punch almost immediately upon its estab-
lishment, and was long one of its strongest contributors. The following
year, 1843, he went to Ireland, and published his 'Irish Sketch-Book. '
In 1844 he made the Eastern journey chronicled in 'From Cornhill
to Grand Cairo,' and published 'Barry Lyndon' in Fraser. In 1846
'The Book of Snobs' appeared; and the next year 'Vanity Fair,'
which made him famous and the fashion. Pendennis' followed
in 1848-49. Next came The English Humorists of the Eighteenth
## p. 14667 (#241) ##########################################
WILLIAM MAKEPEACE THACKERAY
14667
Century' (1851), delivered with great success to the exacting London
world of society and letters; 'Henry Esmond,' and his first trip to
America (1852), where he repeated the lectures, and where he was
greeted universally with a friendliness he thoroughly returned; The
Newcomes (1853-5); his second American trip (1855), when he first
read his lectures on 'The Four Georges'; 'The Virginians' (1857-9);
the establishment of the Cornhill Magazine with Thackeray as editor
(1860), and the publication in its pages during his last three years
of the 'Roundabout Papers,' 'Lovel the Widower,' 'Philip,' and the
beginning of the unfinished 'Denis Duval. ' In 1857 he had contested
a seat in Parliament for Oxford in the Liberal interest, but had been
defeated by a vote of 1018 to 1085 for his opponent. His health had
been far from good for some years; and during the night of Decem-
ber 23d, 1863, he died in his sleep.
Loosely speaking, his work may be said to be divided into two
classes, miscellany and novels, by the climacteric date of his career-
January 1847 - when the first number of 'Vanity Fair' appeared. No
writer whose fame rests, as Thackeray's larger fame does, on nota-
ble works of fiction, has written miscellaneous literature of the qual-
ity of his. Taken in connection with the novels, it ranks him as the
representative English man of letters of his time. There is extraor-
dinarily little "copy" in it. It is the lighter work of a man born
for greater things, and having therefore in its quality something
superior to its genre. In the first place, it has the style which in its
maturity led Carlyle to say, "Nobody in our day wrote, I should say,
with such perfection of style;" and as Thackeray observes of Gib-
bon's praise of Fielding, "there can be no gainsaying the sentence
of this great judge» in such a matter. It has too his qualities of
substance, which were to reach their full development later. The
Great Hoggarty Diamond' is rather small-beer, but it communi-
cates that sense of reality which is to be sought for in vain among
its contemporaries: compare the consummate Brough in this respect
with one of Dickens's ideal hypocrites. The 'Sketch-Books' will
always be good reading. The Book of Snobs' enlarged the con-
fines of literature by the discovery and exploration of a new domain.
'Barry Lyndon' is a masterpiece of irony comparable with Swift and
'Jonathan Wild' alone, and to be ranked rather among the novels.
Such burlesques as 'Rebecca and Rowena' and the 'Novels by Emi-
nent Hands' of Punch, the various essays in polite literature of Mr.
Yellowplush, the delightful extravagance The Rose and the Ring,'
the admirable account of 'Mrs. Perkins's Ball,' and many other trifles
which it is needless even to catalogue here, illustrate in common a
quality of wit, of unexpectedness, of charm, as conspicuous as their
remarkable variety. And as to the later 'Lectures' on the Queen
## p. 14668 (#242) ##########################################
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WILLIAM MAKEPEACE THACKERAY
Anne humorists and the Georges, and the inimitable Roundabout
Papers,' nothing of the kind has ever been done on quite the same
plane.
It is, however, to the elaborate and exquisitely commented picture
of life which the novels present, that Thackeray owes his fellow-
ship with the very greatest figures of literature outside the realm
of poetry. The four most important,-'Vanity Fair,' 'Pendennis,'
'Henry Esmond,' and 'The Newcomes,'-especially, enable him
to take his place among these with the ease of equality. Vanity
Fair' perhaps expresses his genius in its freest spontaneity. Thack-
eray himself spoke of it-to Dr. Merriman -as his greatest work.
And though he declared 'Henry Esmond'— which, as the dedicator
states, "copies the manners and language of Queen Anne's time” —
"the very best that I can do," the two remarks are not inconsistent:
they aptly distinguish between his most original substance and his
most perfect form. 'Pendennis' and 'The Newcomes' are social
pictures on a larger scale, of less dramatic and more epic interest.
'The Virginians' is only less important; but it loses something of
the relief which the remoteness of its epoch gives 'Henry Esmond,'
and something of the actuality that its other predecessors owe to
their modernness. 'Lovel the Widower' is an admitted failure,
largely though not splendidly redeemed by Philip' which followed
it. But the beginnings of Denis Duval' are enough to show that
the level of The Virginians,' at least, might have been reached
again; and make the writer's death at fifty-two indisputably and
grievously premature.
Charlotte Bronté, who dedicated the second edition of Jane Eyre'
to Thackeray, maintaining that "No commentator upon his writings.
has yet found the comparison that suits him, the terms which rightly
characterize his talent," spoke of him as "the first social regenerator
of the day. " She had herself, however, correctly divined his talent:
it was at once social and moral. She objected to his association
with Fielding, whom she declared he resembled "as an eagle does
a vulture," and charged Fielding with having "stooped on carrion. "
Fielding was undoubtedly his model. He regretted that he had not
read him more in early years. And Fielding is undoubtedly a writer
of both social and moral quality. But his moral range is narrow,
and there is a grave lack in his equipment considered as that of a
great writer, he lacks spirituality altogether. And spirituality is a
quality that Thackeray possessed in a distinguished degree. It is
his spirituality that Charlotte Bronté really had in mind in contrast-
ing him in her trenchant, passionate way with his predecessor. The
difference is fundamental. It is far deeper than mere choice of
material. Thackeray himself says regretfully, in the preface to
## p. 14669 (#243) ##########################################
WILLIAM MAKEPEACE THACKERAY
14669
'Pendennis': "Since the author of 'Tom Jones' was buried, no writer
of fiction among us has been permitted to depict to his utmost power
a man. We must drape him, and give him a certain conventional
simper. " He would have liked, clearly, a wider range and a freer
hand; and Charlotte Bronté would have been less pleased with him
had he enjoyed them. But he would never have "sunk with his sub-
ject," because his imagination had so strong a spiritual side.
On the other hand, what distinguishes him from such a novelist as
George Eliot is the preoccupation of his imagination with the heart
rather than the mind. Instinctively his critics agree in characteriz-
ing his dominant faculty as "insight into the human heart. " There
is no question anywhere as to the depth and keenness of this insight
in him, at all events,- however one regards the frequent statement
that it was deeper and keener than that of any other writer, “Shake-
speare and Balzac perhaps excepted. " The exception of Shakespeare
is surely as sound as it is mechanical. That of Balzac may be
disputed. Balzac's insight proceeds from his curiosity, that of Thack-
eray from his sympathy. If always as keen, Balzac's is never quite
as deep. It is perhaps wider. Curiosity in the artist means an
unlimited interest in men and things; which it regards as all, and
more or less equally, material. Sympathy necessarily selects — sympa-
thy, or even antipathy if one chooses; but in selecting it concentrates.
'La Comédie Humaine' is a wonderful structure. It parallels the exist-
ing world, one may almost say. The psychologist, the sociologist,
the specialist of nearly any description, may study it with zest and
ponder it profitably. It is a marvelously elaborate framework filled
in with an astonishing variety of both types and individuals. One
may seek in it not vainly for an analogue of almost anything act-
ual. But though less multifarious, Thackeray's world is far more real.
His figures are far more alive. Their inner springs are divined, not
studied. They make the story themselves, not merely appear in it.
We have no charts of their minds and qualities, but we know them
as we know our friends and neighbors.
This sense of reality and vitality, in which the personages of
Thackeray excel those of any other prose fiction, proceeds from that
unusual association in the author's own personality of the spiritual
and sentimental qualities with great intellectual powers- to which
I have already referred. For character - the subject par excellence
of the great writers of fiction as distinguished from the pure roman-
ticists depends upon the heart. It is comparatively independent
of psychology. For a period so given over to science as our own,
so imbued with the scientific spirit, and so concentrated upon the
scientific side of even spiritual things, psychological fiction - such
as George Eliot's inevitably possesses a special, an almost esoteric,
――――――
## p. 14670 (#244) ##########################################
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WILLIAM MAKEPEACE THACKERAY
interest. But it is nevertheless true that the elemental, the tempera-
mental, the vital idiosyncrasies of character depend less directly upon
mental than upon moral qualities. Men are what they are through
their feeling, not through their thinking except in so far as their
thinking modifies their feeling. At the same time it is to be borne
in mind that Thackeray does not neglect the mental constitution of
his characters. It cannot be said of his Rebecca, for example, as
Turgénieff is said to have observed of Zola's Gervaise Coupeau, that
"he tells us how she feels, never what she thinks. " We have a
complete enough picture of what is going on in her exceedingly
active mind; only in the main we infer this indirectly from what she
does, as we do in the case of Shakespeare's characters, rather than
from an express scrutiny of her mental mechanism. Her human and
social side is uppermost in her creator's presentation of her, though
she is plainly idiosyncratic enough to reward the study and even the
speculation of the most insistent psychologist.
Mr. Henry James acutely observes of Hawthorne's characters, that
with the partial exception of Donatello in the 'Marble Faun,' there
are no types among them. And it is assuredly for this reason that
they appear to us so entirely the creations of Hawthorne's fancy, so
much a part of the insubstantial witchery of his genius, that they
seem as individuals so unreal. Thackeray, on the other hand, has
been reproached with creating nothing but types. But the truth is
that a character of fiction, in order to make the impression of indivi-
duality, must be presented as a type. It is through its typical quali-
ties that it attains a definition which is neither insubstantial like that
of Hawthorne's personages, nor a caricature like that of so many
of Dickens's. Its typical qualities are those that persuade us of its
truth, and create the convincing illusion of its reality. A type in
fiction is a type in the sense in which the French use the term in
speaking of a real person,- a synthesis of representative traits, more
accentuated than the same characteristics as they are to be found in
general; a person, that is to say, of particularly salient individuality.
Only in this way do real persons who are not also eccentric persons
leave a striking and definite impression on us; and only in this
way do we measure that correspondence of fictitious to real charac-
ter which determines the reality of the former.
-
Of course in thus eschewing psychology and dealing mainly with
types, in occupying himself with those elemental traits of charac-
ter that depend upon the heart rather than the mind,—a realist
like Thackeray renounces a field so large and interesting as justly
to have his neglect of it accounted to him as a limitation. And
Thackeray still further narrows his field by confining himself in the
main to character not merely in its elemental traits, but in its morally
## p. 14671 (#245) ##########################################
WILLIAM MAKEPEACE THACKERAY
14671
significant ones as well. The colorless characters, such as Tom Tul-
liver for a single example, in which George Eliot is so strong, the
irresponsible ones, such as Dickens's Winkles and Swivellers, have
few fellows in his fiction, from which the seriousness of his satiric
strain excludes whatever is not significant as well as whatever is
purely particular. The loss is very great, considering his world as a
comédie humaine. It involves more than the elimination of psychol-
ogy,—it diminishes the number of types; and all types are interesting,
whether morally important or not. But in Thackeray's case it has
two great compensations. In the first place, the greater concentra-
tion it involves notably defines and emphasizes the net impression
of his works. It unifies their effect; and sharply crystallizes the mes-
sage to mankind, which, like every great writer in whatever branch
of literature he may cultivate, it was the main business, the aim
and crown and apology of his life, to deliver. There is no missing
the tenor of his gospel, which is that character is the one thing of
importance in life; that it is tremendously complex, and the easiest
thing in the world to misconceive both in ourselves and in others;
that truth is the one instrument of its perfecting, and the one subject
worthy of pursuit; and that the study of truth discloses littlenesses
and futilities in it at its best for which the only cloak is charity, and
the only consolation and atonement the cultivation of the affections.
It
In the second place, it is his concentration upon the morally sig-
nificant that places him at the head of the novelists of manners.
is the moral and social qualities, of course, that unite men in society,
and make it something other than the sum of the individuals com-
posing it. Far more deeply than Balzac, Thackeray felt the relations
between men that depend upon these qualities; and consequently
his social picture is, if less comprehensive and varied, far more vivid
and real. It is painted directly, and lacks the elaborate structural
machinery which makes Balzac's seem mechanical in composition
and artificial in spirit. Thackeray's personages are never portrayed
in isolation. They are a part of the milieu in which they exist, and
which has itself therefore much more distinction and relief than an
environment which is merely a framework. How they regard each
other, how they feel toward and what they think of each other, the
mutuality of their very numerous and vital relations, furnishes an im-
portant strand in the texture of the story in which they figure. Their
activities are modified by the air they breathe in common. Their con-
duct is controlled, their ideas affected, even their desires and ambi-
tions dictated, by the general ideals of the society that includes them.
In a more extended sense than Lady Kew intended in reminding
Ethel Newcome of the fact, they "belong to their belongings. " So
far as it goes, therefore,- and it would be easy to exaggerate its
## p. 14672 (#246) ##########################################
14672
WILLIAM MAKEPEACE THACKERAY
limitations, which are trivial in comparison,- Thackeray's picture
of society is the most vivid, as it is incontestably the most real, in
prose fiction. The temperament of the artist and satirist combined,
the preoccupation with the moral element in character,- and in logi-
cal sequence, with its human and social side,-lead naturally to the
next step of viewing man in his relations, and the construction of a
miniature world. And in addition to the high place in literature
won for him by his insight into the human heart, Thackeray's social
picture has given him a distinction that is perhaps unique. In vir-
tue of it, at any rate, the writer who passed his life in rivalry with
Dickens and Bulwer and Trollope and Lever, belongs with Shake-
speare and Molière.
Woe Brownell
BEATRIX ESMOND
From The History of Henry Esmond'
A$
S THEY came up to the house at Walcote, the windows from
within were lighted up with friendly welcome; the supper
table was spread in the oak parlor: it seemed as if for-
giveness and love were awaiting the returning prodigal. Two
or three familiar faces of domestics were on the lookout at the
porch: the old housekeeper was there, and young Lockwood from
Castlewood in my lord's livery of tawny and blue. His dear
mistress pressed his arm as they passed into the hall. Her
eyes beamed out on him with affection indescribable. "Welcome,"
was all she said, as she looked up, putting back her fair curls
and black hood. A sweet rosy smile blushed on her face; Harry
thought he had never seen her look so charming. Her face was
lighted with a joy that was brighter than beauty; she took a
hand of her son, who was in the hall waiting his mother — she
did not quit Esmond's arm.
-
"Here
"Welcome, Harry! " my young lord echoed after her.
we are all come to say so. Here's old Pincot: hasn't she grown
handsome? " and Pincot, who was older and no handsomer than
usual, made a curtsy to the captain, -as she called Esmond,-and
told my lord to "Have done, now. "
"And here's Jack Lockwood. He'll make a famous grenadier,
Jack; and so shall I we'll both 'list under you, cousin. As soon
## p. 14673 (#247) ##########################################
WILLIAM MAKEPEACE THACKERAY
14673
as I am seventeen, I go to the army-every gentleman goes to
the army.
Look! who comes here: ho, ho! " he burst into a
laugh. "Tis Mistress 'Trix, with a new ribbon: I knew she
would put one on as soon as she heard a captain was coming to
supper. "
This laughing colloquy took place in the hall of Walcote
House, in the midst of which is a staircase that leads from
an open gallery, where are the doors of the sleeping-chambers;
and from one of these, a wax candle in her hand and illuminat-
ing her, came Mistress Beatrix,- the light falling indeed upon the
scarlet ribbon which she wore, and upon the most brilliant white
neck in the world.
Esmond had left a child, and found a woman; grown beyond
the common height, and arrived at such a dazzling completeness
of beauty that his eyes might well show surprise and delight
at beholding her. In hers there was a brightness so lustrous and
melting that I have seen a whole assembly follow her as if by
an attraction irresistible; and that night the great duke was at
the playhouse after Ramillies, every soul turned and looked (she
chanced to enter at the opposite side of the theatre at the same
moment) at her, and not at him. She was a brown beauty;
that is, her eyes, hair, and eyebrows and eyelashes were dark, her
hair curling with rich undulations and waving over her shoulders;
but her complexion was as dazzling white as snow in sunshine,
except her cheeks which were a bright red, and her lips which
were of a still deeper crimson. Her mouth and chin, they said,
were too large and full; and so they might be for a goddess.
in marble, but not for a woman whose eyes were fire, whose look
was love, whose voice was the sweetest low song, whose shape
was perfect symmetry, health, decision, activity, whose foot as
it planted itself on the ground was firm but flexible, and whose
motion, whether rapid or slow, was always perfect grace: agile as
a nymph, lofty as a queen,- now melting, now imperious, now
sarcastic, there was no single movement of hers but was beau-
tiful. As he thinks of her, he who writes feels young again, and
remembers a paragon.
―――
So she came holding her dress with one fair rounded arm, and
her taper before her, tripping down the stair to greet Esmond.
"She hath put on her scarlet stockings and white shoes," says
my lord, still laughing. "Oh, my fine mistress! is this the way
you set your cap at the captain? " She approached, shining smiles
XXV-918
## p. 14674 (#248) ##########################################
14674
WILLIAM MAKEPEACE THACKERAY
upon Esmond, who could look at nothing but her eyes. She
advanced, holding forward her head, as if she would have him
kiss her as he used to do when she was a child.
"Stop," she said, "I am grown too big! Welcome, Cousin
Harry," and she made him an arch curtsy, sweeping down to
the ground almost with the most gracious bend, looking up the
while with the brightest eyes and sweetest smile. Love seemed
to radiate from her.
Harry eyed her with such a rapture as the
first lover is described as having by Milton.
"N'est-ce pas ? " says my lady, in a low, sweet voice, still hang-
ing on his arm.
Esmond turned round with a start and a blush, as he met his
mistress's clear eyes. He had forgotten her, rapt in admiration
of the filia pulcrior.
"Right foot forward, toe turned out, so; now drop the
curtsy and show the red stockings, "Trix. They're silver clocks,
Harry. The dowager sent 'em. She went to put 'em on,” cries
my lord.
"Hush, you stupid child! " says miss, smothering her brother
with kisses; and then she must come and kiss her mamma, look-
ing all the while at Harry over his mistress's shoulder. And if
she did not kiss him, she gave him both her hands and said, "O
Harry, we're so, so glad you're come! "
"There are woodcocks for supper," says my lord. « Huzzay!
It was such a hungry sermon. ”
"And it is the 29th of December, and our Harry has come
home. "
་་
Huzzay, old Pincot! " again says my lord; and my dear lady's
lips looked as if they were trembling with prayer. She would
have Harry lead in Beatrix to the supper-room, going herself
with my young Lord Viscount; and to this party came Tom
Tusher directly, whom four at least out of the company of five
wished away. Away he went, however, as soon as the sweet-
meats were put down; and then, by the great crackling fire,-
his mistress, or Beatrix with her blushing glances, filling his glass
for him,- Harry told the story of his campaign, and passed the
most delightful night his life had ever known. The sun was up
long ere he was, so deep, sweet, and refreshing was his slumber.
He woke as if angels had been watching at his bed all night.
I daresay one that was as pure and loving as an angel had
blessed his sleep with her prayers.
## p. 14675 (#249) ##########################################
WILLIAM MAKEPEACE THACKERAY
14675
Next morning the chaplain read prayers to the little household
at Walcote, as the custom was: Esmond thought Mistress Beatrix
did not listen to Tusher's exhortation much; her eyes were wan-
dering everywhere during the service,- at least whenever he
looked up he met them. Perhaps he also was not very attentive
to his reverence the chaplain. "This might have been my life,"
he was thinking; "this might have been my duty from now till
old age. Well, were it not a pleasant one to be with these dear
friends and part from 'em no more? Until- until the destined
lover comes and takes away pretty Beatrix » and the best part
of Tom Tusher's exposition, which may have been very learned
and eloquent, was quite lost to poor Harry by this vision of the
destined lover, who put the preacher out.
All the while of the prayers, Beatrix knelt a little way before
Harry Esmond. The red stockings were changed for a pair
of gray, and black shoes in which her feet looked to the full as
pretty. All the roses of spring could not vie with the brightness
of her complexion; Esmond thought he had never seen anything
like the sunny lustre of her eyes. My lady viscountess looked
fatigued as if with watching, and her face was pale.
Miss Beatrix remarked these signs of indisposition in her
mother, and deplored them.
"I am an old woman," says my
lady with a kind smile: "I cannot hope to look as young as
you do, my dear. "
"She'll never look as good as you do if she lives till she's a
hundred," says my lord, taking his mother by the waist and kiss-
ing her hand.
"Do I look very wicked, cousin? " says Beatrix, turning full
round on Esmond, with her pretty face so close under his chin
that the soft perfumed hair touched it. She laid her finger-tips
on his sleeve as she spoke, and he put his other hand over hers.
"I'm like your looking-glass," says he, "and that can't flatter
you. "
"He means that you are always looking at him, my dear,"
says her mother archly. Beatrix ran away from Esmond at
this, and flew to her mamma, whom she kissed, stopping my lady's
mouth with her pretty hand.
"And Harry is very good to look at," says my lady, with her
fond eyes regarding the young man.
"If 'tis good to see a happy face," says he, "you see that. "
My lady said "Amen" with a sigh; and Harry thought the
## p. 14676 (#250) ##########################################
14676
WILLIAM MAKEPEACE THACKERAY
memory of her dear lord rose up and rebuked her back again
into sadness, for her face lost the smile and resumed its look of
melancholy.
"Why, Harry, how fine we look in our scarlet-and-silver and
our black periwig," cries my lord. "Mother, I am tired of my
own hair. When shall I have a peruke? Where did you get
your steenkirk, Harry? "
"It's some of my lady dowager's lace," says Harry; "she
gave me this and a number of other fine things. "
"My lady dowager isn't such a bad woman," my lord con-
tinued.
"She's not so-so red as she's painted," says Miss Beatrix.
Her brother broke into a laugh. "I'll tell her you said so;
by the Lord, 'Trix, I will," he cries out.
"She'll know that you hadn't the wit to say it, my lord," says
Miss Beatrix.
"We won't quarrel the first day Harry's here, will we,
mother? " said the young lord. "We'll see if we can get on to
the new year without a fight. Have some of this Christmas pie.
And here comes the tankard; no, it's Pincot with the tea. ”
«< Will the captain choose a dish? " asked Mistress Beatrix.
"I say, Harry," my lord goes on, "I'll show thee my horses
after breakfast, and we'll go a-bird-netting to-night; and on
Monday there's a cock-match at Winchester-do you love cock-
fighting, Harry? -between the gentlemen of Sussex and the gen-
tlemen of Hampshire; at £10 the battle and £50 the odd battle,
to show one-and-twenty cocks. "
"And what will you do, Beatrix, to amuse our kinsman ? "
asks my lady.
"I'll listen to him," says Beatrix. "I am sure he has a hun-
dred things to tell us. And I'm jealous already of the Spanish
ladies. Was that a beautiful nun at Cadiz that you rescued from
the soldiers? Your man talked of it last night in the kitchen,
and Mrs. Betty told me this morning as she combed my hair.
And he says you must be in love, for you sat on deck all night
and scribbled verses all day in your table-book. " Harry thought
if he had wanted a subject for verses yesterday, to-day he had
found one; and not all the Lindamiras and Ardelias of the poets
were half so beautiful as this young creature: but he did not say
so, though some one did for him.
## p. 14677 (#251) ##########################################
WILLIAM MAKEPEACE THACKERAY
14677
THE DUKE OF MARLBOROUGH
From The History of Henry Esmond'
ND now, having seen a great march through
A friendly country, the pomps and festivities of more than
one German court, the severe struggle of a hotly contested
battle, and the triumph of victory, Mr. Esmond beheld another
part of military duty: our troops entering the enemy's territory
and putting all around them to fire and sword; burning farms,
wasted fields, shrieking women, slaughtered sons and fathers, and
drunken soldiery, cursing and carousing in the midst of tears,
terror, and murder. Why does the stately Muse of History, that
delights in describing the valor of heroes and the grandeur of
conquest, leave out these scenes, so brutal, mean, and degrading,
that yet form by far the greater part of the drama of war? You
gentlemen of England, who live at home at ease and compliment
yourselves in the songs of triumph with which our chieftains are
bepraised; you pretty maidens that come tumbling down the
stairs when the fife and drum call you, and huzza for the British
Grenadiers,- do you take account that these items go to make
up the amount of triumph you admire, and form part of the
duties of the heroes you fondle ? Our chief, whom England
and all Europe, saving only the Frenchmen, worshiped almost,
had this of the god-like in him: that he was impassible before
victory, before danger, before defeat. Before the greatest obsta-
cle or the most trivial ceremony; before a hundred thousand men
drawn in battalia, or a peasant slaughtered at the door of his
burning hovel, before a carouse of drunken German lords, or
a monarch's court, or a cottage table where his plans were laid,
or an enemy's battery, vomiting flame and death and strewing
corpses round about him,- he was always cold, calm, resolute,
like fate. He performed a treason or a court bow, he told a
falsehood as black as Styx, as easily as he paid a compliment or
spoke about the weather. He took a mistress and left her, he
betrayed his benefactor and supported him, or would have mur-
dered him, with the same calmness always, and having no more
remorse than Clotho when she weaves the thread, or Lachesis
when she cuts it. In the hour of battle I have heard the Prince
of Savoy's officers say the prince became possessed with a sort
of warlike fury: his eyes lighted up; he rushed hither and thither,
## p. 14678 (#252) ##########################################
14678
WILLIAM MAKEPEACE THACKERAY
raging; he shrieked curses and encouragement, yelling and hark-
ing his bloody war-dogs on, and himself always at the first of
the hunt. Our duke was as calm at the mouth of a cannon as
at the door of a drawing-room. Perhaps he could not have been
the great man he was had he had a heart either for love or
hatred, or pity or fear, or regret or remorse. He achieved the
highest deed of daring, or deepest calculation of thought, as he
performed the very meanest action of which a man is capable;
told a lie or cheated a fond woman or robbed a poor beggar of
a halfpenny, with a like awful serenity, and equal capacity of
the highest and lowest acts of our nature.
His qualities were pretty well known in the army, where
there were parties of all politics, and of plenty of shrewdness
and wit; but there existed such a perfect confidence in him, as
the first captain of the world, and such a faith and admiration
in his prodigious genius and fortune, that the very men whom he
notoriously cheated of their pay, the chiefs whom he used and
injured for he used all men, great and small, that came near
him, as his instruments alike, and took something of theirs, either
some quality or some property: the blood of a soldier, it might
be, or a jeweled hat or a hundred thousand crowns from a king,
or a portion out of a starving sentinel's three farthings; or when
he was young, a kiss from a woman, and the gold chain off her
neck, taking all he could from woman or man, and having, as I
said, this of the godlike in him, that he could see a hero perish
or a sparrow fall with the same amount of sympathy for either.
Not that he had no tears. he could always order up this reserve
at the proper moment to battle; he could draw upon tears or
smiles alike, and whenever need was for using this cheap coin.
He would cringe to a shoeblack, and he would flatter a minister
or a monarch; be haughty, be humble, threaten, repent, weep,
grasp your hand, or stab you whenever he saw occasion — but
yet those of the army who knew him best and had suffered most
from him, admired him most of all; and as he rode along the
lines to battle, or galloped up in the nick of time to a battalion
reeling from before the enemy's charge or shot, the fainting men
and officers got new courage as they saw the splendid calm of
his face, and felt that his will made them irresistible.
-
After the great victory of Blenheim, the enthusiasm of the
army for the duke, even of his bitterest personal enemies in it,
amounted to a sort of rage: nay, the very officers who cursed
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WILLIAM MAKEPEACE THACKERAY
14679
him in their hearts were among the most frantic to cheer him.
Who could refuse his meed of admiration to such a victory and
such a victor? Not he who writes: a man may profess to be
ever so much a philosopher, but he who fought on that day
must feel a thrill of pride as he recalls it.
THE FAMOUS MR. JOSEPH ADDISON
From The History of Henry Esmond'
THE
HE gentlemen ushers had a table at Kensington, and the Guard
a very splendid dinner daily at St. James's, at either of which
ordinaries Esmond was free to dine. Dick Steele liked the
Guard table better than his own at the gentlemen ushers', where
there was less wine and more ceremony; and Esmond had many
a jolly afternoon in company of his friend, and a hundred times.
at least saw Dick into his chair. If there is verity in wine,
according to the old adage, what an amiable-natured character
Dick's must have been! In proportion as he took in wine he
overflowed with kindness. His talk was not witty so much as
charming. He never said a word that could anger anybody, and
only became the more benevolent the more tipsy he grew. Many
of the wags derided the poor fellow in his cups, and chose him
as a butt for their satire; but there was a kindness about him,
and a sweet playful fancy, that seemed to Esmond far more
charming than the pointed talk of the brightest wits, with their
elaborate repartees and affected severities. I think Steele shone
rather than sparkled. Those famous beaux esprits of the coffee-
houses (Mr. William Congreve, for instance, when his gout and
his grandeur permitted him to come among us) would make
many brilliant hits,-half a dozen in a night sometimes,— but
like sharpshooters, when they had fired their shot they were
obliged to retire under cover till their pieces were loaded again,
and wait till they got another chance at their enemy; whereas
Dick never thought that his bottle companion was a butt to aim
at-only a friend to shake by the hand. The poor fellow had
half the town in his confidence: everybody knew everything about
his loves and his debts, his creditors' or his mistress's obdu-
racy. When Esmond first came on to the town, honest Dick
was all flames and raptures for a young lady, a West India for-
tune, whom he married. In a couple of years the lady was dead,
## p. 14680 (#254) ##########################################
14680
WILLIAM MAKEPEACE THACKERAY
the fortune was all but spent, and the honest widower was as
eager in pursuit of a new paragon of beauty as if he had never
courted and married and buried the last one.
Quitting the Guard table one Sunday afternoon, when by
chance Dick had a sober fit upon him, he and his friend were
making their way down Germain Street, and Dick all of a sud-
den left his companion's arm and ran after a gentleman who was
poring over a folio volume at the book-shop near to St. James's
Church. He was a fair, tall man, in a snuff-colored suit, with a
plain sword, very sober, and almost shabby in appearance - at
least when compared to Captain Steele, who loved to adorn his
jolly round person with the finest of clothes, and shone in scarlet
and gold lace. The captain rushed up then to the student of the
book-stall, took him in his arms, hugged him, and would have
kissed him,- for Dick was always hugging and bussing his friends,
-but the other stepped back with a flush on his pale face, seem-
ing to decline this public manifestation of Steele's regard.
"My dearest Joe, where hast thou hidden thyself this age? "
cries the captain, still holding both his friend's hands: "I have
been languishing for thee this fortnight. "
"A fortnight is not an age, Dick," says the other very good-
humoredly. (He had light-blue eyes, extraordinary bright, and a
face perfectly regular and handsome, like a tinted statue. ) "And
I have been hiding myself - where do you think? "
"What! not across the water, my dear Joe? " says Steele,
with a look of great alarm: "thou knowest I have always—»
"No," says his friend, interrupting him with a smile: " we
are not come to such straits as that, Dick. I have been hiding,
sir, at a place where people never think of finding you — at
my own lodgings, whither I am going to smoke a pipe now, and
drink a glass of sack. Will your Honor come? "
"Harry Esmond, come hither," cries out Dick. "Thou hast
heard me talk over and over again of my dearest Joe, my guard-
ian angel? "
"Indeed," says Mr. Esmond with a bow, "it is not from you
only that I have learnt to admire Mr. Addison. We loved good
poetry at Cambridge as well as at Oxford; and I have some of
yours by heart, though I have put on a red coat.
10
qui canoro blandius Orpheo vocale ducis carmen;'-shall I go
on, sir? " says Mr. Esmond, who indeed had read and loved the
charming Latin poems of Mr. Addison, as every scholar of that
time knew and admired them.
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WILLIAM MAKEPEACE THACKERAY
14681
"This is Captain Esmond, who was at Blenheim," says Steele.
"Lieutenant Esmond," says the other with a low bow, "at
Mr. Addison's service. "
"I have heard of you," says Mr. Addison with a smile; as
indeed everybody about town had heard that unlucky story about
Esmond's dowager aunt and the duchess.
"We were going to the George to take a bottle before the
play," says Steele: "wilt thou be one, Joe? "
Mr. Addison said his own lodgings were hard by, where he
was still rich enough to give a good bottle of wine to his friends;
and invited the two gentlemen to his apartment in the Hay-
market, whither we accordingly went.
"I shall get credit with my landlady," says he with a smile,
"when she sees two such fine gentlemen as you come up my
stair. " And he politely made his visitors welcome to his apart-
ment, which was indeed but a shabby one, though no grandee
of the land could receive his guests with a more perfect and
courtly grace than this gentleman. A frugal dinner, consisting
of a slice of meat and a penny loaf, was awaiting the owner
of the lodgings. "My wine is better than my meat," says Mr.
Addison. "My Lord Halifax sent me the burgundy. " And he
set a bottle and glasses before his friends, and ate his simple.
dinner in a very few minutes; after which the three fell to, and
began to drink.
"You see," says Mr. Addison, pointing to his writing-table,
whereon was a map of the action at Hochstedt, and several
other gazettes and pamphlets relating to the battle, "that I too
am busy about your affairs, captain. I am engaged as a poeti-
cal gazetteer, to say truth, and am writing a poem on the cam-
paign. ”
So Esmond, at the request of his host, told him what he knew
about the famous battle, drew the river on the table aliquo
mero, and with the aid of some bits of tobacco pipe showed the
advance of the left wing, where he had been engaged.
A sheet or two of the verses lay already on the table beside
our bottles and glasses; and Dick, having plentifully refreshed
himself from the latter, took up the pages of manuscript, writ
out with scarce a blot or correction, in the author's slim, neat
handwriting, and began to read therefrom with great emphasis
and volubility. At pauses of the verse, the enthusiastic reader
stopped and fired off a great salvo of applause.
-
## p. 14682 (#256) ##########################################
14682
WILLIAM MAKEPEACE THACKERAY
Esmond smiled at the enthusiasm of Addison's friend. «You
are like the German burghers," says he, "and the princes on the
Mozelle: when our army came to a halt, they always sent a dep-
utation to compliment the chief, and fired a salute with all their
artillery from their walls. "
"And drunk the great chief's health afterward, did not they? "
says Captain Steele, gayly filling up a bumper: he never was
tardy at that sort of acknowledgment of a friend's merit.
"And the duke, since you will have me act his Grace's
part," says Mr. Addison, with a smile and something of a blush,
"pledged his friends in return. Most Serene Elector of Covent
Garden, I drink to your Highness's health," and he filled him-
self a glass. Joseph required scarce more pressing than Dick to
that sort of amusement: but the wine never seemed at all to
fluster Mr. Addison's brains, it only unloosed his tongue: whereas
Captain Steele's head and speech were quite overcome by a single
bottle.
No matter what the verses were (and to say truth, Mr. Esmond
found some of them more than indifferent), Dick's enthusiasm
for his chief never faltered; and in every line from Addison's
pen, Steele found a master-stroke. By the time Dick had come to
that part of the poem wherein the bard describes, as blandly as
though he were recording a dance at the opera, or a harmless
bout of bucolic cudgeling at a village fair, that bloody and ruth-
less part of our campaign with the remembrance whereof every
soldier who bore a part in it must sicken with shame,- when we
were ordered to ravage and lay waste the Elector's country; and
with fire and murder, slaughter and crime, a great part of his
dominions was overrun;- when Dick came to the lines,—
"In vengeance roused, the soldier fills his hand
With sword and fire, and ravages the land;
In crackling flames a thousand harvests burn,
A thousand villages to ashes burn.
To the thick woods the woolly flocks retreat,
And mixed with bellowing herds confusèd bleat;
Their trembling lords the common shade partake,
And cries of infants sound in every brake.
The listening soldier fixed in sorrow stands,
Loath to obey his leader's just commands.
The leader grieves, by generous pity swayed,
To see his just commands so well obeyed,”.
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WILLIAM MAKEPEACE THACKERAY
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by this time wine and friendship had brought poor Dick to a
perfectly maudlin state, and he hiccoughed out the last line with
a tenderness that set one of his auditors a-laughing.
. "I admire the license of your poets," says Esmond to Mr.
Addison. (Dick, after reading of the verses, was fain to go off,
insisting on kissing his two dear friends before his departure,
and reeling away with his periwig over his eyes. ) "I admire
your art: the murder of the campaign is done to military music,
like a battle at the opera; and the virgins shriek in harmony
as our victorious grenadiers march into their villages. Do you
know what a scene it was? "-by this time, perhaps, the wine
had warmed Mr. Esmond's head too-"what a triumph you are
celebrating? what scenes of shame and horror were enacted, over
which the commander's genius presided, as calm as though he
didn't belong to our sphere? You talk of the 'listening soldier
fixed in sorrow,' the 'leader's grief swayed by generous pity':
to my belief the leader cared no more for bleating flocks than
he did for infants' cries, and many of our ruffians butchered one
or the other with equal alacrity. I was ashamed of my trade
when I saw those horrors perpetrated, which came under every
man's eyes. You hew out of your polished verses a stately image
of smiling Victory: I tell you 'tis an uncouth, distorted, savage
idol; hideous, bloody, and barbarous. The rites performed before
it are shocking to think of. You great poets should show it as
it is, ugly and horrible, not beautiful and serene. Oh, sir, had
you made the campaign, believe me, you never would have sung
it so. "
—
During this little outbreak Mr. Addison was listening, smoking
out of his long pipe, and smiling very placidly. "What would
you have? " says he. "In our polished days, and according to the
rules of art, 'tis impossible that the Muse should depict tortures
or begrime her hands with the horrors of war. These are indi-
cated rather than described; as in the Greek tragedies, that I
daresay you have read (and sure there can be no more elegant
specimens of composition), Agamemnon is slain, or Medea's child-
ren destroyed, away from the scene,-the chorus occupying the
stage and singing of the action to pathetic music. Something of
this I attempt, my dear sir, in my humble way: 'tis a panegyric
I mean to write, and not a satire.
