driiH";^ IS SBl (QatneU Uttiueratg BJihrarg Stljara, &*ro Unrk FROM THE BENNO LOEWY LIBRARY COLLECTED BY BENNO LOEWY 1854-1919 BEQUEATHED TO CORNELL UNIVERSITY PR563 1 .W O 74 e i9 U n 9 erSi,yUbrary Thackeray in the United States, 1852-3, 3 1924 013 563 048 Cornell University Library The original of this book is in the Cornell University Library. There are no known copyright restrictions in the United States on the use of the text. http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924013563048 THACKERAY in the UNITED STATES Y -- THACKERAY in the UNITED STATES 1852-3, 1855-6 INCLUDING A RECORD OF A VARIETY OI ' THACKERAYANA By JAMES GRANT ^ILSON Author of "Memorial History of Ne*ea***i*^e(. /Ct~u^. . Thackeray at a party given by Mr. Russell Sturgis, in London, /-,/ /£• 4^ » ^*« *"~ ~*<* ^ « e ~^ &-•' Sfaji,, I May 15, 1 85 1. A Pen-and-ink Drawing by Richard Doyle THE UNITED STATES n quarter to ten, waited till half past, and then thinking you were prevented coming I left home. I told you on Wednesday night that I had no engage- ment for Thursday. This was a mistake. I was " en- tered," to use a sporting phrase, for Lord Granville's, and so I went there, intending to go afterwards to Mrs. Sturgis's party. Time flew in an extraordinary manner, for on leaving, as I thought early, for Portland Place, I found it to be so late that I dared not show my face for the first time at a house at such an unseasonable hour. It only remains now for me to ask pardon of Mrs. Sturgis, which I shall be most happy to do in person, if you think she is as forgiving in her nature as pretty . in her looks ; and perhaps tor this purpose you will let me pay a visit some afternoon with you ; the sooner the better. If you will appoint the day and the " hour " I will see that the " man " is forthcoming. Very sincerely yours, Richard Doyle. P. S. My Father and brothers were all engaged " so deep " last evening that none of them were able to accept Mrs. Sturgis's kind invitation. They hope to make her acquaintance on some future occasion. I owe you special apologies for giving you the trouble of calling for me — in vain. Accompanied by his secretary, Eyre Crowe, a young English artist, Thackeray sailed for Boston October 30 in the steamer " Canada." Just as she was casting off her lines, a package was placed aboard 12 THACKERAY IN the Cunarder containing letters from his London publishers and the first copies of" Henry Esmond." tf M ^ ' ^etwltti C*^' ^=d k^W^ of <>V £lnt^ ^«*$ C*>* *" v*""* * Mr*. Brookfield and others from Thackeray' s sketch book begged leave to say that in Mr. Thackeray they discovered a genuine Yankee!" The course was repeated during December, as the Church of the Messiah was not sufficiently large to contain much THE UNITED STATES 23 more than half of the persons who desired to sub- scribe for the six lectures. He also lectured in Brooklyn, and before his departure for Boston, as the fruit of the " English Humourists," Thackeray deposited five thousand dollars with his New York bankers. The leading journals, almost without exception, united in commending, in highly complimentary terms, Mr. Thackeray's first lecture in the United States. The accompanying notice, written by Wil- liam Cullen Bryant, appeared in the " Evening Post," and is included in this chapter chiefly for the reason that it was selected from a sheaf of favourable criticisms to send to his friend and correspondent, Mrs. William H. Brookfield, a beautiful woman, believed to have been Thackeray's model for Lady Castlewood in " Henry Esmond." His letters to her form one of the best collections in epistolary literature published during the past century. In them he is believed to have revealed himself more than in any of his other writings. " The building," says Mr. Bryant, " was crowded to its utmost capacity with the celebrities of literature and fashion in this metropolis, all of whom, we believe, left, perfectly united in the opinion that they never remembered to have spent an hour more delightfully in their lives, and that the room in which they had been receiving so much enjoyment was very badly lighted. We fear also that it was the impression of the many who were disappointed in 24 THACKERAY IN obtaining tickets that the room was not spacious enough for the purpose in which it has been ap- propriated. " Every one who saw Mr. Thackeray last evening for the first time seemed to have their impressions of his appearance and manner of speech corrected. Few expected to see so large a man : he is gigantic, six feet four at least ; few expected to see so old a person ; his hair appears to have kept silvery record over fifty years ; and then there was a notion in the minds of many that there must be something dashing and ' fast ' in his appearance, whereas his costume was perfectly plain, the expressions of his face grave and earnest, his address perfectly unaffected and such as we might expect to meet with in a well-bred man somewhat advanced in years. His elocution also surprised those who had derived their impressions from the English journals. His voice is a superb tenor, and possesses that pathetic tremble which is so effective in what is called emotive eloquence, while his delivery was as well suited to the com- munication he had to make as could well have been imagined. " His enunciation is perfect. Every word he uttered might have been heard in the remotest quarters of the room, yet he scarcely lifted his voice above a colloquial tone. The most striking feature in his whole manner was the utter absence of affec- tation of any kind. He did not permit himself to appear conscious that he was an object of peculiar THE UNITED STATES 25 interest in the audience, neither was he guilty of the greater error of not appearing to care whether they were interested in him or not. In other words, he inspired his audience with a respect for him, as a man proportioned to the admiration which his books have inspired for him as an author. Thackeray's drawings of Mrs. Brookfield and others " Of the lecture itself, as a work of art, it would be difficult to speak too strongly. Though written with the utmost simplicity and apparent inattention to effects, it overflowed with every characteristic of the author's happiest vein. There has been nothing written about Swift so clever, and if we except Lord Orrery's silly letters, we suspect 'we might add nothing so unjust. Though suitable 26 THACKERAY IN credit was given to Swift's talents, all of which was admirably characterised, yet when he came to speak of the moral side of the Dean's nature, Thackeray saw nothing but darkness." * " In welcoming Mr. Thackeray to New York," wrote William Young, " we shall not imitate those of our contemporaries who have taken the opportunity to sketch him or to eulogise his works. The latter are too widely different and too highly esteemed to require any special allusion at this moment. But since it is rather the mode just now to institute comparison or to draw a contrast between himself and Mr. Dickens, we may be permitted to express our satisfaction that the literary lion of to-day is received amongst those whom he visits with more dignity and self-respect than awaited that other celebrity a dozen years ago. There is no need to inquire into reasons why this is so : but the difference in the manner of their reception strikes us as being not dissimilar to the difference ex- isting between them as authors. Dickens — with his comic and pathetic powers, both infinite — reminds us of being created for stage effect. We give our- selves up to the illusion so long as the melodrama lasts, but look not to meet in real life his grotesque and exaggerated character. In Thackeray's books, on the contrary, one seems to meet the men and women of real life, although it naturally follows, 1 A copy of this cutting from the New York " Evening Post " was enclosed in Thackeray's letter written to Mrs. Brookfield in the Clarendon Hotel, December 23, 1852. THE UNITED STATES 27 from his vein being almost exclusively satirical, that in real life one would decline the honour of their personal acquaintance. — So in a measure it is with the greeting respectively awarded. Some of us remember with what a theatrical flourish Charles Dickens was received in this country. Mr. Thack- eray is met with the attention due him as a public man of letters, and with the friendly courtesies due to him as a private gentleman." * In November, 1852, the Harpers issued " Henry Esmond," so that between his personal presence, his lectures, the appearance of his new novel, and the publication of the Appletons' edition of his mis- cellaneous works in a dozen duodecimo volumes edited by Evert A. Duyckinck, together with the many poems appearing in the papers, Thackeray certainly shared with Madame Sontag the admiring attention of the town. Under the title of " Mr. Thackeray in the United States," he contributed a characteristic paper signed, "John Small," to "Fraser's Magazine." It was written at the Clarendon Hotel, and contains amus- ing comments upon himself, which he pretended to find in an imaginary publication entitled the " Sa- chem and Broadway Delineator." This most enter- taining article, which appeared in January, 1853, was immediately recognised as the product of Thackeray's " faithful old Gold Pen." It was a successful imitation of the style of many of the 1 The New York "Albion," Saturday, November 20, 1851. 28 THACKERAY IN newspapers, and caused some squirming and resent- ment on the part of those so happily parodied. " To the Editor of ' Fraser's Magazine ' : You may remember, my dear Sir, how 1 prognosticated a warm reception for your Mr. Michael Angelo Titmarsh in New York — how I advised that he should come by a Collins rather than a Cunard liner — how he must land at New York rather than at Boston — or, at any rate, that he mustn't dare to begin lecturing at the latter city, and bring ' cold joints' to the former one. In the last particular he has happily followed my suggestion, and has opened with a warm success in the chief city. The journals have been full of him. On, the 19th of November he commenced his lectures before the Mercantile Library Association (young ardent commercialists), in the spacious New York Church belonging to the flock presided over by the Reverend Mr. Bellows, a strong row of ladies- — the cream of the capital — and an unusual number of the distinguished literary and professional celebrities. The critic of the 'New York Tribune ' is forward to commend his style of delivery as ' that of a well-bred gentleman, reading with marked force and propriety to a large circle in the drawing-room.' So far excellent. This wit- ness is a gentleman of the press, and is a credit to his order. But there are some others who have whetted the ordinary American appetite of inquisitiveness with astonishing intelligence. Sydney Smith excused the national curiosity as not only venial, but laud- THE UNITED STATES 29 able. In 1824, he wrote: 'Where men live in the woods, and forests, as is the case, of course, in remote American settlements, it is the duty of every man to gratify the inhabitants by telling them his name, place, age, office, virtues, crimes, children, fortune, and remarks.' It is not a matter of surprise, therefore, that this precinctatorial foible has grown with the national growth. " You cannot help perceiving that the lion in America is public property and confiscate to the public weal. They trim the creature's nails, they cut the hair off his mane and tail (which is distrib- uted or sold to his admirers), and they draw his teeth, which are frequently preserved with much the same care as you keep any memorable grinder whose presence has been agony and departure delight. Bear-leading is not so much in vogue across the Atlantic as at your home in England: but the lion-leading is infinitely more in fashion. " Some learned man is appointed Androcles to the new arrival. One of the familiars of the press is dispatched to attend the latest attraction, and by this reflecting' medium the lion is perpetually pre- sented to the popular gaze. The guest's most secret self is exposed by his host. Every action — every word — every gesture is preserved and pro- claimed — a sigh — a nod — a groan — a sneeze — a cough — or a wink — is each written down by this recording minister, who blots out nothing. No t,abulcr rasa with him. The portrait is limned with the fidelity 30 THACKERAY IN of Parrhasius, and filled up with the minuteness of the Daguerre process itself. No bloodhound or Bow Street officer can be keener or more exact on the trail than this irresistible and unavoidable spy. 'T is in Austria they calotype criminals : in the far West the public press prints the identity of each notorious visitor to its shores. " In turn, Mr. Dickens, Lord Carlisle, Jenny Lind, and now Mr. Thackeray have been lionised in America. c They go to see, themselves a greater sight than all.' "In providing for a gaping audience, narrators are disposed rather to go beyond reality. Your fa- mous Oriental lecturer at the British and Foreign Institute had a wallet of personal experience, from which Lemuel Gulliver might have helped himself. With such hyperbole one or two of ' our own cor- respondents ' of American journals tell Mr. Thack- eray more about his habits than he himself was cognisant of. Specially I have selected from the c Sachem and Broadway Delineator ' (the latter- named newspaper has quite a fabulous circulation) a pleasant history of certain of the peculiarities of your great humourist at which I believe he him- self must smile. Mr. Thackeray's person, height, breadth, hair, complexion, voice, gesticulation, and manner are, with a fair enough accuracy, described. " Anon, these recorders, upon which we play, softly whisper — " One of his most singular habits is that of mak- THE UNITED STATES 31 ing rough sketches for caricatures on his finger-nails. The phosphoretic ink he originally used has de- stroyed the entire nails, so his fingers are now tipped with horn, on which he draws his portraits. The Duke of Marlboro' (under Queen Anne), Gen. O'Gahagan (under Lord Lake), together with Ibra- him Pasha (at the Turkish Ambassador's), were thus taken. The celebrated engravings in the ' Paris Sketch Book,' 'Esmond,' etc., were made from these sketches. He has an insatiable passion for snuff, which he carries loose in his pockets, ^.t a ball at the Duke of Northumberland's, he set a whole party sneezing, in a polka, in so convulsive a manner that they were obliged to break up in confusion. His pockets are all lined with tea-lead, after a fash- ion introduced by the late Lord Dartmouth. " Mr. T. has a passion for daguerreotypes, of which he has a ^collection of many thousands. Most of these he took unobserved from the outer gallery of Saint Paul's. He generally carries his apparatus in one of Sangster's alpaca umbrellas, surmounted with a head of Dr. Syntax. He has been known to collar a beggar boy in the streets, drag him off to the nearest pastry-cook's, and ex- ercise his photographic art without ceremony. In London he had a tame laughing hyena presented to him, on the breaking up of the Tower me- nagerie, which followed him like a dog, and was much attached to his master, though totally blind from confinement, deaf, and going on three legs 32 THACKERAY IN and a wooden one. He was always surrounded by pets and domestic animals in his house ; two owls live in the ivy-tod of the summer-house in the garden. His back sitting-room has an aviary. Monkeys, dogs, parrots, cats, and guinea-pigs swarm in the chambers. The correspondent of the Buffalo ' Revolver,' who stayed three ' weeks with Mr. Thackeray during the Great Exhibition, gave us these particulars. " His papers on the ' Greater Petty Chaps ' or ' Garden Warbler ' (Sylvia hortensis) ' the Fauvette,' created an immense sensation when Madame Otto Goldschmidt was last in London. The study is at the end of the garden. The outside is richly covered with honeysuckle, jasmine, and Virginia creepers. Here Mr. T. sits in perfect solitude, ' chewing the cud of sweet and bitter fancy.' Being an early riser he is generally to be found there_ early in the morn- ing, whence he can watch the birds. His daily costume is a hanging chlamys, or frock-coat, which he closely buttons, to avoid the incumbrance of a waistcoat. Hence the multiplicity of his coat pockets, whose extreme utility to him during his lecture has been remarked elswhere. He wears no braces, but his nether garments are sustained by a suspensory belt or bandage of hemp round his loins. Socks or stockings he despises as effeminate, and has been heard to sigh for the days of the Solea or a-avhd\iov. A hair-shirt close to the skin as Dejanira's robe, with a changeable linen front of THE UNITED STATES 33 the finest texture ; a mortification, or penance, ac- cording to his cynical contempt and yet respect for human vanity, is a part of his ordinary apparel. A gibus hat and a pair of bluchers complete his attire. By a contrivance borrowed from the disguises of pantomimists, he undresses himself in the twinkling of a bedpost and can slip into bed while an ordinary man is pulling off his coat. He is awaked from his sleep (lying always on his back in a sort of mes- meric trance) by a black servant (Joe's domestic in c Vanity Fair '), who enters the bedroom at four o'clock precisely every morning, winter or summer, ' tears down the bed-clothes, and literally saturates his master with a can of cold water drawn from the nearest spring. As he has no whiskers, he never needs to shave, and he is used to clean his teeth with the feather end of the quill with which he writes in bed. (In this free and enlightened coun- try he will find that he need not waste his time in cleaning his teeth at all.) With all his excessive simplicity, he is as elaborate in the arrangement of his dress as Count D'Orsay or Mr. Brummell. His toilet occupies him after matin studies until midday. He then sits down to a substantial ' bever ' or luncheon of c tea, coffee, bread, butter, salmon-shad, liver, black puddings and sausages.' At the top of this he deposits two glasses of ratafia and three- fourths of a glass of rum-shrub. Immediately after the meal his horses are brought to the door; he starts at once in a mad gallop, or coolly commences a vol. 1. — 3 34 THACKERAY IN gentle amble, according to the character of the work, fast or slow, that he is engaged upon. " He pays no visits, and being a solitudinarian, frequents not even a single club in London. He dresses punctiliously for dinner every day. He is but a sorry eater, and avoids all vegetable diet, as he thinks it dims the animal spirits. Only when en- gaged in pathetic subjects, does he make a hearty meal ; for the body macerated by long fasting, he says, cannot unaided contribute the tears he would shed over what he writes. Wine he abhors, as a true mussulman. Mr. T.'s favourite drink is gin and toast and water, or cider and bitters, cream and cayenne. " In religion a Parsee (he was born in Calcutta), in morals a Stagyrite, in philosophy an Epicurean ; though nothing in his conversation or manners would lead one to surmise that he belonged to either or any of these sects. In politics an un- flinching Tory; fond of the throne, admiring the court, attached to the peerage, proud of the army and navy ; a thick-and-thin-upholder of church and state, he is for tithes and taxes as in Pitt's time. He wears hair powdered to this day, from his entire reliance on the wisdom of his forefathers. Besides his novels, he is the author of the 'Vestiges of Cre- ation,' the ' Errors of Numismatics,' c Junius's Letters,' and ' Ivanhoe.' The sequel to this last he published three or four years ago. He wrote all < Q THE UNITED STATES 35 Louis Napoleon's works, and Madame H.'s ex- quisite love letters ; and while secretary to that prince in confinement at Ham, assisted him in his escape, by knocking down the sentry with a ruler with which he had been ruling accounts. Mr. T. is very fond of boxing, and used to have an occa- sional set-to with Ben Caunt, the Tipton Slasher, and young Sambo. He fences admirably, and ran the celebrated Bertrand through the lungs twice at an assaut d'armes in Paris. He is an exquisite dancer, he founded Laurent's Casino (was a pupil of old Grimaldi, surnamed Iron Legs), and played Harlequin in c Mother Goose ' pantomime once when Ella, the regular performer, was taken ill and unable to appear. He has no voice, ear, or fancy even, for music, and the only instruments he cares to listen to are the Jew's-harp, the bagpipes, and the c Indian drum.' "He is disputatious and loquacious to a degree in company ; and at a dinner at the Bishop of Oxford's the discussion with Mr. Macaulay respecting the death of Mausolus, the husband of Zenobia, occu- pied the disputants for thirteen hours ere either rose to retire. Mr. Macaulay was found exhausted under the table. He has no acquaintance with modern languages, and his French, which he freely uses throughout his writing, is furnished by the Parisian governess in the Baron de B.'s establish- ment. In the classics he is superior to either Prof. Sedgwick or Blackie {vide his ' Colloquies on Strabo ' 36 THACKERAY IN and the 'Curtain Earthquake'). He was twice senior opt. at Magdalen College, and three times running carried off Barnes's prize for Greek Theses and Cantate, k.t.X. " Happily these delicate attentions have not ruffled Mr. Thackeray's good temper and genial ap- preciation of the high position occupied by literary men in the United States. Let me avow that this position not only reflects credit on the country which awards it, but helps to shed its lustre on the men of letters who become the guests of its hospitality. [Here follows the graceful tribute with which Thackeray concluded his sixth lecture. Vide preceding page 20.] " To his family Thackeray writes : " Now that I am comfortably settled [in New York] with a hundred kind people to make your papa welcome and two thousand every night to come and hear his lectures, doesn't it seem absurd that we should all have been so gloomy, and foreboding so many evils at my go- ing away ? . . . We are up three pairs of stairs, in very snug rooms, at a very good hotel. The people have not turned out with flags and drums to receive me like Dickens, but the welcome is a most pleasant one. There is no speechifying or ceremony in it — everybody has read Somebody's book." Mrs. Ritchie remarks : " Once the letters began to arrive from America we were all much happier, for we seemed to be in touch with him once more. He THE UNITED STATES 37 was fairly well and in good spirits, and making friends and making money." To William C. Macready. Clarendon Hotel, New York, Nov. so [1852]. My dear Macready, — I have been wanting to write you a line ever since I have been here, and waiting for a day's quiet when I could have leisure to send a letter big enough to travel 3000 miles — but there never is a day's quiet here. It is day after day skurry and turmoil, friends calling, strangers calling, newspaper articles bawling out abuse or telling absurd personalities — you know the life well enough, and have undergone the persecution in your time. The dollars hardly compensate for it : nor the ^kindliness of the real friends on whom one lights. Several of yours are here and in Boston I know I shall meet many more. Did Foster tell you I had met Hall and C. King and good old Dr. Francis who all asked with such sincere regard after you and seemed so happy to hear you looked well ? I told them I had seen you the last day I was in London and how very kind it was of you to come all the way from Sherborne to give me a parting shake of the hand. My dear fellow, it is about that horrible nightmare of a dinner I want to speak to you: You must know I intended to say something funny about Macbeth and Banquo : and then to finish off with the prettiest compli- ment and give some notion of the kindness I was feeling. I blundered in the joke, left out the kindness and com- pliment — made an awful fiasco. If I lose my head when I try speech-making, all is up with me, I say what I don't mean, what' I don't know afterwards the Lord forgive me — and you must if I said aught (I don't know for certain that I did or did n't) which was unpleasing. , I am savage 38 THACKERAY IN We* tt>«- JiiL* I Luh. vw-ii. Uttc 1 Ai«l U^utwt* UA.'4...AjiqS Ajtid' iu^-t'H U da* aM*. iUa AVwiKuks KusiueA* ha**A uMt** IX. iduu^ aX&uhA* 'v&qgM%&#^ fyt* %uv& fat, Ubr&Ji, tu, iAunu. (feM&i&te &«Hxd, W *«**<£.«** Uut*, cud it* Facsimile of Letter written at the Clarendon Hotel, New York, November 20, 1852, by Thackeray, to his friend William C. Macready THE UNITED STATES 39 Alt mmam* \tJt*u, fu*u Ku ^«iti icuut, ct Am, etttlPcue ioUnn ^ v nif Jutfl (uriU* Lm l*> «Wu> iu.'iuMH § V<* ictff (tu dUc^f (tt tuuc j»*« lu,baXn (uuv UWu> Uwut> ujw/lt (tu ***fc *L ^« ttuU-bwtii J\"uAeL Imm. tut Iou.aU. k^O" A. iu«. W*>4, LLL U| Kui ti ^ flu. *Gt UiuULftab Luluidu ittu, ! ft Jaw- RD lo "-ypop being fond of him. ... I may quarrel with Mr. Dickens's art a thousand and a thousand times, I delight and wonder at his genius. I recognise in it — I speak with awe and reverence — a commission from that Divine Beneficence whose blessed task we know it will one day be to wipe every tear from every eye. Thankfully I take my share of the feast 56 THACKERAY IN of Jove and kindness which this gentle, and gener- ous, and charitable soul has contributed to the hap- piness of the world. I take and enjoy my share, and say a Benediction for the meal." During his month's sojourn in New York, Thack- eray made a morning call on the Harpers, where he met the ex-mayor, senior member of the great publishing house. In response to his inquiry as to the most popular author in this country, the visitor was astonished to hear from Mr. Harper, that the now forgotten G. P. R. James of "two horsemen" fame, who produced a couple of novels per annum, was at the head of the list. During their hour's interview, a bright-eyed little girl, entering the counting-room in Cliff Street, was introduced as his daughter by the veteran pub- lisher. Thackeray smilingly shook hands with her, saying, " So this is a pirate's daughter, is it ? " an appellation which much amused the fun-loving ex-mayor's keen sense of humour. The English author also renewed his pleasant acquaintance with William H. Appleton. They had spent many happy hours together as young men in Paris in the thirties, when the latter was making his first visit as a publisher to the French capital, and the former was following a Trilbyesque artistic career in the gay city. They often dined together at Terre's in the Rue Neuve des Petits Champs, where the course included a bowl of Bouillabaisse, celebrated by Thackeray in his beautiful ballad : — THE UNITED STATES $7 " Ah me ! how quick the days are flitting ! I mind me of a time that 's gone, When here I 'd sit, as now I am sitting In this same place — but not alone. A fair young form was nestled near me, A dear, dear face looked proudly up, And sweetly spoke and smiled to cheer me — There *s no one now to share my cup. " I drink it as the Fates ordain it. Come, fill it, and have done with rhymes : Fill up the lonely glass and drain it In memory of dear old times. Welcome the wine whate'er the seal is ; And sit you down and say your grace With thankful heart, whate'er the meal is. — Here comes the smoking Bouillabaisse! " Thackeray and Miss Shawe were married in August, 1836, at the British Embassy, Paris, by Bishop Luscombe, and occupied apartments in the Rue Neuve St. Augustin. Eyre Crowe writes : "Still vivid is the impression of the charming grace and modesty of the hostess, who was lithe in figure, with hair of the tinge Titian was so fond of depicting, bordering on redness. This pleasant time of newly married folks which is so touchingly hinted at with delicate hand in the ' Bouillabaisse ' ballad, has not been chronicled in the short lives of the author hitherto published. The day's work done, they would stroll off by the arched entrance, and through that lively thronged Passage Choiseul, 58 THACKERAY IN at the far end of which they would emerge on the street of the Little Fields. At No. 16 was the now immortalised restaurateur. I find in the old Paris guidebook of that date : ' Terre Jeune Restaurateur: house noted for Spanish dishes, and for good wines, and more especially for the Marseilles dish " Bouillabaisse." ' Those curious as to its exact ingredients will find them enumer- ated in Larousse's Dictionary, — some of them so scarce as to require a journey to Marseilles itself." As Mr. Appleton remembered Thackeray in Paris he was slight in figure ; fifteen years later, when they met again in New York, the author had become stout, apparently weighing not less than two hundred pounds, the publisher said to me. The young artist and publisher also visited together the home in the Rue du 29 Juillet, of Eyre Evans Crowe, father of Joseph and Eyre Crowe mentioned in this volume. At Mr. Crowe's, Thomas Moore and Thackeray were fre- quent guests. At the time of his visit in 1852, the Appletons were issuing the skilfully edited series of popular reprints of Thackeray's writings, and for these twelve red-covered half-dollar vol- umes he wrote at their request an admirable Pre- face, which appeared signed, and with the date "New York, December, 1852," in "Mr. Brown's Letters to a Young Man about Town : with, the Proser and other Papers," published, early in the Thackeray in i8zz, by J. Devile THE UNITED STATES 59 following year. 1 The original eleven sheets of this characteristic composition in the author's dainty manuscript may be seen in the Lenox Library. "On coming to this country I found that the pro- jectors of this series of little books had preceded my arrival by publishing a number of early works, which have appeared under various pseudonyms during the last fifteen years. I was not the master to choose what stories of mine should appear or not : these miscellanies were all advertised, or in course of publication ; nor have I the good fortune to be able to draw a pen, or alter the blunder of author or printer, except in the case of the accompanying volumes, which contain contributions to ' Punch,' whence I have been enabled to make something like a selection in the * Letters of Mr. Brown,' and the succeeding short essays and descriptive pieces, something graver and less burlesque was attempted than in other pieces which I here publish. My friend the ' Fat Contributor ' accompanied Mr. Titmarsh in his 'Journey from Cornhill to Cairo.' The Prize novels contain imitations, not malicious I hope, nor unamusing, of the writings of some contemporaries who still live and flourish in the novelist's calling. I myself had scarcely entered on it when these burlesque tales were begun, and stopped further parody from a sense that this merry 1 Of this series of well-printed small duodecimo volumes, now quite out of print, the New York publishers sold eighty-three thousand, seven hundred and fifty copies. 60 THACKERAY IN task of making fun of the novelists should be left to younger hands than my own : and in a little book published some four years since, in England, by my friends Messrs. Hannay and Shirley Brooks, I saw a caricature of myself and writings to the full as ludicrous and faithful as the Prize novels of Mr. Punch. Nor was there, had I desired it, any pos- sibility of preventing the reappearance of these per- formances. Other publishers besides the Messrs. Appleton were ready to bring my hidden works to the light. Very many of the works printed, I have not seen since their appearance twelve years ago, and it was with no small feelings of curiosity (re- membering under what sad circumstances the tale had been left unfinished) that I bought the incom- plete ' Shabby Genteel Story,' in a railway car, on my first journey from Boston hither, from a rosy- cheeked little peripatetic book merchant, who called out ' Thackeray's works : ' — in such a kind, gay voice, as gave me a feeling of friendship and wel- come. " Here is an opportunity of being either satiric, or sentimental. The careless papers, written at an early period, and never seen since the printing boy carried them away, are brought back and laid at the father's door, and he cannot, if he would, forget or disown his own children. "Why were some of the little brats brought out of their obscurity ? I own to a feeling of anything but pleasure in reviewing some of these misshapen, THE UNITED STATES 61 juvenile creatures which the publisher has disin- terred and resuscitated. There are two perform- ances especially (among the critical and biographical works of the erudite Mr. Yellowplush) which I am very sorry to see reproduced, and I ask pardon of the author of the c Caxtons ' for a lampoon, which I know he has him- self forgiven, and which I wish I could recall. " I had never seen that eminent writer but once in public when this satire was penned, and wonder at the recklessness of the young man who could fancy such personality was harmless jocularity, and never calculate that it might give pain. The best experi- ences of my life have been gained since that time of youth and gaiety and careless laughter. I allude to them, perhaps, because I would not "W.M. 7. on bis Travels" . 1*1 !/•• 11 a • From a drawing by Thacktray have any kind and friendly Ameri- can reader judge of me by these wild performances of early years. Such a retrospect as the sight of these old acquaintances perforce occasioned, cannot, if it would be gay. The old scenes return, the remem- brance of the by-gone time, the chamber in which the stories were written : the faces that shone round the table. Some biographers in this country have been pleased to depict that homely apartment after a very 62 THACKERAY IN strange and romantic fashion : and an author in the direst struggles of poverty waited upon by a family domestic in ' all the splendour of his menial deco- rations,' has been circumstantially described to the reader's amusement as well as the writer's own. I may be permitted to assure the former that the • splendour and the want were alike fanciful : and that the meals were not only sufficient, but honestly paid for. "That extreme liberality with which American publishers have printed the works of English au- thors, has had, at least, this beneficial result for us, that our names and writings are known by multi- tudes using our common mother tongue, who never had heard of us or our books but for the specula- tors who have sent them all over this continent. " It is, of course, not unnatural for the English writer to hope, that some day he may share a por- tion of the profits which his works bring at present to the persons who vend them in this country : and I am bound gratefully to say myself, that since my arrival here I have met with several publishing houses who are willing to acknowledge our little claim to participate in the advantages arising out of our books : and the present writer having long since ascertained that a portion of a loaf is more satisfac- tory than no bread at all, gratefully accepts and acknowledges several slices which the book, purvey- ors in this city have proffered to him of their free will. THE UNITED STATES 63 " If we are not paid in full and in specie as yet, English writers surely ought to be thankful for the very great kindness and friendliness with which the American public receives them : and if we hope some day that measures may pass here to legalise our right to profit a little by the commodities which we invent and in which we deal, I for one can cheer- fully say, that the good will towards us from pub- lishers and public is undoubted, and wait for still better times with perfect confidence and humour. " If I have to complain of any special hardship, it is, not that our favourite works are reproduced, and our children introduced to the American pub- lic : children, whom we have educated with care, and in whom we take a little paternal pride : but that ancient magazines are ransacked, and shabby old articles dragged out, which we had gladly left in the wardrobes where they have lain hidden many years. There is no control, however, over a man's thoughts — once uttered and printed, back they may come upon us any sudden day ; and in this collec- tion, which Messrs. Appleton are publishing, I find two or three such early productions of my own that I gladly would take back, but they have long since gone out of the paternal guardianship. " If not printed in this series, they would have appeared from other presses, having not the slight- est need of the author's own imprimatur : and I cannot sufficiently condole with a literary gentle- man of the city, who (in his voyages of professional 64 THACKERAY IN adventure) came upon an early performance of mine which shall be nameless, carried the news of the discovery to a publisher of books, and had actually done me the favour to sell my book to that liberal man, when, behold, Messrs. Appleton an- nounced the book in the press, and my confrere had to refund the money which had been paid him. And if he is a little chagrined at finding other intrepid voyagers beforehand with him in taking, possession of my island, and the American flag already floating there, he will understand the feel- ings of the harmless but kindly treated aboriginal native, who makes every sign of peace, who smokes the pipe of submission, and meekly acquiesces in his own annexation. " It is said that those only who win should laugh : I think, in this case, my readers will not grudge the losing side its share of harmless good-humour : if I have contributed to theirs, or provided them with means of amusement, I am glad to think my books have found favour with the American .public, as I am proud to own the great and cordial welcome with which they have received me." 1 1 In Appleton's reprint of the prize novelists the burlesque on Fenimore Cooper was omitted by the editor of the series. It is the " Stars and Stripes," and concludes : " Three days afterward, as the gallant frigate ' Repudiator * was sailing out of Brest harbour, the gigantic form of an Indian might be seen standing on the binnacle in conversation with Commodore Bowie, the commander of the ship. It was Tatuu, the chief of the Nose-Sings." A little incident illustrat- ing Thackeray's candour and truthfulness is related by John Holling- THE UNITED STATES 65 Thackeray's " light in hand manner," as the his- torian Motley remarked, " suits well the delicate hovering rather than superficial style of his com- position." The great author himself made mirth of his lectures by describing " Mr. Thackeray as having recited with unusual pathos the poem of 'How doth the little busy bee' to a large and enthusiastic audience ; and his vivid yet delicate description of the author of c Robinson Crusoe ' in the pillory drew tears from every eye." Writing of Thackeray, Curtis said : " The first course upon the Humourists was the most popular. Indeed, they were to many hearers an introduction to the Time and men of whom he spoke. . . . Who that heard is likely to forget them ? His huge figure filled the pulpit, and the desk was raised so that he could easily read his manuscript. He stood erect and perfectly still : his hands thrust into his trousers' pockets, or the thumbs and forefingers into the waistcoat pockets, and in that deep, melo- dious and flexible voice he read his essays. No purely literary lectures were ever half so interest- ing. As he moved on, his felicitous skill flashed out the living form of each man he described like a torch upon a statue. Probably most of those shed, who, in 1862, was walking through the London International Exhibition with the novelist when they met Benjamin Disraeli. " They saw each other," says Hollingshed, "but showed no signs of recog- nition. « He has never spoken to me,* said Thackeray, ' voluntarily, since I wrote the short parody of "Coningsby" (" Codlingsby " ) in " Punch." * " vol. 1. — 5 66 THACKERAY IN who heard him will always owe their impression of Fielding, Goldsmith, Addison, Swift, Pope, Con- greve and Dick Steele to Thackeray's lectures." feu* jwut &**«f 4&* ^6a*u-u~*i' Jc*>t? 4uuc6 *£6jrcJ f/6 J&uSau. ti^g *-l%*4 c*t. Facsimile of Note addressed by Thackeray to the Secretary of a * Club, with two small Sketches Perhaps there was no place in New York so popular with Thackeray as the Century Club, in THE UNITED STATES 67 Clinton Place, which he called the best club in the world. He was first taken there by his friend and publisher for whom he prepared the above pre- face. There he sat with an admiring circle includ- ing Curtis and Cozzens and Daly, and smoked and sipped and sang his " Little Billee " and " Larry O'Toole " or " Dr. Luther," or listened to a senti- mental song from Curtis, or a lively Irish air from Judge Daly. The artist Cranch also contributed charming songs ; and " Tom " Hicks convulsed Thackeray with his droll imitations of Webster's oratory. He would draw forth a huge red ban- danna handkerchief, and unfolding it with Dutch deliberation, would, after many nose-pullings and trumpet blasts, proceed with his ponderous sen- tences. Dr. Kane, the Arctic hero, told the fresh story of his wanderings ; and as Curtis charmingly relates, "We listened like boys to 'Sinbad the Sailor,' until rising from the table, and straighten- ing his huge figure, Thackeray towered over the neat, small person of Kane, and said to the host who provided the feast, ' Do you think the doctor would permit me to kneel down and lick his boots ? ' Companions, friends of those days and nights at the Century, gone now to join those of the Mermaid, can we ever recall that burly figure, that ringing voice, that wit and wisdom, without remember- ing the terrible picture of him sitting years before in the cabin of the steamer crossing from Ireland, and through the long nights in which the ship strug- 68 THACKERAY IN gled with the storm, holding his little child in his arms, while his wife, suddenly smitten with brain- fever, lay beside him. She never recovered from that illness, although she lived for many years. He Unpublished engraving from a Thackeray drawing lost his wife that night. But it seems to me that the spirit of the little child passed into his heart : for he was always, like his Colonel Newcomej noble and simple and childlike." Describing the Century Club of New York as it was almost half a century ago at the time of Thack- THE UNITED STATES 69 eray's two visits, George William Curtis wrote : "After some time the club moved into Clinton Place and to a more spacious and agreeable house. It was like a well-ordered home below; and up- stairs there were the familiar oil cloth, and small tables. Here Greenough 1 came with his wonderful Harry Foker on Horseback 2 talk ; and here how many who are living, still sent the night flying on winged words ! The Nestor of Centurians, 3 who revives for younger members the traditions of a London age, and of a love and knowl- 1 Richard S. Greenough, the sculptor. 2 The above pencil drawing, by Thackeray, and the five succeed- ing ones were discovered, more than half a century after they were made, in the second volume of the author's copy of " Pendennis." The first is drawn at the end of chapter one, the second at chapter seven, the third at chapter eleven, the fourth at chapter twenty-three, the fifth at chapter twenty-five, and the sixth and last at chapter twenty-six, all being drawn on the blank spaces at the close of the various chapters. * Gulian C. Verplanck. 70 THACKERAY IN edge of the theatre and actors such as Charles Lamb had, here told his impressions of modern players, ranging from Mrs. Piozzi's Conway and Edmund Kean, down to Rachel and Edwin Booth. Here too the other men whose names are public, sat round and smoked, and sipped, and listened with sparkling eyes and jovial lips. This was Thackeray's pet room on Saturday nights : and here, too, were the most mem- orable dinners, as when Kane returned from his last expedition and he and Thackeray met for the first time. The doctor had seen one of his sailors in the long Arctic night when he was frozen under a Green- land glacier, intently reading, and curious to know what book held him so fast, came to him and found that it was ' Pendennis.' The story interested Thack- eray, and the huge Briton and slight heroic American met with the utmost cordiality and sympathy. Kane told his wonderful adventures, and they all sat and listened. It was like dining with Marco Polo. The tale was marvellous ; but the Centurians believed it. And when minds were blue with polar ice and all thoughts were frosted, they dissolved to tears in the warm mist of pathos that softens thy manly voice, exiled of Erin ! 1 It was as if one heard the bells that you heard in your heart, as you sang Father Prout's words. Then followed Thackeray in his ' Three Sailors of Bristol City,' or his petted Doctor Luther which he poured out in a great volume of voice like old and oily wine. Thackeray makes his 1 Paul Duggan, an Irish painter and professor of drawing. THE UNITED STATES 71 c Philip ' sing it now : for in ' Philip ' as in his ' Pendennis,' and c Clive Newcome,' Thackeray lives his youth over again." Charles P. Daly, who sat longer on the New York bench than any other jurist of his generation, was among Thackeray's intimate American friends, and with Mr. Appleton, among the last. They both Mr. Bendigo and Ben Caunt died during 1899. The Judge had a sweet low tenor voice and sang Irish melodies in a manner that greatly pleased Thackeray when they frequently met on convivial occasions at the Century Club, and else- where. The novelist was much amused with two Daly incidents, and repeated them at a London dinner on at least one occasion, as the writer learned from a person who was present. A couple of Irish- men were waiting for the opening of the Court of Common Pleas, of which Daly later became Chief Justice. On the occasion in question the Judge was 72 THACKERAY IN not punctual, as not infrequently happened, when at length one of the men exclaimed, " Och, sure, there comes his Honour at last ! Be jabers, Judge De-lay, yer rightly named ! " The other incident occurred in London when the Judge was first there in 1851. He was so fortunate as to be presented to the great Duke of Wellington, who said, " You are too young to have reached a high place on the bench." "I owe my position," replied Daly, "to one of those accidents of fortune to which your Grace owes so little." "I recall my criticism," said the " Iron Duke" grimly. " You are doubtless where you belong." An original drawing, an unpublished engraving, a fine photograph taken in New York, and a droll little note, with two drawings, all reproduced in these pages, were among Judge Daly's treasured memorials of Thackeray. Thackeray related a good story to Daly, Curtis, and other Centurians, at one of their Saturday night gatherings at the club, then in Clinton Place. It was of his friend Warren, author of the popular " Ten Thousand a Year," 1 who was always named in " Punch " " Our Sam," and Arthur Roebuck, who became one of the leading orators of the British Parliament. As young lawyers they were frequently pitted against each other in a Debating Society of 1 The original manuscript, almost without a blot or alteration, of this famous story, is in the possession of the author's son, the Rev. Dr. Walpole Warren of St. James Church, New York. THE UNITED STATES 73 which they were members. The latter in a speech indignantly denied that he was a " Party man," as had been charged by the other side, repudiating the statement with scorn. Warren rose and with deep A Portrait of Arthur Pendennis voice and great earnestness said : " Mr. Chairman, what my learned friend has said reminds me pain- fully of the words of Cicero, ' That he who belongs to no party is presumably too vile for any.' " As they left the meeting an hour later, the two men, as is the custom of their profession, walked out together in apparent harmony, Roebuck complimenting his adversary upon having made a successful hit, adding, 74 THACKERAY IN " I am fairly up in Cicero : but I have no idea where I can find the passage you quoted." " Neither have I," said Warren. " Good-night." During the same evening Thackeray surprised the Centurians by saying that he did not admire Sydney Smith, although in conversation he occasionally quoted some of the witty canon's curious comments on men, and remarked, " Ah, Sydney ! he was a poor creature, a very poor creature." The second Duke of Wellington shared in this Thackerayan view. Writing, in June, 1884, he remarks: "I was ac- quainted with Sydney Smith, and wish, like yourself, that my acquaintance had been confined to sitting in his chair at his son-in-law's dinner table, for I honour cleverness particularly when it is light hearted and blithesome, but I disliked Sydney Smith : for he was noisy, tyrannical and vulgar. Unfortunately, he had a very loud voice, which he made louder if anybody attempted to amuse the company but him- self. You must not suppose, my dear General, that I had any pretensions of the kind in his presence. I was but a young and silent spectator. Thackeray I also knew and admired, as an author and a man. Except Sir Walter Scott's, no novels delighted me more than his." Among the many literary treasures of Richard Henry Stoddard's library is a manuscript copy of the " Sorrows of' Werther," written for John R. Thompson, then editor of the " Southern Literary Messenger," when Thackeray made his first visit to THE UNITED STATES 75 Richmond almost half a century ago. It is framed with an engraving of Laurence's fine portrait of the novelist, which Mrs. Ritchie calls " a noble draw- ing of our father's head, by Samuel Laurence, to look at while he was away, " in the United States - / *j$fe? Warrington and Pendennis in 1852-53. 1 Dr. "Rab" Brown, a most competent critic, expressed to the writer the opinion that Laurence's later picture of 1864, in which he is represented reading, with his book. held very near his face, is the best of all the numerous portraits of Thackeray. The original is in the National Gallery, 1 When Charlotte Bronte first saw this portrait of Thackeray she stood before it some time in silence, and then her first words were : " And there came up a lion out of Judah." 76 THACKERAY IN 'u*fc ^ iwut <>w6£ 1uot* tf\st, t muU x^ Ww Vow |*vt Lr w* Iwt ? <«ta£. a ■itunrtX Vuau Mat toe\faik t t^X fa all flu u^JUt, ^ \yjMiJ UnnM. Ao. iWftMc* %l\ b*ufi& hunt iu*. 7& In, tw t* jottj &*■*«*/ #uh i QamjJLc^o , iuuui/ut «J«« tut Whi \3fru \ktyl* Uw ov. 4. 4ktfitc& ; A Thackeray Autograph From the collection of Richard Henri Stoddard THE UNITED STATES 77 London. When the popular painter came to this country, he brought with him a letter of intro- duction from Thackeray to John Jay, and before his return to England, Laurence successfully delin- Blanche Amory and Arthur Pendennis eated Washington Irving and many other promi- nent Americans. Another interesting autograph of the author of " A Novel Without a Hero," was the following tribute to the Pater Patriae written in the album of a lady of South Carolina: "Washington was the very noblest, purest, bravest, best of God's men," a quotation from Thackeray's letter to the 78 THACKERAY IN London "Times," or at least, words used in that communication. Thackeray dined with Commodore Stevens, founder of the Union Club and chief owner of the celebrated " America," which during the previous year had won the " Queen's Cup," or, more properly, the " America's Cup," as it became the property of her five owners, after winning the trophy in the regatta of the English Royal Yacht squadron in August, 1 85 1. The great author went on the following day with George L. Schuyler to visit the shipyard of George Steers, the designer and builder of the successful yacht, and after their de- parture, the famous constructor, observing the great respect paid to the English visitor by his companion, asked, " Who the h — is Thackeray ? " Mr. Schuyler, who died in 1891, was the last sur- vivor of the gentlemen who took the famous yacht to foreign waters, and was fond of relating the incident, which interested the novelist, of Her Majesty appearing on the deck of the "Victoria and Albert " when it was announced that the leader of the race was in sight, and saying to the captain, " Which of our yachts is that ? " To which he replied, " Madam, that is the ' America.' " " Which is sec- ond ? " " Your Majesty, there is no second," an- swered the English captain. • A few days later, Thackeray dined with the St. George's Society. The British vice-consul, formerly stationed at Charleston, S. C, was an old London THE UNITED STATES 79 acquaintance, and calling at the Clarendon to see the novelist, chanced to observe some notes written in the novelist's minute hand lying on his table. Discovering that they related to the dinner at which Thackeray was to respond to the toast of " Our Guests," and being a practical joker, he hastily made a copy of them and disappeared before the author and owner of the notes returned. That evening, as the incident was recently related to the writer by a common friend, Thackeray was as- tounded to hear the Consul, who preceded in the speech-making, make many of his best points. When he arose, the novelist announced that as he had just heard most of his carefully prepared speech 80 THACKERAY IN delivered by Her Majesty's vice-consul of New York, he would necessarily be compelled to strike out something new with which to entertain the assembled company of his countrymen, and this he did most successfully. The amusing incident is related in part to show that the familiar American jest of stealing a friend's address is an ancient joke, at least half a century old ! To Halleck, at one of their many meetings in New York, Thackeray expressed admiration for the writings of Fenimore Cooper, and a wish that he might have had an opportunity of meeting him in England. [Cooper died in 1 8 5 1 .] Some of my readers may remember that in Thackeray's Pleasant Roundabout Paper entitled " On a Peal of Bells," * after praising a number of Sir Walter's immortal characters, he thus writes of several of Cooper's creations: "Much as I like those unassuming, manly, unpretending gentlemen, I have to own that I think the heroes of another writer, viz., Leather- Stocking, Uncas, Hardheart, Tom Coffin, are quite the equals of Scott's men : perhaps Leather- Stocking is better than any in ' Scott's lot.' La Longue Carabine is one of the great prize-men of fiction. He ranks with your Uncle Toby, Sir Roger de Coverl ey, Falstaff, — heroic figures all, — 1 For this, and others of his inimitable " Roundabout Papers," Thackeray was paid by the " Comhill Magazine " at the rate of about sixty-three dollars per printed page, probably the highest price ever received by an author at that time for short articles. Thackeray in 1836, aged 25, by Frank Stone, A.R.A. THE UNITED STATES 81 American or British, and the artist has deserved well of his country who devised them." " Thackeray was invited/' writes Richard Henry Stoddard, "on one occasion to a dinner at the house of a prominent Centurian, 1 who was soon to rank among 'Members Deceased.' Fitz-Greene Hal- leck was present, and Hackett the comedian, and ' Sparrow-grass ' Cozzens, and half a dozen other good fellows of that ilk. The host was aware of Thackeray's curiosity in regard to our oysters, (which does not appear to have been allayed by his Boston experience) 2 and he procured from the immortal Dolan of Fulton Market some of the largest and fattest ones that he could obtain. A 1 A member of the New York Century Club, consisting chiefly of artists, authors, and poets. 2 At his first American dinner, some unusually large oysters were placed before Thackeray. Fields, who relates the incident, apologised for the smallness of the Falstaffian bivalves, promising that better ones should appear the next time. I noticed that he gazed at them anxiously with fork upraised : then he whispered to me, with a look of anguish, " How shall I do it?" I described to him the simple process by which the freeborn citizens of America were accustomed to accomplish such a. task. He seemed satisfied that such a thing was feasible, selected the smallest one in the half dozen (rejecting a large one, "because," he said, "it resembled the High Priest's servant's ear that Peter cut off") and then bowed his head as if he were saying grace. All eyes were upon him to watch the effect of a new sensation in the person of a great British Author. Opening his mouth wide, he struggled for a moment, and then all was over. I shall never forget the comic look of despair he cast upon the other five over-occupied shells. I broke the perfect stillness by asking him how he felt. " Profoundly grateful," he gasped, " and as if I had swallowed a small baby." vol. i. — 6 82 THACKERAY IN plate of them was of course placed before the guest of the evening. 'Thackeray, what do you think of our oysters ? ' asked Cozzens. Thackeray did not reply. ' Press that question,' said Halleck to his next man, who repeated it in the words of Cozzens. He smiled, and placing his spectacles on his nose, looked down upon his plate. ' Why, they are perfect beasts of oysters ! ' They were eaten nevertheless. This anecdote is trivial, no doubt ; but it is not more trivial than some of the apocryphal anecdotes of Shakspeare which are handed down to us, and which we are fain to be- lieve, because we think they are characteristic of that myriad-minded man." The following letter was addressed to Edward Livingston Welles, a Brooklyn boy, who wrote to Thackeray requesting his autograph : — N. York. Sunday Dec? 19 [1852]. My dear Sir, — I have very great pleasure in sending you my signature ; and am never more grateful than when I hear honest boys like my books. I remember the time when I was a boy very well ; and, now that I have children of my own, love young people all the better : and hope some day that I shall be able to speak to them more di- rectly than hitherto I have done. But by that time you will be a man, and I hope will prosper. As I got into the railroad car to come hither from Boston there came up a boy with a basket of books to sell, and he offered me one and called out my own name : and I bought the book, pleased by his kind face and friendly voice w h . seemed as it were to welcome me & my own children to THE UNITED STATES 83 this country. And as you are the first American boy who has written to me I thank you and shake you by the hand, & hope Heaven may prosper you. We who write books must remember that among our readers are honest children, and pray the Father of all of us to enable us to see and speak the Truth. Love & Truth are the best of all : pray God that young & old we may try and hold by them. I thought to write you only a line this Sunday morning ; but you see it is a little sermon. My own children thou- sands of miles away (it is Sunday night now where they are, and they said their prayers for me whilst I was asleep) will like some day to see your little note and be grateful for the kindness you & others show me. I bid you fare- well and am Your faithful Servant, W. M. Thackeray. To Mrs. William H. Brookfield. Clarendon Hotel, New York, Tuesday, 23 Dec. [1852] My dear Lady, — I send you a little line and shake your hand across the water. God bless you and yours. The passage is nothing now it is over; I am rather ashamed of gloom and disquietude about such a trifling journey. I have made scores of new acquaintances and lighted on my legs as usual. I did not expect to like people as I do, but am agreeably disappointed and find many most pleasant companions, natural and good ; natural and well read and well bred too ; and I suppose I am none the worse pleased because everybody has read all my books and praises my lectures ; (I preach in a Unitarian church and the parson comes to hear me. His name is Mr. Bellows, it is n't a pretty name ;) and there are 2,000 people nearly who come and^ the lectures are so well liked that it is prob- 84 THACKERAY IN able that I shall do them over again. So really there is a chance of making a pretty little sum of money for old age, imbecility, and those young ladies afterwards. Has Lady Ashburton told you of the moving tables ? Try, six or seven of you, a wooden table without brass castors ; sit round it, lay your hands flat on it, not touch- ing each other, and in half an hour or so perhaps it will begin to turn round and round. It is the most wonderful thing, but I have tried twice in vain since I saw it and did it at Mr. Bancroft's. I have not been into fashionable society yet, what they call the upper ten thousand here but have met very likeable of the lower sort. On Sunday I went into the country and there was a great rosy jolly family of sixteen or eighteen people round a great tea table; and the lady of the house told me to make myself at home — remarking my bashfulness you know — and said with a jolly face and twinkling of her little eyes, " Lord bless me we know you all to pieces ! " and there was sitting by me O! such a pretty girl, the very picture of Rubens' second wife and face and figure. Most of the ladies, all except this family, are as lean as greyhounds ; they dress prodi- giously fine, taking for their models the French actresses, I think of the Boulevard theatres. Broadway is miles upon miles long, a rush of life such as I have never seen ; not so full as the Strand but so rapid. The houses are always being torn down and built up again, the railroad cars drive slap into the middle of the city. There are barricades and scaffoldings banging every- where. I have not been into a house, except the fat country one but something new is being done to it, and the hammerings are clattering in the passage, or a wall or steps are down or the family is going to move. Nobody THE UNITED STATES 85 is quiet here, no more am I. The rush and restlessness pleases me, and I like, for a little, the dash of the stream. • I am not received as a god and I like it too. There is one paper that goes on every morning saying I am a snob and I don't say no. Six people were reading it at breakfast this morning, and the man opposite me popped it under the table-cloth. But the other papers roar with approba- tion, " Criez, beugles, O ! Journaux." They don't under- stand French though, that bit of Beranger will hang fire. Do you remember, " Jete sur cette boule, &c." ? Yes, my dear Sister remembers. God Almighty bless her and all she lovesi I may write next Saturday to Chesham Place ; you will go and carry my love to those ladies, won't you ? Here comes in a man with a paper I had n't seen ; I must cut out a bit just as the actors do, but then I think you will like it, and that is why I do it. There was a rich bio- graphy about me in one of the papers the other day with an account of a servant maintained in the splendour of his menial decorations. Poor old John whose picture is in Pendennis. And I have filled my paper and I shake my dear lady's hand across the roaring sea and I know that you will be glad to know that I prosper and that I am well and that I am yours. W. M. T. When Thomas G. Appieton was in London in 1856, soon after Thackeray's return from his second visit to the United States, he received, with Bayard Taylor and Thomas Kensett, many attentions from his English friend. Writing to Longfellow, his brother-in-law, he says : " Mackintosh and myself were invited by George Ticknpr to meet Thackeray 86 THACKERAY IN at dinner. It was very pleasant. Thackeray seems to remember the Yankee sunshine, and expanded, and looked well, though but lately recovering from illness. He proposed going to Evans's after the dinner, so Mackintosh drove us. down. The pro- prietor made great ado and honour. The same scene Hawthorne described to you was enacted. 1 We had a seat of honour at the head of the table, and nice copies of the songs were given to us. Much men- tion was made of you, and the earnest request that you would favour him by a visit when you come to England. It was fun. The head was a character worthy of Dickens. In the midst of beefsteaks and tobacco he dilated on the charms of early editions, and showed us some. Deprecating the character of the music, he nudged me and said that, like myself, he should prefer Beethoven and Mozart, but if he gave them, he should starve. The singing was chiefly comic and not bad : but one French piece, by some sixteen juveniles, had a lovely boy, with a lovely voice, piping clear, sweet, and high, like a lark. Thackeray was in raptures with that boy. . . . Thackeray called on me, and I must try and find him. He lives in a very pretty square not far from Ticknor's." Bayard Taylor was frequently taken by Thackeray to the celebrated chop-house and concert-hall of which Evans was long the proprietor. It was a 1 Vide Nathaniel Hawthorne's letter in "Life of Henry W. Long- fellow," vol. ii. p. 276. THE UNITED STATES 87 popular resort of Thackeray and other famous litterateurs and men of fashion, including Prince Maximilian before his advent in Mexico, where he met a melancholy death. Sergeant Ballantyne pays high tribute to the resort in his pleasant volume of reminiscences, 1 and Thackeray often mentioned it to intimate friends as a place where he had spent many agreeable hours. Seated in Green Park near the residence of the poet Rogers, I once saw'a stout gentleman with a jovial, rubicund countenance, a gold- headed cane/and an unusual display of colour and gold chain in his attire. The following conver- sation occurred : — "Will you permit me, sir, to ask in which of those houses Samuel Rogers, the banker poet, resided ? " " Certainly, the one directly opposite. I knew him well and many of his literary friends. Poor 1 "Since I last saw it, it is much changed: a handsome edifice is added to the long room of which it consisted when Colonel Newcome left it in disgust at the obscenity that went on. Moving among the tables upon legs rather shaky, a rotund figure with a rubicund face and yellow wig offers with much courtesy his snuff-box to the occu- piers, hoping at the same time that they have been supplied with all they want. The owner of the snuff-box is the proprietor of the hall, and to him is due the change in its character which has taken place. It is now conducted with perfect propriety, the music and amusements are refined, and the refreshments good and moderate. My readers will recognize Mr. Green, Paddy, as he was always called behind his back, and by those who knew him well in speaking to him. Origi- nally he had appeared upon the stage at the Adelphi, not, I fancy, in a higher capacity than a chorus singer. I used to take a great deal of pleasure in his conversation." — " Experiences of a Barrister's Life." 88 THACKERAY IN old Sam Rogers ! He 's been dead nearly twenty years." " Then perhaps you were acquainted with Dickens and Thackeray ? " " God bless my soul, I was intimate with both of them for a score of years. Charley Dickens and ' Old Thack,' a couple of fine jolly fellows. But they are gone too." " Possibly you knew Thomas Moore and Douglas Jerrold, Samuel Warren and Tom Hood." " Certainly, every mother's son of them, and the little poet was so pleased with my singing of one of his Irish songs that he wrote it out for me. I used to chant c Little Billee,' and I have a copy of it which Bill Thackeray gave me. But my singing days are over now. Your countryman (if I mistake not) Washington Irving occasionally came to my house with Tom Moore or the painter Morse." On parting we exchanged cards, his bearing the name " Mr, John Green." Recounting the above conversation that evening at a dinner table where the author of "Tom Brown at Oxford" and other London litterateurs were present, I remarked that I was entirely at a loss to imagine who the extraordi- nary person could be that, according to his own account, had been on such friendly and intimate terms with Thackeray and Dickens, with Moore and Rogers, and the other authors mentioned. A roar of laughter followed, and the dozen guests shouted as one man, " Paddy Green, Paddy Green ! " THE UNITED STATES 89 The red-faced gentleman with the enormous gold chain and rings was John Green of Galway, succes- sor of Evans, as proprietor of the celebrated Covent Garden resort which Thackeray and his distin- ' ' guished literary contemporaries occasionally visited, as many American authors about the same period frequented Windust's in Park Row, New York. "Sam" Ward of New York and Washington, well known on both sides of the Atlantic as the most artistic of bon vivants, who could not only give a charming dinner, but could also cook it, was one of Thackeray's American friends. They to- gether enjoyed many nodes ambrosianq in New York. Ward frequently quoted the great author's words : " Sir, respect your dinner : idolise it : enjoy it properly : you will be by many hours in the week, many weeks in the year, and many years in your life, the happier if you do." He was particu- larly fond of repeating some verses of Thackeray's unequalled v Ballad of Bouillabaisse," and the writer recalls at least one occasion when Ward supple- mented the poem by reading to Halleck and sev- eral other friends who were dining with him at the Brevoort, in Fifth Avenue, the delightful descrip- tion by Thackeray, of an ideal Bohemian dinner in Paris, asserting that it was unsurpassed in English literature. — " Before Charon paddles me across the Stygian stream," said Thackeray to " Uncle Sam," " I should like to write a story that would live for several centuries," to which Ward promptly and 90 THACKERAY IN truthfully replied, "Why, Thackeray, you did that when you presented us with c Henry Esmond.' It will live as long as ' Don Quixote ' and c Tom Jones ' and c Ivanhoe.' Can you wish for more?" This little incident is suggestive of a passage in De Ju- ventute, where Thackeray writes, " If the gods would give me the desire of my heart, I should be able to write a story which boys would relish for the next few dozen of centuries. The boy-critic loves the story : grown up, he loves the author who wrote the story. Hence the kindly tie is established between writer and reader, and lasts pretty nearly for life." To a young New York friend Thackeray, who was usually free and lavish in his expenditures and tips, exhibited a whimsical instance of economy by saying, as he returned the visitor's card, which had been sent to his rooms on the third floor of the Clarendon, fronting on Fourth Avenue, " Better put this in your pocket again, it will serve your purpose for another call." By a curious coincidence, almost the identical words were used a decade later by William Cullen Bryant, as he lifted a card from his editorial table in the office of the " Evening Post " and handed it back to the same person who had called, when a youth, on Thackeray, at his New York hotel. From New York Thackeray returned before Christmas to repeat his lectures in the Melodeon, the great Music Hall of Boston, meeting with the THE UNITED STATES 9.1 similar crowded house and hearty welcome that had greeted him in New York. His audience included Longfellow, Lowell, Emerson, Holmes, Whittier, Parkman, Prescott, Ticknor, the Danas, father and son, and many other chosen lights of literature, none, alas ! now numbered among the living. Of the first lecture on " Swift " his friend Fields says : " I remember his uproarious shouting and dancing when he was told that the tickets to his first course of lectures were all sold : and when we rode to- gether from his hotel to the lecture-hall, he insisted on thrusting both his long legs out of the carriage- window, in deference, as he said, to his magnanimous ticket-holders." Writing in his diary, Dec. 24, 1852, Longfellow says : "In town to hear Thackeray's lecture on ' Swift ' : very clever playing round the theme with the lambent flame that scorches a little sometimes." Thackeray, writing to his family, says: " I only wish I had two stomachs, for it is the habit here to sup and dine too, and parties are made for one meal and the other. I had a very pleasant little party-kin last night at Cambridge, at Long- fellow's, where there was a madcap fiddler, Ole Bull, who played most wonderfully on his instru- ment, and charmed me still more by his oddities and character. Quite a character for a book. Long- fellow lives in a house which Washington occupied when he was in command outside of Boston, a fine old solemn, stately house. He is a kindly, pleasant gentleman, has pretty children. I liked him." 92 THACKERAY IN The Anthony Trollope story of Thackeray con- cluding an animated discussion with George Ticknor by saying : " Let it alone ; what can two such broken old fellows as you and I do about it ? " was long ago discredited as apocryphal, but the follow- ing incident is undoubtedly authentic. During the delivery of the "English Humourists" in Boston a friend asked the "gentle censor of our age," as Lord Houghton called him, to attend one of Tick- nor's Wednesday evenings, and he accepted with the expectation of meeting Theodore Parker. Of course Thackeray expressed his disappointment as they walked together to the Tremont House, the Bos- tonian replying, " Oh, no, you would never meet Parker there." "Indeed," retorted Titmarsh, "I thought Ticknor saw the best society!" All who know anything of the Boston Brahmins of half a century ago will appreciate the jest which was then current, and which is still remembered by the few sur- vivors of those distant days, one of whom has recent- ly retold the story. This same lady rather surprised " the gentle giant," as Longfellow described him, by saying, " Mr. Thackeray, I feel sorry for you, for it seems that you never knew a good woman who was not a fool, nor a bright one that was not a knave." During his several visits to Boston, Thackeray was a familiar and welcome guest in the family of Mr. Ticknor, described by Augustus Hare as "atypical Boston aristocrat," and exhibited his responsive feeling in many kindly ways. On one occasion at THE UNITED STATES 93 the close of the year he invited himself to dine with the Ticknors and on New Year's Eve came to watch the New Year in by their fireside. On the stroke' of twelve o'clock he rose and drank the health of his daughters, and with tears in his eyes exclaimed, " God bless my girls and all who are kind to them." Thackeray enjoyed his conversations with Ticknor, concerning Goethe and other lit- erary celebrities, as well as in listening to the Professor's recol- lections of Lord Byron, Sir Walter rhe Titmarsh Club Bust of %4mJL&> fc eUit.ii^ AttA #*<* ***** » '**<*, &J&U4 lux. &**> *4tuu ■ liiuJc 6. )f+ut\ul Facsimile of undated Thackeray Note and Portrait, addressed to Lady Londonderry vol. 1. — 9 130 THACKERAY IN 1 *u- Uui curu^ tut *JXU tun JZ> uu*f btluful \u4t*iiL 4 ltd*** itrurv. ub a* \ Urtu aJr' THE UNITED STATES 131 Crowe has just come out from what might have been, and may be yet, a dreadful scrape. He went into a slave market and began sketching: and the people rushed on him savagely and obliged him to quit. Fancy such a piece of imprudence. It may fall upon his chief, who knows, and cut short his popularity. The negroes don't shock me or excite my compassionate feelings at all; they are so grotesque and happy that I can't cry over them. The little black imps are trotting and grinning about the streets, women, workmen, wait- ers, all well fed and happy. The place the merriest little place and the most picturesque I have seen in America." In Richmond the English lecturer said to his friend Thompson that he was willing to be judged as a writer by " Henry Esmond," which he was confident he could not surpass, and indeed doubted if he should again equal. Among his poems he expressed a preference for " The Cane-bottom 'd Chair," which Mrs. Ritchie has also testified was her father's favourite. Thackeray told Mr. Thomp- son that he was very fond of" Little Billee," which for droll comic verse is perhaps unsurpassed. 1 This 1 Du Maurier borrowed the name for one of his characters in " Trilby," the original being Thackeray's artist friend, Frederick Walker, who illustrated the "Adventures of Philip." Describing Walker and his own fictitious hero in "Trilby," Du Maurier says that "both were small and slight, though beautifully made, with tiny hands and feet ; always arrayed as the lilies of the field, for all they spun and toiled so arduously ; both had regularly featured faces of a t3* THACKERAY IN production, originally called " The Three Sailors," was written at a dinner-table in Rome during the winter of 1 844-45, at which several American artists were present. Being called for a song amid vigorous shouts of Viva Titmarsh ! he said he was unable to sing, but would endeavour to make amends by a recitation, if in the mean time some one else would make a beginning. While several were singing, the novelist, busy with his notes, produced the affecting narrative of " Little Billee," which he repeated for the first time that evening in a fittingly lugubrious tone. Thackeray frequently chanted this astonishing piece of nonsense, repeating each line twice, at the Century Club's nodes ambrosian LrvJUe*. At *yx< eAu. '. Wu -jtnMl cvw- ftt«t QuMfuUil h . Scmu> Uvu-Ve- luta+JL A ttrtUt hn&urkti ^Xi.| | tULmtuwtfr tun** From the Collection of Major William H. Lambert THE UNITED STATES 153 the lovely Sally Baxter." The novelist, in a note to an American friend, described the latter as being "eighteen and brilliantly beautiful." To his London publisher, the late George Smith, he writes from the Clarendon in April : " We have had a very pleasant and not unprofitable tour in the South. The words are the words of Thackeray, but the pen is the pen of Crowe. The former is boiling himself in a warm bath, and is, whether in or out of hot water, yours very faithfully always." " Mr. Thackeray," said George Lunt, " was an admirer — as what man of taste and true senti- ment is not ? — of female beauty. Certainly he saw ' in Boston many cultivated and attractive ladies ; but I think he admired, more than any others, one married lady, whom he knew in private life rather than in general society, and in whose house I often met him. It was a domestic scene in which he seemed completely at home, and where he con- versed freely of his own household ties in England, which he so sorely missed in another land. Of this lady, distinguished for her personal attractions and her unpretending good sense, he used to say, ' She would be a countess any where ; ' which was accepted as a remark of no little significance from one who had the entree into aristocratic English society, and was sufficiently acquainted with countesses at home." Thackeray thus describes his first meet- ing another lady with whom he became intimate : " Once, in America, a clever and candid woman said THE UNITED STATES 155 The lecturer's departure was so sudden that he had no time to say farewell to any except the friendly family of Baxters, who resided in Second Avenue opposite the mansion of Hamilton Fish, and near the Clarendon. His secretary says : " I visited Thackeray in his room in the early morn- ing. He had a newspaper in his hand, and he said: 'I'll go down to Wall, Street, and see whether I can secure ,berths in her.' " He was successful, and sailed with Mr. Crowe on April 20, in the " Europa ; " and so terminated Thackeray's six months' lecture tour in the United States. Early on Sunday morning, May 1, he was again in his beloved England. Two months later the poet Clough, who had returned to his native land, writes to Charles Eliot Norton : " Thackeray, they tell me, is full of the kindheartedness and generousness of the Americans, and is faithful to his promise of writing no book." To an American correspondent, Thornton Hunt, son of the author of " Abou Ben Adhem," wrote several months after Thackeray's return : " I have no right to claim more than a slight acquaintance with Thackeray, from having met him in the exer- cise of our profession, and from possessing several common friends. In some parts of the Union, however, my name may be known, and where it is, certainly it will be known as a man who will not tolerate any language unworthy of a country which is half my own. Now I happen to have met 156 THACKERAY IN Thackeray in a company where he could, with the most unqualified confidence, and where he must have conversed without study, and without thought of what would be repeated. In that free and friendly converse he poured forth all his thoughts upon America — not unmixed with touches of sly humour, such as would occur to him in visiting any community, whether in Belgravia or Broadway. I wish what he then said could have been overheard by the whole Union, because I never heard but one Englishman so heartily acknowledge the noble qualities, the worth, and the estimable traits of Americans generally ; that one Englishman being a relative of my own, formerly an officer of the Republic and now a resident in the Union. Satir- ists have been to America, have accepted her hospi- tality, and have repaid it with satire. Thackeray is not of that number. He is a satirist, but he is a man with a keen sense and a large heart ; and he understands America, North and South. I heard him talk of giving his impressions of the Union publicly, and I joined with others in urging him to do so. What was his objection ? That he would not make money by his sense of the kindness which he had received; and that if he did it with- out payment it might be misconstrued into an invidious contrast of his own better feeling as com- pared with that of others who had not so well understood the American people. I wish that this over-delicacy had not restrained him ; but it is im- THE UNITED STATES 157 possible that Americans should harbour resentment at one misunderstood sentence in the writings of a man who put so generous an appreciation on their personal qualities, their kindness to himself, and their national power." The Thackeray bookplate which appears on this page was designed for his friend Fitz-Gerald, who wrote, " Done by Thackeray one day in Coram Street in 184a. All wrong on her feet, so he said, — I can see him now." The American possessor of an impression says the angel holding before her a shield of arms is a portrait of Mrs. Brookfield. The feet are so tiny, and in the picture are so closely pressed together, that the figure appears in danger of falling. The Thackeray Arms THE SECOND VISIT (October, 1855 April, 1856) THE SECOND VISIT (October, 1855. — April, 1856) If Truth were a goddess, I would make Thackeray her High Priest. Charlotte Bronte. DURING the period between his first and second visits to the New World Thackeray wrote several letters that properly find a place in this volume. The two earliest were written to his friend William B. Reed of Philadelphia, the first a few months after his return to England ; the third was addressed in the same year (1853) to an English journal. It relates to Washington, who is intro- duced in " The Newcomes," then appearing in twenty-four monthly numbers, the last one being • published in August, 1855. A passage in an early chapter of this delightful story, containing the finest of all Thackeray's characters, alluding to " Mr. Washington," was so far misunderstood on this side of the sea that the fact was referred to by the New York correspondent of the London " Times." To this criticism the novelist addressed the communi- cation to the editor of that journal, which follows the letter to Mr. Reed written in Switzerland: — VOL. I. — II 162 THACKERAY IN Neufchatel, Switzerland, July »i, 1853. My dear Reed, — Though I am rather slow in pay- ing the tailor, I always pay him; and as with tailors, so with men ; I pay my debts to my friends, only at rather a long day. Thank you for writing to me so kindly, you have so much to do. I have only begun to work ten days since, and now in consequence have a little leisure. Before, since my return from the West, it was flying from London to Paris, and vice versa, dinners right and left, parties every night. If I had been in Philadelphia, I could scarcely have been more feasted. Oh, you unhappy Reed ! I see you (after that little supper with McMichael) on Sunday at your own table, when we had that good Sherry-Madeira, turning aside from the wine cup with your pale face ! That cup has gone down this well so often (meaning my own private cavity), that I wonder the cup is n't broken, and the well as well as it is. Three weeks of London was more than enough for me, and I feel as if I had had enough of it and pleasure. Then I remained a month with my parents ; then I brought my girls on a little pleasuring tour, and it has really been a pleasuring tour. We spent ten days at Baden, when I set intrepidly to work again : and have been five days in - Switzerland now ; not bent on going up mountains, but on taking things easily. How beautiful it is ! How pleas- ant ! How great and affable, too, the landscape is ! It's delightful to be in the midst of such scenes — the ideas get generous reflections from them. I don't mean to say my thoughts grow mountainous and enormous like the Alpine chain yonder : but, in fine, it is good to be in the presence of this noble nature. It is keeping good company : keep- ing away mean thoughts. I see in the papers now and put/. ^KyUv,^ 4k atjp,, u, ^t^i^ ' * ■ • x ' "'t'"h * 43 l^W l*A<* U«44 U*0 t tt*A\ « r ' 'if Last page of a Letter to William B. Reed, July 21, 1853 THE UNITED STATES 163 again accounts of fine parties in London. Bon D'teu! is it possible any one ever wanted to go to fine London parties, and are there now people sweating in Mayfair routs ? The European continent swarms with your people. They are not all as polished as Chesterfield. I wish some of them spoke French a little better. I saw five of them at supper at Basle the other night with their knives down their throats. It was awful ! My daughter saw it, and I was obliged to say, My dear, your great-great- grandmother, one of the finest ladies of the old school I ever saw, applied cold steel to her wittles. It 's no crime to eat with a knife, which is all very well : but I wish five of 'em at a time would n't. Will you please beg McMichael, when Mrs. Glyn, the English tragic actress, comes to read Shakespeare in your city, to call on her, to do the act of kindness to her, and help her with his valuable editorial aid ? I wish we were to have another night soon, and that I was going this very evening to set you up with a headache to-morrow morning. By Jove! how kind you all were to me ! How I like your people, and want to see 'em again ! You are more tender- hearted, romantic, and sentimental than we are. I keep on telling this to our fine people here, and have so be- laboured your [Here the paper was turned and revealed the sketch. At the top is written : " Pardon this rubbishing picture: but I didn't see it and can't afford to write page 3 over again "] country with praise in private that I sometimes think I go too far. I keep back some of the truth, but the great point to try and ding into the ears of the great stupid virtue-proud English public is, that there are folks as good as they in America. That's where Mrs. Stowe's book has done harm, by inflaming us with an idea of our own supe- 164 THACKERAY IN rior virtue in freeing our blacks, whereas you keep yours. Comparisons are always odorous, Mrs. Malaprop says. I am about a new story, but don't know as yet if it will be any good. It seems to me that I am too old for story- telling; but I want money, and shall get $20,000 for this, of which (D. V.) I '11 keep fifteen. I wish this rubbish [the sketch] were away ; I might put written rubbish in its stead. Not that I have anything to say, but that I always remember you and yours, and honest Mac, and Wharton and Lewis, and kind fellows who have been kind to me, and I hope will be kind to me again. Good-by, my dear Reed, and believe me, ever sincerely yours, W. M. Thackeray. Thackeray's pen-and-ink sketch is evidently the original of one of the illustrations of his grotesque fairy tale entitled " The Rose and the Ring," written — as he informed an American lady when on his second visit to the United States — while he was watching and nursing his two daughters, who were ill during his summer vacation in Switzerland. To the Editor of the Times : Sir, — Allow me a word of explanation in answer to a strange charge which has been brought against me in the United States, and which your New York correspondent has made public in this country. In the first number of a periodical story which I am now publishing appears a sen- tence in which I should never have thought of finding any harm until it has been discovered by some critics over the water. The fatal words are these : — • "When pigtails grew on the backs of British gentry, and THE UNITED STATES 165 their wives wore cushions on their heads, over which they tied their own hair, and disguised it with powder and pomatums : when ministers went in their stars' and orders to the House of Commons and the orators of the oppo- sition attacked nightly the noble lord in the blue riband ; when Mr. Washington was heading the American rebels with a courage, it must be confessed, worthy of a better cause ; — there came to London, out of a northern county, Mr., etc." This paragraph has been interpreted in America as an insult to Washington and the whole Union; and from the sadness and gravity with which your correspondent quotes certain of my words, it is evident he too thinks they have an insolent and malicious meaning. Having published the American critic's comment, permit the author of a faulty sentence to say what he did mean, and to add the obvious moral of the apologue which has been So oddly construed. I am speaking of a .young ap- prentice coming to London between the years 1770 and '80, and want to depict a few figures of the last century. (The illustrated head-letter of the chapter was intended to represent Hogarth's " Industrious Apprentice.") I fancy the old society with its hoops and powder — Barre or Fox thundering at Lord North asleep on the Treasury bench — the news-readers in the coffee-room talking over the paper, and owning that this Mr. Washington who was leading the rebels was a very courageous soldier, and worthy of a better cause than fighting against King George. The images are at least natural and pretty consecutive. 1776 — the people of London in '76 — the Lord and House of Commons in '76 — Lord North — Washington — what the peoplei thought about Washington — I am thinking about '76. 166 THACKERAY IN Where, in the name of common-sense is the insult to 1853 - ? The satire, if satire there be, applies to us at home, who called Washington "Mr. Washington," as we called Frederick the Great "the Protestant Hero," or Napoleon " the Corsican Tyrant " or " General Bonaparte." Need I say that our officers were instructed (until they were taught better manners) to call Washington " Mr. Washing- ton ? " and that the Americans were called rebels during the whole of that contest ? Rebels ! of course they were rebels ; and I should like to know what native American would not have been a rebel in that cause. As irony is dangerous, and has hurt the feelings of kind friends whom I would not wish to offend, let me say, in perfect faith and gravity, that I think the cause for which Washington fought entirely just and right, and the Champion the very noblest, purest, bravest, best, of God's men. I am Sir, your very faithful servant, W. M. Thackeray. Athenaeum, Nov. 22 [1853]. Concerning " The Newcomes," a friend has sent me the following interesting incident : " Just after the completion of ' The Newcomes,' " writes Mr. Edward Wilberforce, " Thackeray told me he was walking to the post office in Paris to send off the concluding chapters when he came upon an old friend of his who was also known to me. 'Come into this archway,' said Thackeray to his friend, 'and I will read you a bit of " The Newcomes." ' The two went aside out of the street, and there Thackeray read the scene of the Colonel's death. The friend's emotion grew more and more intense THE UNITED. STATES 167 as the reading went on, and at the close he burst out crying, and exclaimed, ' If everybody else does like Thackerafs Drawing of the Rector and Children who were "Destroying the Foundations of the Church " that the fortune of the book is made !' ' And every- body did,' was my comment. ' Not I,' replied Thackeray. ' I was quite unmoved when I killed the Colonel. What was nearly too much for me was 168 THACKERAY IN the description of the " Boy " saying " Our Father." I was dictating to my daughter, and I had the greatest difficulty in controlling my voice and not let her see that I was almost breaking down. I don't think, however, that she suspected it.'" Robert Louis Stevenson, in an appreciative article on " Some Gentlemen in Fiction," writes : "Whether because Thackeray was himself a gentle- man in a very high degree, or because his methods were in a very high degree suited to this class of work, or from the common operation of both causes, a gentleman came from his pen by the gift of Nature. He could draw him as a character-part, full of pettiness, tainted with vulgarity, and yet still a gentleman, in the inimitable Major Pendennis. He could draw him as the full-blown hero in Colonel Esmond. He could draw him — the next thing to the work of God — human and true and noble and frail, in Colonel Newcome. If the art of being a gentleman were forgotten, like the art of staining glass, it might be learned anew from that one character." To Willard S. Felt, New York. 36 Onslow Square, Brompton, August 18, 1854. ■My dear Felt, — I have been 2 months away from England during which I have done 5 numbers of New- comes and had 4 smart attacks of illness. Your letter meanwhile has been lying at my house where I found it on my return 2 days since with one from N, Y, M. L. A, THE UNITED STATES 169 Repeated illnesses have however thrown me back ^ a dozen months at least so that I cannot put my project in execution of coming to the States this year. Nor would it be worth my while to change my scheme from 6 to 4 lectures for the 1000 dollars which our friends offer me. I shall give the lectures in London and Edinburgh before I go westward as I did with the first set : and even then I think from the result of our last transaction that the N. Y. M. L. A. might have made me a better offer than that which Mr. Ballard sends me. However I can't do the Lectures this year which will take a great deal of time. I have not discussed money matters at all in answering Mr. Ballard's proposal, but declined it for the above reason. Thank you very much for your letter and believe that I am always grateful and mindful for your kindness to me whilst at New York. O me ! How awfully bad the Railway Share-market looks ! Always faithfully yours, W. "M. Thackeray. During Thackeray's first visit to the United States he had made the acquaintance df Prof. Henry Reed, highly appreciating his refined and scholarly tastes and accomplishments ; and when the latter visited Europe in the following year he received acceptable attentions from the novelist. The Professor on his return voyage perished in the shipwreck, on the coast of Nova Scotia, of the Collins steamer "Arctic." In the following letter to his brother, Thackeray writes of the good man's loss, 170 THACKERAY IN and also alludes to some transient diplomatic visions in connection with this country. Onslow So,uare, Brompton, November 8 [1854]. My dear Reed, — I received your melancholy letter this morning. It gives me an opportunity of writing about a subject on which, of course, I felt very strongly for you and your poor brother's family. - I have kept back writing, knowing the powerlessness of consolation, and having vague hopes that your brother and Miss Bronson might have been spared. That ghastly struggle over, who would pity any man that departs ? It is the survivors one commiserates of such a good, pious, tender-hearted man as he seemed whom God Almighty has just called back to Himself. He seemed to me to have all the sweet domestic virtues which make the pang of parting only the more cruel to those who are left behind. But that loss, what a gain to him ! A just man summoned by God, — for what purpose can he go but to meet the divine love and goodness ? I never think about deploring such : and as you and I send for our children, meaning them only love and kindness, how much more Pater Noster ? So we say, and weep the beloved ones whom we lose all the same with the natural selfish sorrow : as you, I dare say, will have a heavy heart when your daughter marries and leaves you. You will lose her, though her home is ever so happy. I remember quite well my visit to your brother — the pictures in his room, which made me see which way his thoughts lay : his sweet, gentle, melancholy, pious manner. That day I saw him here in Dover Street, I don't know whether I told them, but I felt at the time that to hear their very accents affected me somehow : and where shall I ever hear voices in the world that have spoken THE UNITED STATES 171 more kindly to me. It was like being in your grave, calm, kind old Philadelphia over again ; and behold : now they are to be heard no more. I only saw your brother once in London. When he first called I was abroad ill, and went to see him immediately I got your letter, which he brought and kept back, I think. We talked about the tour which he had been making, and about churches in this country — which I knew interested him — and Canterbury especially, where he had been at the opening of a missionary college. He was going to Scotland, I think, and to leave London in- stantly, for he and Miss B. refused hospitality, etc. ; and we talked about the memoir of Hester Reed which I had found, I did n't know how, on my study-table, and about the people whom he had met at Lord Mahon's — and I believe I said I should like to be going with him in the " Arctic." And we parted with a great deal of kindness, please God, and friendly talk of a future meeting. May it happen one day! for I feel sure he was a just man. I wanted to get a copy of " Esmond " to send by him (the first edition, which is the good one); but I did not know where to light on one, having none myself, and a month since bought a couple of copies at a circulating library for js. bd. apiece. I am to-day just out of bed after another, about the dozenth, severe fit of spasms which I have this year. My book would have been written but for them, and the lectures begun, with which I hope to make a few thousand more dollars for those young ladies. But who knows whether I shall be well enough to deliver them, or what is in store for next year ? The secretaryship of our Legation at Wash- ington was vacant the other- day, and I instantly asked for it; but in the very kindest letter Lord Clarendon showed how the petition was impossible. First, the place was given 172 THACKERAY IN { away : next, it would not be fair to appoint out of the ser- vice. But the first was an excellent reason, not a doubt of it. So if ever I come, as I hope and trust to do this time next year, it must be in my own coat, and not the Queen's. Good-by, my dear Reed, and believe that I have the ut- most sympathy in your misfortune, and am most sincerely yours, W. M. Thackeray. The day before Dickens wrote the following note, Daniel Huntington, who was then in London and listened to the delightful address, called at the studio of Glasse, a distinguished English artist, who remarked in the course of their conversation : " By the way, Thackeray has just been here and said, ' I have prepared a dish of soft soap for Dickens ; ' " the droll statement obviously referring to the highly complimentary passage with which the speaker concluded the address on " Charity and Humour." Many readers may remember that it was written in New York, where it was first delivered by Thackeray for the benefit of a benevo- Britisb Valor defending Innocence THE UNITED STATES 173 lent Society. The reader will find the tribute on page 55 of this volume. [London] March 23, 1855. My dear Thackeray, — I have read in the "Times" to-day an account of your last night's lecture, and cannot refrain from assuring you, in all truth and earnestness, that I am profoundly touched by your generous reference to me. I do not know how to tell you what a glow it spread over my heart. Out of its fulness I do entreat you to believe that I shall never forget your words of commendation. If you could wholly know at once how you have moved me and how you have animated me, you would be the happier, I am certain. — Faithfully yours ever, Charles Dickens. In October, 1855, Thackeray departed on his second lecture tour in the United States, from which he returned to England in April, 1856. The sub- ject of the uncompleted lectures on " The Four Georges " — for he finished the last one in this country — seems first to have occurred to him sev- eral years previously, while travelling on the Conti- nent. In 1852 he> wrote: "I had a notion of lectures on the Four Georges, and going to Han- over to look at the place whence that race came ; but if I hope for preferment hereafter, I mean Police-magistrateship or what not, I had best keep a civil tongue in my head : and I should be sure to say something impudent if I got upon that subject : and as I have no Heaven-sent mission to, 174 THACKERAY IN do this job) why, perhaps I had best look for an- other. And the malheur is, that because it is a needless job, and because I might just as well leave it alone, it is most likely I shall be at it." In August, 1855, Thackeray wrote: "I am going to try in the next six weeks to write four lectures for the great North American Republic, and de- liver them after they are tired ^ of the stale old humourists." George Hodder, who published some pleasant rec- ollections of Thackeray, wished to accompany him in the same capacity that Eyre Crowe had done in the first visit, and he was told to come for his answer the^ next day. On the following morning he was informed by Thackeray that, in consequence of the condition of his health, he should be com- pelled to take a servant with him, rather than a sec- retary, adding drily, " I can ask a servant to hold a basin for me : but I doubt if I could do that to a secretary — - at least he might object." Mr. Hodder says : " He smiled as he made this droll observation, but I too well knew that it was a true word spoken in jest: for he was subject to periodical illnesses which rendered the services of a valet most essential to him : and the young man who filled that situa- tion at the time was fortunately one in whom he placed implicit confidence : and he was thankful for the gentle way in which his servant tended him." Two days before sailing, some threescore friends and admirers entertained him at the London Tavern, THE UNITED STATES 175 Charles Dickens presiding at the dinner and pro- posing the toast of the evening. Thackeray deliv- ered a carefully prepared reply, which was followed by some complimentary* verses by another guest, "a friend of the O' Mulligan," recited with great success. An idea of its character may be obtained from the concluding verse : " I 'm tould there 's a banquet performing somewhere, That a warm-hearted party assemble to hail him, And a world-honoured penman is taking the chair. I 'd like to be present — I'm fond of such orgies : And since he 's about to be crossing the surges To tell all the Yankees about the Four Georges, 'Fore George, there 's a sentiment I would declare. I 'd say, ' Fill a glass to the sworn foe of Quackery ; ' May his ship be helped westward by Ariel and Puck ; Here 's health, fame, and gold, to our guest William Thackeray, And, in token, we give him this horse-shoe for luck." Thackeray, who in rising was warmly greeted, said : " I know a great number of us here present have been invited to a neighbouring palace, where turtle, champagne, and all good things are as plenti- ful almost as here, and where there reigns a civil monarch with a splendid court of officers, etc. — The sort of greeting that I had myself to-day — this splendour, etc. — the bevy in the ante-room — have filled my bosom with an elation with which no doubt Sir Francis Graham Moon's throbs. 1 I am surrounded by respectful friends, etc. — and I 1 Sir F. G. Moon, Bart., was at that time Lord Mayor of London. 176 THACKERAY IN feel myself like a Lord Mayor. To his lordship's delight and magnificence there is a drawback. In the fountain of his pleasure there surges a bitter. He is thinking about the 9th of November, and I about the 13 th of October. 1 " Some years since, when I was younger and used to frequent jolly assemblies, I wrote a Bacchanalian song, to be chanted after dinner, etc. — I wish some one would sing that song now to the tune of the 'Dead March in Saul,' etc. — not for me — I am miserable enough ; but for you, who seem in a great deal too good spirits. I tell you I am not — all the drink in Mr. Bathe's 2 cellar won't make me. There may be sherry there 500 years old — Colum- bus may have taken it out from Cadiz with him when he went to discover America, and it won't make me jolly, etc. — and yet, entirely unsatisfactory as this feast is to me, I should like some more. Why can't you give me some more ? I don't care about them costing two guineas a head. It is not the turtle I value. Let us go to Simpson's fish ordinary — or to Bertolini's or John o'Groat's, etc. — I don't wan't to go away — I cling round the mahogany-tree. " In the course of my profound and extensive reading I have found it is the habit of the English nation to give dinners to the unfortunate. I have been living lately with some worthy singular fellows 1 The day on which he was to start for America. 2 The then proprietor of the London Tavern. THE UNITED STATES 177 150 or 160 years old. I find that upon certain oc- casions the greatest attention was always paid them. They might call for anything they liked for dinner. My friend Simon Frazer, Lord Lovat, about 109 years since, I think, partook very cheerfully of minced veal and sack before he was going on his journey x — Lord Ferrer (Rice) 2 — I could tell you a dozen jolly stories about feasts of this sort. I remember a par- ticular jolly one at which I was present, and which took place at least 900 years ago. My friend Mr. Macready gave it at Fores Castle, North Britain, Covent Garden. That was a magnifi- cent affair indeed. The tables were piled with most splendid fruits — gorgeous dish-covers glittered in endless perspective - ready, I mean — taking up a huge gold beaker, shin- ing with enormous gems that must have been worth many hundred millions of money, filled it out of a 1 He was beheaded in the year 1 747 for fighting in the cause of the Pretender, in the Scottish rebellion of 1745. 2 Executed at Tyburn in the year 1760 for the murder of one Johnson, the receiver of his estates. His lordship was allowed to ride from the Tower to the scaffold in his own'landau, and appeared gayly dressed in a light-coloured suit of clothes, embroidered with silver. It was doubtless to this circumstance that Mr. Thackeray intended to allude in filling up the vacuum. The above drawing and the four that follow are from a single page of Thackeray's Sketch Book. - Macbeth — Mac- VOL. I. — 12 178 THACKERAY IN gold six-gallon jug, and drank courteously to the general health of the whole table. Why did he put it down ? What made him, in the midst of that jolly party, appear so haggard and melancholy ? It was because he saw before him the ghost of John Cooper, with chalked face and an immense streak of vermilion painted across his throat ! No wonder he was disturbed. In like man- ner I have before me at this minute the horrid figure of a steward, with a basin perhaps, or a glass of brandy and water, which he will press me to drink, and which I shall try and swal- low, and which won't make me any better — I know it won't. " Then there 's the dinner which we all of us must remember in our school-boy days, and which took place twice or thrice • a year at home, on the day before Dr. Birch ex- pected his young friends to reassemble at his academy, Rodwell Regis. Don't you remember how, the morning was spent ? How you went about taking leave of the garden, and the old mare and foal, and the -paddock, and the pointers in the kennel ; and how your little sister wistfully THE UNITED STATES 179 kept at your side all day ; and how you went and looked at that confounded trunk which old Martha was packing with the new shirts, and at that heavy cake packed up in the play-box ; and how kind c the governor ' was all day; and how at dinner he said, ' Jack — or Tom — pass the bottle,' in a very cheery voice ; and how your mother had got the dishes she knew you liked best; and how you had the wing instead of the leg, which used to be your ordinary share ; and how that dear, delightful, hot, raspberry roily polly pudding, good as it was, and fondly beloved by you, yet somehow had the effect of the notorious school stick-jaw, and choked you and stuck in your throat ; and how the gig came ; and then, how you heard the whirl of the mail-coach wheels, and the tooting of the guard's horn, as with an odious punctuality the mail and the four horses came galloping over the hill. — Shake hands, good-bye ! God bless every- ► ' *tBI body ! Don't cry, sister, — away we (To g° ! an d to-morrow we begin with Dr. Birch, and six months at Rodwell Regis. " But after six months * came the holidays again ! etc., etc." 1 Thackeray was to be absent in the United States for about that period of time. 180 THACKERAY IN In the course of* an after-dinner address delivered in London in 1857, Thackeray said, "The last time I visited America two years ago, I sailed on board the Africa, Captain Harrison. As she was steaming out of Liverpool one fine blowy October day, and was hardly over the bar, when, animated by those peculiar sensations not uncommon to landsmen at the Commencement of a sea-voyage, I was holding on amidships, up comes a quick-eyed shrewd-looking little man, who holds on to the rope next to me, and says, c Mr. Thackeray, I am the representative of the house of D. Appleton &? Co., of Broadway, New York — a most liberal and enter- prising firm, who will be most happy to do busi- ness with you.' I don't know that we then did any business in the line thus delicately hinted at, because at that particular juncture we were both of us called, by a heavy lurch of the ship, to a casting-up of accounts of a far less agreeable character." As on his previous visit, Thackeray landed in Boston, where he was most cordially welcomed, and his lectures on the Four Georges well received and highly commended by the critics. He renewed intimacies made three years earlier, and formed many new friendships, seeing much of Ticknor, " Tom " Appleton, Longfellow, Lowell, Dana, and Prescott, — of whose histories he said that they afforded him more pleasure than Macaulay's, add- ing, " when we make a little fortune it will be THE UNITED STATES 181 pleasant some day to write a nice little history book. But where is the memory of the astonish- ing Macaulay ? " When Thackeray first collected for the publica- tion his " Ballads and Poems," he wrote the follow- ing short preface, dated Boston, October 27, 1855, saying : " These ballads have been written during the past fifteen years, and are now gathered by the author from his own books and the various peri- odicals in which the pieces appeared originally. They are published simultaneously in England and America, where a public which has been interested in the writer's prose stories, he hopes, may be kindly disposed to his little volume of verses." The following lines, for some reason not included in Mrs. Ritchie's biographical edition of her father's writings, were found among Thackeray's papers a decade after his death, and first appeared in the " Cornhill Magazine " for June, 1 874. A copy of the poem sent by the author to an American friend is carefully preserved among the literary treasures contained in a large collection of Thackeray ana. " King Fritz at his palace of Berlin I saw at a royal carouse, In a periwig powdered' and curling He sat with his hat on his brows. The handsome young princes were present, Uncovered they stood in the hall ; And oh ! it was wholesome and pleasant To see how he treated them all ! 182 THACKERAY IN "Reclined on the softest of cushions His Majesty sits to his meats, The princes, like loyal young Prussians, Have never a back to their seats. Of salmon and venison and pheasants He dines like a monarch august : His sons, if they eat in his presence, Eut up with a bone or a crust. " He quaffs his bold bumpers of Rhenish, It can't be too good or too dear, His princes are made to replenish Their cups with the smallest of beer. If ever, by words or grimaces, Their highnesses dare to complain, The King flings a dish in their faces, Or batters their bones with his cane. " 'Tis thus that the chief of our nation The mind of his children improves, And teaches polite education By boxing the ears that he loves. I warrant they vex him but seldom, And if so we dealt with our sons, If we up with our cudgels and felled 'em, We 'd teach them good manners at once." To a considerable company of gentlemen dining together in Boston, Thackeray made a statement concerning Sir William Temple and Stella, and on being asked for his authority, he answered, " I can- not prove it, it is apparent like the broken nose on my face." Apropos of this, Lady Dorothy Nevill, in her " Sheaf of Recollections," contributed to the "Anglo-Saxon Review," writing of Thackeray, con- lfe^K% -■:. ■■>- '0 ©iLJN / Thackeray, from a pencil drawing by Richard Doyle, in the British Museum THE UNITED STATES 183 fesses to an awkward blunder. Dining at the same table with the novelist, she occupied a seat next to Mr. Venables. Noticing that he appeared to be well acquainted with the chief guest, she suddenly said to him : " Can you tell me whether the mal- formation of Mr. Thackeray's nose is natural or the result of an accident ? " To the lady's surprise her companion was greatly disturbed, but at length re- plied, "It was in an accident at school." "After dinner," Lady Dorothy relates, " I asked some one what harm there could have been in my inquiry, and was told in return that Mr. Venables had been the boy who had broken Thackeray's nose in a fight!" A distinguished English lady who trav- elled widely in the United States, frequently said that her brother, John Kemble, unfortunately bore a part in breaking her friend Thackeray's nose. This statement Mrs. Fanny Kemble made to Fitz- Greene Halleck, to whom she said that this acci- dent suggested to Thackeray the nom de -plume of Michael Angelo Titmarsh ; also that when the address drawn up in London, under the impulse of Mrs. Beecher Stowe's " Uncle Tom's Cabin," and the Duchess of Sutherland and other promi- nent society leaders, Thackeray denominated the document the "Womanifesto Against Slavery." Mrs. Kemble, who married an American, writes : " What a misfortune it is to have a broken nose, like poor dear Thackeray ! He would have been positively handsome, and is positively ugly in con- 184 THACKERAY IN sequence. John (Mrs. Kemble's brother) and his friend Venables broke the bridge of Thackeray's nose when they were schoolboys playing together. What a mishap to befall a young lad just beginning life ! I suppose my friend Thackeray's injury was one that did not admit of a surgical remedy, but my father (Charles Kemble) late in life fell down while skating, and broke the bridge of his nose, and Lis- ton, the eminent surgeon, urged him extremely to let him raise — ' build it up again,' as he used to say. My father, however, declined the operation, and not only remained with his handsome nose dis- figured, but suffered a much greater inconvenience, which Liston had predicted — very aggravated deaf- ness in old age." " Of Thackeray's second visit to the United States, in the winter of 1855," writes Mr. Lunt in " Harper's Magazine," " I saw him still more famil- iarly than on the occasion of his first lecturing tour. During the earlier period I happened to be too much engaged in professional pursuits to leave much leisure for friendly or social intercourse, ex- 1 - cept, as I have observed, at our frequent meetings at table. After dinner I sometimes went with him to his apartments consisting of a parlour and bed- room, the most agreeable of any in the Tremont House, for a little social chat. On one of these occasions he recited to me his ' Ballad of Bouil- labaisse,' afterward printed in a collection of his poems which was published in Boston. But he was THE UNITED STATES 185 certainly, not a poet; that is, notwithstanding his power of writing such admirable prose, together with a knack of versifying, he did, after all, lack a certain mysterious qualification which goes to make up the complement of a poet — in a word, what a famous writer calls, in this relation, — "'The vision and the faculty divine.' He gave those touching verses forth with emphatic expression and every manifestation of the tender feeling which must have inspired them. ' But,' said he, 'they made no mark' — referring to the fact that they had formerly appeared in some Lon- don periodical. But the truth is, an author cannot always tell what is the actual judgment in regard to his lighter productions, which may be much admired, though the knowledge of it may never come to his ears. I expressed my own gratification at the senti- ment and spirit of his verses, which seemed to give him pleasure. Indeed, some passages of the poem have been often quoted, as exhibiting a peculiar softness^ so to say, of feeling in one whom too many, not sounding the real depths of his nature, have regarded simply as a satirist and a cynic, be- cause, looking more profoundly than they into the motives and springs of human action, he portrayed the baseness of some, as he certainly did display the more generous impulses and principles which gov- erned the conduct of many of his more conspicuous characters. 186 THACKERAY IN " I remember once standing with Thackeray on the steps of the Tremont House, toward evening, when crowds were pouring into the Tremont Temple nearly opposite, to hear him deliver a lecture in behalf of some benevolent object, and I think the topic of the lecture was ' Charity.' * ' What in the world,' said he, ' can possess these people to flock to hear me speak an essay which was printed in last month's " Harper's Magazine," and doubtless has been read by so many of them ? ' I suggested that it was the way with numbers of our people to run after celeb- rities, and that after reading whatever he might have written, the impulse would be only the stronger to see him face to face. Besides, the price of admis- sion to the prospective lecture was comparatively small, and many would attend who might not feel able to afford the higher sum demanded for his full course. In fact, it was the opportunity for the multitude, who constituted a different class from those who had secured places at his readings upon the { English Humourists ' and the ' Four Georges.' The audience, in fact, proved to be large, and 1 The title of this address was " Charity and Humour." It was first delivered in New York during his previous visit, and subsequently repeated with slight variations in London, for the benefit of the families of Thackeray's friends, Angus B. Reach and Douglas Jerrold, and elsewhere in England and Scotland for charities. There is a little story of the former correcting Thackeray in the pronunciation of his name : " Re-ack, sir, is the proper thing," he said across the dinner-table. Almost immediately Thackeray's opportunity presented itself, when some peaches were placed before him, and, looking at his 'vis-a-'vis, he remarked, " Mr. Re-ack, will you have a pe-ack ? " THE UNITED STATES 187 doubtless the proceeds in behalf of the benevolent project was correspondingly liberal. %-** tubvc Ami vauJtiUX ft* CurJt AnUZaxxUS AnA JbiAimruJU , Ik "» <(t«t«Mu Kitlkvi J» jCu» twr Jo d*{4*| *» IKeu toco. lllM 4lMftfel a osd J U Utuvel , 1t[JI Unfe • a shame to bring such a man to what she thought a sort of degradation. c Then,' said Thackeray, with more than usual earnestness of manner — THE UNITED STATES 193 c then she is not a Christian ! ' This was in itself as much a profession of faith as if he had written volumes in defence of it. I suppose the excellent lady only meant to say, that in a worldly point of view, it shocked the ' offending Adam ' in her, that so grand and simple a life as that of the beloved Colonel should not have been crowned with ' all that should accompany old age.' " It seems to be the fortune of those who are prominently before the public, in certain relations with it, to have a class of followers the motives of whose pursuit are not always intelligible, and it was a subject of amusement with Thackeray, that he, a grave gentleman past middle life, a philoso- pher and a novelist, not beautiful certainly, with white hair and in spectacles, dignified and somewhat reserved in manner should be exposed to this species of personal adulation. I am afraid he had occasion sometimes to set down the demonstrations in ques- tion to the disadvantage of the manners of some of the freer of our American girls, compared with the more staid demeanour of English young ladies with whom he was acquainted. Of course no imputation of a moral nature could arise, except as far as man- ners are in themselves indications of the inner moral sense. I know that one pretty young lady actually followed him to Boston from a distant city, whose respectable father came and reclaimed her from this Quixotic undertaking. Her countenance was known to me, and one day, walking with Thackeray on VOL, I. — 13 194 THACKERAY IN Beacon Street, we met this infatuated young person coming from the opposite direction. He accosted her politely, and passed on without pause, remark- ing, as if to himself, with a sort of sigh of relief, c Well, thank Heaven, that pipe is smoked out.' I was a good deal struck by the more than ordi- nary freedom of the expression from such a man, and on such an occasion. . . . " Our primitive dinner hour at the Tremont House was half past two o'clock. On these occa- sions we generally had the company of an excellent lady already referred to : and I believe he really preferred these not very pretentious repasts to the formal feasts, at hours so much later, in fashionable society : for it was easy to see that his tastes in this respect were simple enough, and that his personal wants were easily satisfied. We had wine, com- monly sherry, of which he moderately partook, to which was not unfrequently added a modest half bottle of champagne." Writing to his family from the Clarendon Hotel, New York, Nov. 13, 1855, Mr. Thackeray says: " I have hardly made a visit yet — only to the good Baxters, and one or two more whose kindness is quite affecting. ... I lectured at Brooklyn last night. Shows how much nervousness has to do with health : found an immense, brilliantly-lighted room, thronged chock up to the ceiling, and two thousand five hundred people I should think. Spoke the lecture as well as before, and ended From a Photograph made of Thackeray in 1856, by Alman, of" New York THE UNITED STATES 195 rather the better for having talked. Had good supper, a good sleep, woke early, actually dreaming that I was lecturing in London to three boys and three reporters. ..." Of Mr. Charles King he writes : " A gentleman of the old school, — Presi- dent of Columbia College, — editor of ' the Ameri- can ' newspaper, who sat at school at Harrow with Peel and Byron, and spoke still in admiration of Byron's pluck. Harrow challenged Eton to a match at cricket. Eton refused Harrow, saying Eton only played matches with Schools of Royal foundation." Mr. King also remembered Byron saying, " X I am not good at cricket," alluding to his foot, " but if you will get up an eleven to fight an Eton eleven, I should like to be one of yours." l Mr. Thackeray continues : " The compliments some- body gets on all hands would please some ladies. One touched me yesterday. — Dr. Kane, the tre- mendous Arctic traveller, has just come back from the North, and he says he saw one of his seamen in one of the holds crouched over a book for hours and hours, and behold it was ' Pendennis.' Had a very pleasant dinner with Sam Ward and a party at Del- monico's ; came home late, and had an awful escape — I tremble when I think of it. Took my key at the bar, entered my apartment, began straightway to pull off boots, etc. etc., when a sweet female 1 Byron played for Harrow against Eton in 1805, scoring seven and two, in his two innings. The name of King does not appear among the players in that year. 196 THACKERAY IN voice from the room within, exclaimed ' Gorgie ! ' Had gone into the second-floor room instead of the third. I gathered my raiment together, and dashed out of the premises." Who that saw Thackeray in this country in the fifties will ever forget that giant form, crowned with a stately and massive head, covered with almost snow-white hair ? Said Fitz-Greene Halleck, who was five feet seven, to a young friend as they ap- proached the English humourist and Bayard Taylor in Broadway : " Behold those two Brobdingnags coming this way. Together they measure twelve feet and several inches in their stockings." The youth was presented, a few words of cordial greet- ings were exchanged, and the giant litterateurs passed on. Halleck called his companion's atten- tion to the fact that Thackeray had a particularly small hand, half inherited, his friend Fitzgerald sug- gested, from the Hindu people among whom he was born. I then mentioned to Halleck that a few months earlier I had seen Thackeray walking in London with his friend Matthew J. Higgins, a bril- liant writer, best known by his nom de guerre of " Jacob Omnium," and great in every way, being . six feet eight inches high and large in proportion. 1 1 Thackeray told Dean Hole of Rochester Cathedral, who lectured in the United States a few years ago, of his having gone with "big Higgins" to see a Brobdingnagian show, and how the doorkeeper in- quired " whether they were in the business, because, if so, no charge would be made." Perhaps of all Thackeray's ballads "Jacob Horn- The Author when he met Thackeray THE UNITED STATES 197 A few days later, Bayard Taylor received the follow- ing note from Thackeray : — Wednesday, Clarendon [1855]. My dear Mr. Taylor, — A card has just been given to me which you must have written without having re- ceived my note written and promised to be sent from the Albion to the Tribune yesterday. Young has arranged the Press Club dinner should take place on Saturday 17th instead of 24th and we shall meet there I hope. And don't, don't give a dinner at Delmonico's please. I did yesterday and it is a sin to spend so much money on the belly. Let us have content and mutton chops and I shall be a great deal better pleased than with that godless disbursement of dollars. . . . Notwithstanding Thackeray's protest, he was bidden to a Delmonico Sunday breakfast a few days later, and of all the eighteen choice spirits who were present at the delightful entertainment, when the chief guest gave " Dr. Martin Luther " and Curtis and Wallack sang the duet " Drink to me only with thine eyes," Richard Henry Stoddard remembers that he is the only survivor. " I met Thackeray twice when he was in this nium's Hoss," is the most amusing. " Some of the lines," said Trollope, "are almost sublime": — " Who was this, master good, Of whomb I makes these rhymes ? His name is Jacob H omnium, Esquire; And if I 'd committed crimes, Good Lord ! I would n't 'ave that man Attack me in the ' Times " ! " 198 THACKERAY IN country," writes Mr. Stoddard, in " Harper's Maga- zine," " once at a press dinner, which was given him at the Astor House, and to which he came late, having just arrived from a journey. He was too ill to seat himself, though he entered the room in which the dinner was held, and my remembrance is that he shook hands cheerily with the friends that were nearest him, and then was borne off to bed. He was liable to sudden attacks, and his sufferings on these occasions were terrible. We all regretted his absence — none more than myself, for I wanted to see and hear the satirical historian of the Four Georges. We had a dull evening — at least I did, for I came to be introduced to Thackeray, and the genial, friendly talk of Washington Irving, to whom I was introduced instead, did not console me for my disappointment. " A few days later I was in the editorial rooms of ' The Tribune,' where I met my good friend Bayard Taylor, who had been disappointed, - like myself, at the press dinner, and he told me that he was going to give Thackeray a breakfast at Delmon- ico's on the Sunday morning following — Sunday being the only day at his disposal — -and he asked me to be present. How well I remember that memorable morning, and how little I brought away from it ! It was late in December — -a bright, sharp morning, and the walk from my rooms to Del- monico's was inspiriting. We met in Delmonico's parlour, some eight or ten of us — the Howadji I THE UNITED STATES 199 think, was one — and waited until Thackeray, who was stopping at the Clarendon, came. I was in- troduced to him informally. He gave me the grip of his hearty hand, and we proceeded to the break- fast-room. I forget how we were placed at the table, nor does it matter. It was Thackeray that I came to see — that I wish to remember — not my right or left hand man, who, I have no doubt, was an author or an artist. It was the author of ' The Newcomes ' that I wished to hear talk. As I am not a gourmand, I cannot remember whether the oysters were large or small, nor the order in which the wines were brought on, though I can remember that the proper order was discussed while we were sipping them. Breakfast over — and it was a long one — we lighted our cigars, changed chairs with each other, and chatted in groups of twos and threes. I took an empty chair beside Thackeray, as he motioned me to, detecting, no doubt, the ad- miration that I felt for him, and we had a-pleasant chat. He had no idea that I hoped to be a man of letters some day, so we talked like men of the world, on whatever topic presented itself. Some- thing that I said about theatricals (I was a dramatic critic at the time) led him to say that he had written a comedy, which he had left in Webster's hands — I think it was Webster's though it may have been Wigan's — with but small chance of its acceptance. I very earnestly told him that I could not under- stand how he should have a play refused. He said 20O THACKERAY IN he could, he had had so many things declined — ' Vanity Fair/ for example : besides, he added, there might be some defect in the play which would prevent its successful representation. Dumas was mentioned, and I noticed that in speaking of him Thackeray gave his name the Spanish and not the French pronunciation. He had chaffed Dumas, I remembered, in the ' Paris Sketch Book,' but it was for his dramas, not his novels. I asked him what he thought of the latter, especially ' Monte Christo ' and c The Three Guardsmen.' No one ever displayed, he thought, such prodigality of inven- tion as Dumas. His novels were vastly entertain- ing. For himself, he was never weary of reading ' Les Trois Mousquetaires.' The exact language in which Thackeray expressed his admiration for Dumas has passed from my recollection, but the substance of it afterward took this form in print : ' Of your heroic heroes, I think our friend Mon- seigneur Athos, Comte de la Fere, is my favourite. I have read about him from sunrise to sunset, with the utmost contentment of mind. I have passed through many volumes — forty? fifty? I wish from my heart there were a hundred more, and would never tire of him rescuing prisoners, pun- ishing ruffians, and running scoundrels through the midriff with his most graceful rapier. Ah ! Athos, Porthos, and Aramis, you are a magnificent trio ! ' The feeling with which Thackeray inspired me was extravagant, I suppose, but it was sincere. I THE UNITED STATES 201 felt toward him as he felt toward Shakspeare: Somebody interrupted our chat ; we separated, shook hands when the company dispersed, and — I never met Thackeray again. " 'Ah, did you once see Shelley plain ? And did he stop and speak to you? And did you speak to him again ? How strange it seems, and new !' " It may be mentioned here that the two "big fellows " became great friends. With three possible exceptions, Thackeray admired Bayard Taylor more than any other American that he had met, and a few years later presented to him Schiller's sword, perhaps his most valued possession ; for Fields re- lates that on one occasion, when Thackeray desired a little service done for a friend, he remarked, with a quizzical expression, "Please say the favour will greatly oblige a man of the name of Thackeray, whose only recommendation is that he has seen Napoleon 1 and Goethe, and is the owner of Schiller's sword." Taylor bequeathed the sword to the museum of Weimar, where it may now be seen among many relics of Goethe and Schiller. Thackeray purchased it in Weimar, using it as a part of his court costume when, as a student^ 1 Thackeray as a youth, while on a voyage from India to England, saw at St. Helena a short, fat man in white clothes, wearing a large straw hat. It was the hero of a hundred battles whose meteor-like career was closed by Wellington at Waterloo and whose funeral Thackeray witnessed in Paris. He afterward described it in the paper entitled" The Second Funeral of Napoleon," 202 THACKERAY IN there, he was invited to the grand duke's ball and other entertainments. Mr. Thackeray concluded the course with the following affecting passage : " O brothers ! speak- ing the same dear mother tongue 1 — O comrades! enemies no more, let us take a mournful hand together as we stand by this royal corpse, and call a truce to battle ! Low he lies to whom the proudest used to kneel once, and who was cast lower than the poorest — dead whom millions prayed for in vain. Hush Strife and Quarrels over the solemn grave ! Sound Trumpets a Mournful March. Fall Dark Curtain, upon his pageant, his pride, his grief, his awful tragedy ! " During the delivery of these lectures many charges of disloyalty were brought against Thack- eray by his countrymen in England, some journals asserting that he would not dare attempt to deliver them among his own people. One clerical worship- per of royalty sent a communication to a prominent paper, saying, " An elderly, infidel buffoon of the name of Thackeray has been lecturing on the sub- ject of the Four Georges," while Mrs.- Browning wrote to a friend : " I heard one of Thackeray's lectures, the one on George the Third, and thought 1 In a similar strain Thackeray's friend Carlyle, in his first letter to Emerson, said, '* We and you are not two countries, and cannot for the life of us be, but only two parishes of one country," and later he bequeathed valuable books to Harvard University, to make amends for his misjudgment of the American Civil War. THE UNITED STATES 203 it better than good — fine and touching. To what is it people are ^objecting ? " " The Cunarder Africa has brought to Boston, among its other passengers, a visitor to whom America will give cordial welcome," wrote N. P. Willis. When Willis made his second visit to England in the summer of 1839, he made the ac- quaintance of Thackeray, and a month later engaged him as a contributor to " The Corsair," a weekly New York journal conducted by himself and Dr. Thomas O. Porter. In a private letter to his partner, dated London, July 26, Willis writes : " I have engaged a contributor to the ' Corsair.' Who do you think ? The author of ' Yellowplush ' and { Major Gahagan.' I have mentioned it in my jottings, that our readers may know all about it. He has gone to Paris, and will write letters from there, and afterwards from London, for a guinea a close column of the ' Corsair ' — cheaper than I ever did anything in my life. I will see that he is paid for a while to see how you like him. For myself, I think him the very best periodical writer alive. He is a royal, daring, fine creature too." The mention in the jottings referred to by Willis ap- peared in " The Corsair " a month later. The poet says in part : " Mr. Thackeray is a tall, athletic man of about thirty-five, with a look of talent that could never be mistaken. He has taken to literature after having spent a very large inheritance : but in throwing away the gifts of fortune, he has cultivated his natural 204 THACKERAY IN talents very highly, and is one of the most accom- plished draftsmen in Engknd, as well as the clever- est and most brilliant of periodical writers." In his first contribution, Thackeray concludes with a char- acteristic address to the editor, alluding to his feel- ings " in finding good friends and listeners among strangers far, far away — in receiving from beyond seas kind crumbs of comfort for our hungry vanities." His eight letters are signed T. T. (Timothy Tit- comb, a pen-name adopted some years later by Dr. J. G. Holland). A few years later, in reviewing " Pencillings by the Way," and the story of " Brown's Day with the Mimpsons," Thackeray indulges in some good-natured fun at the expense of the American author and editor of whom he wrote : " It is comfortable that there should have been a Willis." In this country he spoke kindly of Willis and his writings. The " crushed orange blossom clinging to one of the heels " of Ernest Clay's boots was a Willis touch which immensely amused him. Whether it was owing to the delicate health of the American editor, or that he resented being quizzed by his former contributor, I cannot say ; but, so far as I am aware, the two authors did not meet, or exchange any communications, while Thackeray was in this country. But I very dis- tinctly remember that after Thackeray's death Willis spoke kindly of him, also expressing admi- ration for his writings and skill as an artist. In his volume on Thackeray, his friend Anthony THE UNITED STATES 205 Trollope writes : " I cannot but think that had he undertaken public duties for which he was ill quali- fied, and received a salary which he could hardly have earned, he would have done less for his fame than by reading to the public. Whether he did that well or ill, he did it well enough for the money. The people who heard him, and who paid for their seats, were satisfied with their bargain — as they were also in the case of Dickens : and I venture to say that in becoming publicly a reader, neither did Dickens or Thackeray ' Alter his position as a writer,' and c that it was a change to be justified,' though the success of the old calling had in no degree waned. What Thackeray did enabled him to leave a comfortable income for his children and one earned honestly, with the full approval of the world around him. ... It is, I think, certain that he had none of those wonderful gifts of elocution which made it a pleasure to listen to Dickens, what- ever he read or whatever, he said; nor had he that power of application by using which his rival taught himself with accuracy the exact effect to be given to every word. The rendering of a piece by Dickens was composed as an oratorio is composed, and was then studied by heart as music is studied. And the piece was all given by memory, without any looking at the notes or words. There was nothing of this with Thackeray. But the thing was in itself of great interest to educated people. The words were given clearly, with sufficient intonation for easy 206 THACKERAY IN understanding, so that they who were willing to hear something from him felt in hearing that they had received full value for their money. At any rate the lectures were successful. The money was made — and was kept." Thackeray's son-in-law, Sir Leslie Stephen, says : " Over-scrupulous Britons complained of Thackeray for laying bare the weaknesses of our monarchs to Americans who were already not predisposed in their favour. The Georges, however, had been dead for some time. . . . Although they (the lectures) have hardly the charm of the more sympathetic accounts of the ' Humourists,' they show the same qualities of style, and obtained general if not equal popularity." In the " Four Georges," the great author gives an interesting bit of early autobiography which may properly find a place in this work from the circum- stance of the passage having been written, as he said to " Sam " Ward, in the Clarendon Hotel. " When I first saw England," writes Thackeray, "she was in mourning for the young Princess Char- lotte, the hope of the Empire. I came from India as a child, ( 1817) and our ship touched at an island on our way home, where my black servant took me a long walk over rocks and hills until we reached a garden where we saw a man walking. ' That is he ! ' cried the black man. 'That is Bonaparte! He eats three sheep a day and all the children he can lay hands on ! ' With the same childish attendant THE UNITED STATES 207 I remember peeping through the Colonnade at Carlton House, and seeing the abode of the Prince Regent. I can yet see the guards pacing before the gates of the palace! What palace? The place exists no more than the Palace of Nebuchadnezzar. It is but a name now." 1 Another Ward reminiscence is of his pointing out to his English friend on the window-pane of a noted New York mansion, now no longer standing, the name of a conceited celebrity who composed clever vers de soctit'e, written with a diamond, whereupon Thackeray promptly quoted Pope's epigram: " When I see a man's name Scratched upon the glass, I knows he owns a diamond, And his father owns art ass." When Fanny Kemble first came to this country with her father Charles Kemble, Fitz- Greene Hal- leck became well acquainted with them. He was then, and always afterward, an admirer of the gifted daughter. In a notice of her play of " Francis the First," written before she was eighteen, and her own part of Louise de Savoy, the poet stated that she had " a dark flashing eye, when roused in any degree, that streams, with fiery rays, and, diamond-like, lights up the tints that show themselves through a brunette shin." If the careless compositor of the morning journal had substituted " skin " for the 1 The lecture on " George the Third," from which these lines are taken, was completed in this country. 208 THACKERAY IN italicised word of the quotation, it would, of course, have been what the unlucky and exasperated Hal- leck wrote. Thackeray was convulsed with laughter as " Uncle Sam" Ward related the incident to him, and when he met Mrs. Kemble in London, they en- joyed a laugh together over the sad typographical slip, at which the sensitive poet was inclined to tear his hair. Mrs. Kemble was among the first contrib- utors to the Halleck Monument. Clarendon, Thursday [1855]. My dear Curtis, — Don't forget the partie carri dinner at Delmonico's, the other merry blades being Bayard Taylor and Fred Cozzens ; the day and hour, Saturday at seven sharp. That 's all. Adoo ! W. M. Thackeray. [1856] Dear Curtis, — Who can be the friend who asks for the .signature of the unhappy W. M. Thackeray ? " No one," said Halleck to a young friend, "could be in Thackeray's company without the positive feeling that they were in the presence of a gentle- man," adding, " Do you remember what he says on this subject? 'Gentlemen, — men whose aims are generous, whose truth is constant and not only, con- stant in its kind but elevated in its degree : whose want of meanness makes them simple ; who can look the world honestly in the face with an equal manly sympathy for the great and the small.' " An- other favourite quotation from Thackeray followed : THE UNITED STATES 209 " If you take temptations into account, who is to say that he is better than his neighbour." At William Duer Robinson's in Houston Street, Thackeray, after returning from the theatre, was discussing with the senior Wallack some love pas- sages in Shakespeare, expressing admiration for several lines in Henry the Sixth, which he repeated with much feeling : — " 'T is not the land I care for, wert thou hence; A wilderness is populous enough, So Suffolk had thy heavenly company; For where thou art, there is the world itself With every several pleasure in the world; And where thou art not, desolation." As - the Shakespeare conversation progressed, in which Curtis and Lester Wallack joined, it was con- cluded by Thackeray saying, with unfeigned earnest- ness : " Oh, how I should have liked to have been Shakespeare's shoe-black, just to have lived in his house, to have been permitted to worship him, to have run on his errands, and daily seen that serene face ! " Another Shakespearian allusion of a droll character is contained in the accompanying note from Dr. Horace Howard Furness of Philadelphia : — " I was a boy of only sixteen or seventeen when Mr. Thackeray was in this country, and therefore, can by no means aspire to the honour of 'intimacy with him.' Have you ever seen a privately-printed account of his visit to Philadelphia written by the late William B. Reed? In it you will find Mr. VOL. 1. — 14 210 THACKERAY IN Thackeray's professions of extreme admiration for my sister's singing. To her (now Mrs. Caspar Wister) personally, he was as devoted as his short time in the city allowed. I shone only by reflected light and remained the silent auditor of his exu- berant fun. The speech of his which remains in my memory and over which I laughed ' fit to split ' was that he knew all about Shakespeare, he c understood him ' : ' Shakespeare wrote solely for money and that when he had made enough he returned to Stratford, sat at his door and sassed passengers.' Maturer years have revealed to me that beneath that ' gracious fooling ' there lies a germ of truth." Dr. Furness, it may be mentioned, is the fortunate possessor of a precious relic which Thackeray greatly admired, — no less than a pair of genuine gloves worn by "William Shakespeare. They are dull buff gaunt- lets, the deep cuffs of which are embroidered in gold. The actor John Ward gave them to David Garrick in 1769 : Garrick's widow presented them to Sarah Siddons. Mrs. Siddons bequeathed the gloves to her daughter, who gave them to Fanny Kemble, from whom the Philadelphia Shakespearian scholar received the precious possession. Conversing one evening at the Century Club with the poet Bryant and Verplanck the Shakespeare scholar, concerning the Delia Bacon claim that to Lord Bacon belonged the authorship of the Shake- speare plays, Thackeray said, " I could more easily believe that Shakespeare was the author of the ' No- THE UNITED STATES 211 >n"d i—i..ige Slpmk UU \v$U i»u wWiL4*— w vum Organum,' than that Bacon wrote ( Macbeth,' " also remarking that when Miss Bacon presented a 212 THACKERAY IN letter of introduction from Emerson to his friend Carlyle, his reply was : " Lord Bacon could as easily have created this planet as he could have written Hamlet." Verplanck said it was " nonsense and tomfoolery — the subject seemed too absurd for se- rious consideration," and Bryant believed by adopt- ing the method of the Baconians, that he "could make just as good a claim for Jeremy Taylor." In answer to the recent revival of this craze, which appears perennially, Sir Henry Irving, before leaving our shores lately, said at Princeton University : " When the Baconians can show that Ben Jonson was either a fool or, a knave, or that the whole world of players and playwrights at that time was in a conspiracy to palm off on the ages the most astounding cheat in history, they will be worthy of serious attention." The name of William Henry Wills, the friend and associate of Charles Dickens in the editorship of "Household Words" and "All the Year Round," being mentioned, Thackeray remarked, in allusion to his diminutive size, somewhat resembling De Quincey, " Yes, I know him and his agreeable wife, who is a sister of William and Robert Chambers of Edinburgh." It was of Wills that Douglas Jerrold affirmed, that he had all his life been training to go up a gas-pipe, and that his musical wife, who loved the songs of her native land, would sing, with a sly glance at her small husband, " Better be mairried to somethin' than not to be mairried awa ! " En passant "> I Belgian soldiers and others, from a Thackeray Sketch-Book THE UNITED STATES 213 it may be mentioned that the present Editor of " Chambers' Journal," a grandson of one of its founders, is the possessor of one of the most com- plete sets known of first editions of Thackeray, and also an equally complete set of first editions of the writings of Charles Dickens. From the Clarendon Hotel, during the winter of 1855-56, Thackeray wrote two letters to his old friend Frank Fladgate, the Nestor of the Garrick Club. 1 He was familiar with the records of the English stage and an enthusiastic Shakespearian. Thackeray said to Wallack senior, who was intimate with him, that he supposed Fladgate had not a single enemy in or out of the club. These letters were sold in London in July, 1900, the latest one, from which the extract is taken, selling at Sotheby's for twenty pounds or one hundred dollars. 1 To Frank Fladgate, Garrick Club, London. Clarendon Hotel, New York, Wednesday, Nov. 14th, 1855. My dear Frank, — How does all the G. (Garrick) do ? I 'm sure you'll be glad to hear I 'm doing famously well. 1 Serjeant Ballantine, writing in the spring of 1S82 (he died five years later), says : " Of course in recording old reminiscences it would be impossible to forget Frank Fladgate, now, I believe the father of the Garrick Club, and who for all the years it has existed, and through all its changing scenes, has never made an enemy. No one of the present day is so conversant with the records of the stage and the lives of its greatest actors ; and it is a real treat to listen to his pleasant talk, and note his adoration of his beloved Shakespeare." Among the mem- bers of the Garrick Club, Fladgate was, perhaps, Thackeray's greatest admirer. 214 THACKERAY IN At first there was a doubt — almost a defeat. The people did not know what to make of George I. and his strumpets. Morality was staggered. But they liked better and better with each lecture, and now they 're done and the success of the affair beyond a question. Last night at Brooklyn there were twenty-five hundred persons at the lecture. I 'm to repeat them here again, beginning Thursday, and in De- cember go to Boston where a letter that some kind fellow writes by the Liverpool mail of Saturday, December ist will be sure to reach me. I wonder whether he will. I should like to have news of the G. You '11 do what I have not : read my friend the Herald's attack on me. Never read that sort of thing ; too old a hand. Two or three more have hit into me, but the attacks don't matter here. Will you please go over — no, I 've altered that. Instead of begging you to go to Daniel, I '11 write to Daniel. Have seen old Jim Wallack. Dine with him next Sunday. Says he 's doing a very good business ; came to my lectures. "When do you do George second?" says he. He had been at the lecture about George the Third the night before. Shall make a nice little pot of money here, eight hundred pounds, between ist November and 4th December, et vogue la galere. Good bye my dear Frank. Hands to all, to Stanny and David and Peter and every one, says Yours always W. M. Thackeray. " I know you will be glad to hear that I have done as well in January as in December, and much better as far as popularity goes, Boston being far better pleased than New York with my compositions. I am just back from Buffalo, 500 miles off, twenty THE UNITED STATES 215 hours by railway in the snow, it would have taken three weeks to travel from place to place in the old times, in our times, and instead I thank the railways for putting these thousands of dollars in my pocket. Oh Sir, the West is a great place. I have only just seen the portal of it, but it 's wonderful. The boys must come here. Wealth grows here, its first crop pays the fee simple of a farm : send your boys out and accustom them to the shovel and hoe, and when big enough, to start them for this West. For you and me the old country is the best. How I wish I was back, I hate the money grubbing, but for the young ones' sake, we must continue it, and for old age, when no man may work." Among Thackeray's most intimate friends during his several sojourns in New York, was William Young (1 809-1 888), son of an English admiral, who married an American lady, and from 1848 till 1867, was editor of " The Albion," a weekly jour- nal devoted to British news and interests. Repeat- ing to Young the " Great Thacker " St. Louis story, 1 he added : " There is really a Robert and Thomas Thacker, also such variety of the name as 1 Fields informs us that another Tremont House Milesian of Bos- ton addressed him as Mr. Thackuarey ! and Judge Daly delighted him with the gift of two eighteenth-century engravings, published by Thackara and Vallance of Philadelphia, one a rare Plan of the City of Washington, the other an equally scarce picture of Niagara Falls dated 1790. To Daly the great man said : " My American cousin has ap- proached nearer to the ancient spelling of the name than any of us moderns in England." 216 THACKERAY IN Thackhard, Thackuree, Thackrah, Thackwray and Thackeberries, known as English writers of the past and present centuries." * Bayard Taylor, being mentioned, Thackeray said: "By the way, Young, do you know that men of your name are numerous among the Knights of the pen? The Smiths are of course first, the Williams and Wilson families are good seconds, and then follow the Taylors, among whom I have many friends, but none of the name that I admire more than Bayard. Behind the Taylors march the multitudinous army of Browns, Jones and Robinsons." Apropos of the tall American poet, a correspond- ent writes : " I have a book of Bayard Taylor's, no doubt presented to Thackeray by the author, with the well-known stamped monogram (W. M. T.) on the titlepage. The leaves are entirely uncut ! " * On Taylor's titlepage appears, Titmarsh's monogram embossed, But neither over-night's dog-ears, Nor eager paper-knife have' crossed The crisp, unopened, unread pages ! So do we reciprocate the world's great Sages! ' " 2 Thackeray mentioned to Taylor, whom he affec- tionately called Bayard, his having " bed books," i Among the treasures of perhaps the most valuable private library in the United States is a volume printed in London, early in the seventeenth century, by " A. W. for W. Thackeray, at the Angel in Duck Lane." 1 Can this be the volume that Thackeray in * letter to Cozzens, dated 1857, says, "helped me over the voyage " ? THE UNITED STATES 217 with which, when wakeful at night, as frequently happened, he could amuse himself. His favourites for this purpose were, said Taylor, dear old Pepys, Howell, Montaigne, and a battered old copy of Drawn by Thackeray for the cover of "Vanity Fair" , Boswell's Johnson. Readers of the " Roundabout Papers " may remember in the one " On Two Chil- dren in Black," Thackeray writes, " Montaigne and Howell's ' Letters ' are my bedside books. If I wake at night, I have one or other of them to prattle me to sleep again. They talk about themselves 218 THACKERAY IN for ever, and don't weary me. I like to hear them tell their old stories over again. I read them in the dozy hours, and only half remember them." Speak- ing of " Hertry Esmond," of which Taylor was an enthusiastic admirer, the latter remarked, " I have an impression that many of Thackeray's readers are more indebted for their knowledge of English history of the period covered by Esmond, than from any and every other source. I also believe with Dr. ' Rab ' Brown, that at the last, Thackeray was the greatest master of pure English in our day." In re- sponse to the inquiry if he placed him higher than Ruskin, he replied : " Well, no, I do not. They deserve to stand side by side, as the two greatest writers who have used the language of Shakespeare and Milton during the present century." Taylor added : " Thackeray always alluded to himself as an old man," remarking on one occasion that " he was fortunate in not taking up the profession of letters too young." He had not, as Douglas Jerrold said, " to take down the shutters before there was any- thing in the shop windows." After Thackeray's marriage and loss of fortune by The Constitutional he laboured energetically in London at a variety of literary hackwork, reviewing Carlyle's " French Rev- olution " in the " Times " during 1837. The author of the article, Carlyle informed a friend, " is one Thackeray, a half monstrous Cornish giant, kind of painter, Cambridge man, and Paris newspaper corre- spondent who is writing for his life in London. I THE UNITED STATES 219 have seen him at the Bullers' and Sterling's." Taylor showed me the last letter that he received from Thackeray, of which I only remember that it ^\/^^v\ Thackeray delivered his lectures on the Georges in Cincinnati, and then set out for New York by way of Buffalo to lecture there, and visit Niagara Falls, sending a few lines to his family en route, in which he says : " How sparkling Lake Erie looked, how pretty the country was, albeit still wintry. But Europe is still a prettier country for me, and I long for it." It however appears that the novelist neglected to see the famous Falls. Charles Mackay says " that Mr. Thackeray, like Dr. Johnson — and all the ancients — was singularly indifferent to the beauties of natural scenery — and took more pleasure in contemplating the restless tide of human life in the streets of London, than in looking at, or wandering among the most glorious panoramic splendours of mountain and forest, or wide stretching river, lake or sea. It was reported of him in America, that he was within an hour and a half's run of the magnifi- cent Falls of Niagara, when he was strongly pressed by a friend and companion to visit that renowned wonder of America, and that he refused, with the contemptuous observation, ' all the snobs go to Niagara, I shall not make one of them.' When this story reached England, he was indignant at the reason which gossip had erroneously assigned, but admitted that he had not visited the Falls, and re- gretted that he had not done so." x 1 "Forty Years' Recollections," London, 1877. THE UNITED STATES 309 St. Louis. Mo. 26 March [1856]. My dear Robinson, — I think and hope and trust to be at New York next week. Is the Bower of Virtue vacant ? O how glad I shall be to occupy it ! — Is there a bed for Charles my man ? Yours always, W. M. Thackeray. address care Mercantile Library Cincinnati. On the seventh of April Bayard Taylor writes from New York : " Thackeray came here on Saturday. He looks jolly and rosy, although he had a few chills on the Mississippi. He is staying with Robinson, 604 Houston Street. It is delightful and refreshing to see his good face and his body among us once more." The Bower of Virtue was No. 604 Houston Street, near Broadway, between Green and Mercer. Its site is now occupied by a stately warehouse, but on the north side of the street are still to be seen several old-fashioned two-storied brick houses of the same style as the one that sheltered Thackeray for several weeks during his second visit to this country. At that time Mr. Robinson, J. C. B. Davis, and Samuel E. Lyons occupied what the humourist styles " the Bower of Virtue." Mr. Davis, one of the few survivors among Thackeray's intimate American friends, in letters to the writer, says : " My acquaintance with Thackeray began in a very pleasant way. In the summer of 1849 I wen t to London, with a letter to Mr. Thomas Baring, 3io THACKERAY IN the head of the house of Baring Bros., and com- monly known as Tom Baring. This brought me the usual invitation to dinner, but as the cholera was then prevalent in London, I found only two other guests. ' No presentations were made, and I finished my dinner and the cigars which followed it without knowing the names of my fellow-guests. When we came to leave, one of them, finding that I was going past Hyde Park corner, said that he was going the same way, and we walked along together. When we reached the corner, as I was crossing Piccadilly, he said =■ he was to have an early dinner the next day, and afterwards take his guests to Vauxhall : would I come ? I answered that I should be glad to come, and was about to add that I had not the slightest idea what his name was, when he handed me his card, told me the hour for dinner, and we bade each other good-night. When I got to a street light I saw that I had been spending the evening with Thackeray. 'Vanity Fair' was the only novel which he had then published in full, and we were not as familiar with his appearance then as we afterwards became. " The next day I went to the dinner, and found Drawing from Thackeray Sketch Book THE UNITED STATES 311 as companions most of the men who figure on the platform with him in the 2d number of the 12th volume of Punch: Doyle, Tom Taylor, Lemon, Leech, Douglas Jerrold, etc. We went to Vauxhall after dinner, and spent a pleasant evening there. A little later, when Pendennis went to the same place, I understood why we had been there. The acquaint- ances I made then I had most friendly relations with afterwards. They made my stay of three years in England a most happy one. "In 1852 Thackeray made his first visit to the United States. I followed about a month later, reaching New York on New Year's day, 1853. I had hardly got into the hotel on Broadway, nearly opposite Grace Church, when he appeared and said he had an invitation for me to a reception party to be given that evening at a villa in the country, and would call for me. He came in a sleigh at the appointed hour, and took me to the out-of-town villa on the west side of Fifth Avenue, between 37th and 38th streets. It was indeed out of town at that time. •. . . " You ask me about our lower floor in Houston St. Like all New York houses of that day, it con- tained two rooms (with closets). The front was our dining-room. The closets between were our pantry ; and the rear room was occupied as a bedroom by Samuel E. Lyon, whose family lived in Westchester County. He practised law in New York, where he was in partnership with Alexander Hamilton, grand- 312 THACKERAY IN son of the Alexander Hamilton. They had a large business, and often he had to stay over in town. When he did he made his home with us. . . ." To the Bower of Virtue Thackeray was again heartily welcomed on his arrival in New York, and a corner was found for Charles, who was an excel- lent specimen of the good English valet. Curtis recalled Thackeray's expressions- of delight, and beaming with happiness at finding himself back on Broadway again, also how he would drop in on him at his editorial sanctum no. 10 Park Place, and lay- ing down his watch on the desk or table, greet him with, " George William, I will give you just fifteen minutes," or, " My dear boy, can you waste a quarter of an hour on an hidle Hinglishman ? " Sometimes the two friends would walk across City Hall Park, and take lunch together at Windust's in Park Row. During his second visit, Lester Wallack became a favourite with Thackeray. In his " Memories of Fifty Years," the popular actor writes of the cele- brated author : " I thought him with his great height, his spectacles, which gave him a pedantic appearance, and his chin carried in the air, the most ppmpous, supercilious person I had ever met, but I lived to alter that opinion, and in a very short time. Thackeray then lived with a very great and dear friend of mine and my father's, and they had rooms together in Houston Street. I had a house next door but one to them, and this is how I became so intimate with Thackeray. The name CO o p B 1 ^J^kiM l^^^ .^-^.. THE UNITED STATES 313 of this gentleman was William Duer Robinson, a member of an old and well-known family, a family whose property was confiscated in revolutionary times because they stuck to the King. Thackeray, I suppose, took a fancy to me : at any rate it was understood every night when I came home from acting, that if I saw a light in a certain window I was to go in. When I did find them in we never parted until half past two or three in the morning. Then was the time to see Thackeray at his best, because then he was like a boy : he did not attempt to be the genius of the party : he would let Robin- son or me do the entertaining, while he would be the audience. It did not matter how ridiculous or impossible might be the things I said, he would laugh till the tears ran down his face : such an un- sophisticated gentle creature as he was. He gave a large dinner, at which I remember were my father, George William Curtis, Mr. Robinson and myself, eighteen in all. It was the most delightful evening that could possibly be imagined. . . . Curtis and I sang a duet I remember, ' Drink to Me Only with Thine Eyes,' and we were asked to repeat it three or four times. This all took place about the year 1856. On one occasion there was to be a dinner party of four. Thackeray said it might probably be the last time he should meet us convivially dur- ' ing the visit, so we agreed to dine together with him in Robinson's rooms. The party was to con- sist of Mr. Robinson, my father and myself. After 314 THACKERAY IN waiting a long time for Thackeray, at last there came a ring at the bell, and the waiter brought up a large parcel and a note from him, saying that a letter he had received compelled him to pack up as quickly as possible and start for England by the first steamer, adding, ' By the time you receive this, dear William, I shall be almost out. of the harbour. Let me ask you to accept this little gift, as a re- membrance of the many, many pleasant days and nights we have passed together.' " The present was a beautiful silver tankard, simply inscribed, " W. D. Robinson from W. M. Thackeray, April 26, 1856," which is still in the possession of Mr. Robinson's family, and to be seen in the accompanying illus- tration. Another equally prized treasure is a copy of "The Virginians," presented to him by the author, with the following daintily written inscription : " In the U. States and in the Queen's dominions All people have a right to their opinions, And many people don't much relish ' The Virginians.' Peruse my book, dear R., and if you find it A little to your taste, I hope you '11 bind it." A surviving friend of Lester Wallack asserts that the successful play of " Rosedale " was written as the result of a conversation at one of the nodes ambrosian* at No. 604 Houston Street. The actor questioned an assertion of Thackeray's, that the lovers in a popular play must be very young per- sons, Wallack later putting the novelist's theory to Silver Pitcher presented as a Parting Gift by Thackeray to William Duer Robinson THE UNITED STATES 315 the test by writing " Rosedale," in which, as will be remembered by many of my readers, Elliott Grey and Rosa Lee are both rather pass'e for young lovers. In addition to George Bancroft, who knew Byron, Thackeray became well acquainted with Charles King, president of Columbia College, who, with his elder brother John, was at school at Harrow with Byron and Peel, their father, Rufus King, being then American minister to the court of St. James. This fine type of gentleman of the old school ex- pressed to the English author admiration for Byron's courage. He befriended a delicate boy, saying to his protege : " If any one bullies you tell me, and I will thrash him if I can." Considering his lameness, Byron was good at cricket, * said Mr. King, who also knew Peel, " the greatest member of Parliament who ever lived," and Palmerston, who left Harrow a hundred years ago ! James G. King, a younger brother of John and Charles, was Thackeray's New York banker. In the spring of 1856, Thackeray was unwisely advised by Mr. Reed and other Philadelphia friends to repeat his lectures on the English Humourists in that city. The undertaking was a failure, owing to the lateness of the season, and the lectures having been printed by the Harpers in 1853. Thackeray 1 Byron's account of a match in which he played is to be found in one of his letters from Harrow. The poet says, "We have played the Eton and were most confoundedly beat." 316 THACKERAY IN took his disappointment good-humouredly, but ex- pressed much sympathy with the man of business. " I don't mind the empty benches, but I cannot bear to see that sad, pale-faced young man as I come out who is losing money on my account." He generously returned a sufficient sum to cover the amount which had been lost in the speculation by the young Philadelphian, who had paid Thackeray a specified sum to repeat the lectures. The modern Fielding was well designated by an English friend as " Good Will." The incident is mentioned in a letter to Mr. Reed written on the day he sailed. Before sailing for Liverpool, Thackeray gave a farewell dinner at Delmonico's, then on the corner {uf*« y Jk. Aha (UtA Aum. t*Ju. \uta aX Vti**unu- of Broadway and Chambers Street, opposite A. T. Stewart & Co.'s. Thirty-two guests sat down with him, including Reed and several other Philadelphia friends, who came to New York to attend the entertainment. The last survivor said, " We had a glorious night of it;" and he remembered that the party included Cozzens, Cranch, Curtis, Daly, THE UNITED STATES 317 Dana, Charles A. Davis, Duer, Hackett, Halleck, Hicks, Charles King, Robinson, Taylor, the two Wallacks, Ward, and Young. Alas ! "All, all are gone, the old familiar faces." " Thackeray was in fine spirits," writes George William Curtis, " and when the cigars were lighted he said that there should be no speech-making, but that everybody, according to the old rule of festivity, should sing a song or tell a story. James Wallack was one of the guests, and with a kind of shyness which was unexpected but very agree- able in a veteran actor, he pleaded very earnestly that he could not sing and knew no story. But with friendly persistence, which yet was not immoderate, Thackeray declared that no excuse could be allowed, because it would be a manifest injustice to every other modest man at table and put a summary end to the hilarity. c Now, Wallack,' he continued, 'we all know you to be a truthful man. You can, since you say so, neither sing a song nor tell a story. But I tell you what you can do better than any living man — you can give us the great scene from " The Rent Day." ' There A Thackeray Sketch 318 THACKERAY IN was a burst of enthusiastic agreement, and old Wallack, smiling and yielding, still sitting at the table in his evening dress, proceeded in a most effective and touching recitation from one of his most famous parts. No enjoyment of- it was greater and no applause sincerer than those of Thackeray, who presently sang his ' Little Billee,' with infinite gusto." As a pendant to the above, Judge Daly, the last of the party, after more than twoscore years, remembered two additional incidents of the evening : that the poet Halleck, remaining in his seat, — for, as he said, he could not speak standing, — made a remarkably bright little speech, and that Curtis and Lester Wallack sang several duets. Of this delightful dinner Curtis relates, in one of his incomparable " Easy Chair " essays, an amus- ing instance of the marvellous assurance and exqui- site courtesy of Thackeray's particular friend, " Sam " Ward. He writes : " The Easy Chair re- calls one incident which was a striking illustration of the masterly and phenomenal assurance of a well- known figure in the Bohemian circles of New York at that time, but whom it must veil under the name of Uncle Ulysses. By, the side of the Chair sat a poet, whom also it must protect by the name of Candide, for a simpler and sincerer literary man never lived. It was in the time, as Thackeray was fond of saying, Planco Consule, which in this instance means in the time of the old '. Putnam's Monthly THE UNITED STATES 319 Ute «UJA &f ' fool* * Alii. k/W*. , Facsimile of " Thi Church Porch " 320 THACKERAY IN Magazine.' The number for the month had just been published, and Candide had contributed to it his ' Hesperides,' a charming poem, although the reader will not find that title in his works. He and the Easy Chair were speaking of the maga- zine, when Uncle Ulysses, who had never met Candide, and knew him only by name, dropped into the chair bevond him, and at a convenient moment made some pleasant remark to the Easy Chair across Candide, who sat placidly smoking. ' By-the-bye,' said Uncle Ulysses presently, 'what a good number of " Putnam " it is this month ! But, my dear Easy Chair, can you tell me why it is that all our young American poets write noth- ing but Longfellow and water ? Here in this month's " Putnam " there is a very pretty poem called w Hesperides." Very pretty, but nothing but diluted Longfellow.' " This was said to the Easy Chair most unsus- piciously across the author of the poem, and at the moment it was uttered, the Easy Chair, to prevent any further disaster, broke in and said, 'Yes, it is a delightful poem, written by our friend Candide who sits beside you. Pray permit me to intro- duce you. Mr. Candide, this is Uncle Ulysses.' Candide turned, evidently swelling with anger, and the Easy Chair was extremely uncertain of the event, when Uncle Ulysses, with exquisite urbanity and a look of surprise and pleasure, held out his hand, and said : ' Mr. Candide, this is a pleasure THE UNITED STATES 321" which I have long anticipated. I am very much honoured in making your acquaintance, and I was just speaking to the Easy Chair of your delightful poem just published in "Putnam." I congratulate you with all my heart.' An American Book-plate " Candide, astonished but perplexed, and yielding to the perfect bonhomie of Uncle Ulysses, half involuntarily put out his hand, which our uncle shook warmly, and in five minutes his fascinating tongue had charmed Candide so completely that the Easy Chair is confident that the good poet VOL. I. — 21. 322 THACKERAY IN always supposed that in some extraordinary manner he had entirely misunderstood Uncle Ulysses's re- mark touching the imitative tendency of young American poets." Two days before his departure on the American steamer " Baltic " of the Collins Company, which sailed for Liverpool April 24, Thackeray dined with Charles Augustus Davis, meeting, among others, " lovely Sally Baxter " and the poet Hal- leck. At that pleasant dinner-party he expressed great regret that he came to this country too late to meet Cooper, for whose writings he entertained the highest admiration, and referred to the affect- ing final scene in " The Prairie " when the dying Leatherstocking said, " Here ! " as surpassing any- thing that he had met with in English literature, saying, " ' La Longue Carabine ' is perhaps the greatest character in fiction, and better than any in Scott's lot." April 24. My dear Reed, — When you get this, . . . remum- mum-ember me to kick-kick-kind ffu-fffu-ffriends ... a sudden resolution — to — mummum-morrow ... in the Bu-bu-baltic. Good-by, my dear kind friend, and all kind friends in Philadelphia. I did n't think of going away when I left home this morning ; but it 's the best way. I think it is best to send back 25 per cent, to poor . Will you kindly give him the enclosed ; and depend on it I shall go and see Mrs. Booth when I go ! [fl -a Oh a, Oh _g 4J o A c fe QJ c J3 '5 C o M 6 ai & <-. -T3 4J CO £ fi .2 o i;* '-t-T O aj B c h J3 .2 t -t- >> ^ O _Q o > c IS — -a t-, t- u ft cu 4_, -S i2 I >- OCJ=i 1 M ! & 8« _* O CO *-l-l J3 3 ° h 2 ^ O 7 M ^ « S $ Ph 3 u THE UNITED STATES 323 to' London, and tell her all about you. My heart is uncommonly heavy ; and I am yours gratefully and affectionately. W. M. T. A few days after Thackeray sailed, in speaking to a young friend of the exquisite scene in "The Newcomes," when the dying colonel drew himself up, exclaiming, " Adsum !" Halleck remarked that the similarity between this and the Cooper scene, to which attention had been called at the Davis dinner, was certainly a singular literary coincidence, but un- doubtedly undesigned, adding, " I know of nothing in nineteenth-century fiction likely to outlive them." Bayard Taylor writes to a friend, " Thackeray went off in the Baltic on Saturday, running off from his friends for fear of saying good-bye. I saw him off. He seemed sorry to leave." Still we must believe that he was happy to return to " the familiar London flagstones, and the library at the Athenaeum, and the ride in the park, and the pleasant society afterwards." The first message received from Thackeray after his departure from this country was addressed to Mr. William Duer Robinson. On board last day. May 7, 1856. My dear old Robinson, — I tell you that writing is just as dismal and disgusting as saying goodbye. I hate it and but for a sense ef duty I would n't write at all — confound me if I would. But you know after a fellow has been so uncommonly hospitable and kind and that 324 THACKERAY IN sort of thing — a fellow ought you see to write and tell a fellow that a fellow 's very much obliged and — in a word you understand. Sir, you made me happy when I was with you, you made me sorry to come away and you make me happy now when I think what a kind generous friendly W D R you are. You have Davis back in the Bower of Virtue — you '11 fill that jug one day and drink to my health won't you ? and when you come to Europe you '11 come to me & my girls mind, and we '11 see if there is not some good claret at 36 Onslow Square. . , . Home, (wiz 36 Onslow Square, Brompton London) May 9. * We did pass the bar, and did n't I have a good dinner at the Adelphi, and was n't I glad to get back to town yesterday, and wasn't there a great dinner at the Garrick Club (the Annual Shakespeare dinner w? ought to have come ofF on the 23d ult. but was put off on ace. of a naval review) and did n't I make a Yankee speech, and oh lor' Robinson ! have n't I got a headache this morning ? I 'm ashamed to ask for a sober-water that 's the fact. — And so here 's the old house, the old room the old teapot by my bedside, the old trees nodding in at the window — it looks as if I 'd never been away — and that it is a dream I have been making. Well, in my dream I dreamt there was an uncommonly good fellow by name W D R. and I dreamed that he treated me with all sorts of kindness, and I send him and J C B D. 1 and D D 2 (and what 's L's name down-stairs ? 3 ) my heartiest regards ; and when my young women come home I shall tell them what a deal of kindness their Papa had across the water. So good bye, my dear Robinson & believe me always grate- fully yours, W. M. T. 1 J. C. Bancroft Davis. 2 Denning Duer. s Samuel E. Lyons. THE UNITED STATES 325 Tell Jim Wallack that we had n't a single actor at the Shakespeare dinner and that F. Fladgate and G. Dance send their best remembrances to him. How did that Sunday dinner go off? Was it as bad as the dreary Friday ? " Soon after the burly Briton's arrival in London one of his friends writes, " Yesterday I met Thack- eray who is just returned from the United States. He thinks there is every probability of the quarrel leading to war for there is a very hostile spirit, con- stantly increasing throughout the States, and an evi- dent desire to quarrel with us. He says he has never met a single man who is not entirely per- suaded, that they are in the right, and we are in the wrong, and they are equally persuaded if war ensues they will give us a good thrashing ; they don't care for consequences ; their riches" are immense, and two hundred thousand men would appear in arms at a moment's notice." * In a copy of the first edition of 1824, of "Im- aginary Conversations," may be seen the following stinging epigram on the Georges written on a fly- leaf by an early possessor of the precious volume. These lines by Landor have frequently been at- tributed to Thackeray, and have also very often been misquoted : — " Landor was with Thackeray after his lectures on the Georges were delivered in London, and said : — 1 Henry Greville's Memoirs, June i, 1856. 326 THACKERAY IN " ' I sing the Georges Four, For Providence could stand no more. Some say that far the worst Of all the four was George the First. But still by some 't is reckon'd That worser still was George the Second. No mortal ever said one word Of good or bad of George the Third. When George the Fourth from Earth Ascended Thank God the line of Georges ended.' " Extempore by Landor." Writing to the late Baron Tauchnitz in May, 1856, Thackeray says: "Your letter of the a 6th March has only just found me on my return from America, where I made a prosperous voyage, though I have not quite reached the sum of jive hundred thousand dollars, which the Allgemeine Zei- tung states to be the present amount of my savings. Don't be afraid of your English — a letter con- taining £ — is always in a pretty style. You are welcome to the ' Miscellanies ' for that sum ; in the forthcoming volumes is a novel about ' Frederic the Great.' I don't think I ever sent you the sealed paper investing you with the right over the ' Newcomes ' : I fear I have lost it ; but you need not fear that I shall shrink from my bargain. Will you come to London this year ? Give a notice, and believe me very very faithfully yours. . . ." Lowell writes from London to Charles Eliot Norton, August 11, 1856: "Thackeray gave us Crayon Sketch by Samuel Laurence for his Portrait of Thackerav THE UNITED STATES 327 (Story, Cranch — whom I brought over from Paris — and me) a dinner at the Garrick club. The place is full of pictures of actors and actresses, some of them admirable — one of Garrick as Macbeth, for example — especially those by ZofFany. The din- ner was very funny. Thackeray had ordered it for two, and was afraid there would not be enough — an apprehension which he expressed very forcibly to the waiter. He said something to Story which pleased him wonderfully. There were some cut- lets which did look rather small. ' Eat one of 'em, Story,' said he ; ' it will make you feel a little hungry at first, but you '11 soon get over it.' The benevolent tone he gave to the soon was delight- fully comic. After dinner we went to a room over the 'Cyder Cellar' to smoke. Thackeray called for a glass of gin and water, and presently sent for the last ' Newcomes,' saying that he would read us the death of Colonel Newcome. While he was reading, came in a tall man in his shirt- sleeves and cried, ' Well, Thack, I 've read your last number. Don't like it. It's a failure. Not so good as the rest!' This was Maurice John O'Connell. 1 Thackeray was not at all disturbed, but sent him off cavalierly. While reading one of the worst tirades of the 'Campaigner' he inter- rupted himself to say, 'That's my she- devil of a mother-in-law, you know, whom I have the good 1 Lowell should have called him Morgan John O'Connell, a son of the more celebrated father, Liberator Daniel O'Connell. 328 THACKERAY IN luck to possess still.' I complained of his marry- ing Clive and Ethel as an artistic blunder. He acknowledged that it was so. ' But then, you see, what could a fellow do ? So many people wanted 'em married. To be sure, I had to kill off poor little Rosey rather suddenly, but shall not a man U/Yiu3U«A«'zA *U*L 1*6. lux ,JuA^ b*!^ m». u«» iv*M4<* * ***tt* l{ Ji. I wit Ji~l ij«4. Unto. Ur^, I miHyu.- fim,tMu, K lyuvcLtKuXo\^i luW C*H*ui it JfVU All (j Au. Uwi&l ■ "Ilu46 - f Ou tu> WUT*. • ^iwAl^* U»^| a little later, a portrait of Tennyson, with the mes- sage accompanying it, to which were added a few lines. Taylor appended his initials and the date, June, 1857, so that, as may be seen in the facsimile, the same page contains the chirography of the three T's, — Tennyson, Thackeray, and Taylor. The original is framed with the portrait, and belongs to Mrs. Bayard Taylor, as does the last photograph of Thackeray. It was presented to Mr. Taylor after her father's death, by Mrs. Ritchie. In his " At 1 William Young, editor of the "Albion." THE UNITED STATES 339 Home and Abroad," Taylor describes a pleasant annual dinner given by Thackeray in July, 1857, to the writers for "Punch," at which he and three other Americans were present. The others he describes as " a noted sculptor, the architect-in-chief of the Central Park, and an ex-editor of the New York ' Times.' " Mr. Taylor writes : " The guests assembled in Mr. Thackeray's drawing-room, most of them wearing easy black cravats instead of the stiff white ' chokers ' which English society requires, and marched thence to the dining-room without any particular order of precedence. Our giant host, upon whose head lie the snows of wisdom, not of age, illustrated the grandeur of cheerfulness, as he took his place at the head of the table. The eyes which can pierce through the triple mail of shams and hypocrisies, sheathed their trenching glances, and beamed only a cordial hospitality. At the other end of the table sat Mark Lemon, his very oppo- site in appearance." 36 Onslow Square, 29 May [1857] My dear Bayard, — I have written a letter to Tennyson containing comments upon your character, which I could n't safely trust to your own hand — and so, you '11 go to Fresh- water in the Isle of Wight and he '11 be prepared to receive you. The girls are sorry not to see the sisters who must have had a famous time and we here shall be delighted to shake hands with you — A month sooner we would not have let you camp out elsewhere, but I have just pulled part of my house down and have only one bed-chamber 34° THACKERAY IN / ^*- i 'J***, u+ ^ >ty ^6 £ frr are Bayard Taylor' 's) THE UNITED STATES 341 where there were to be two. But live as close as you can to us and eat, drink, smoke, come in and out as you please, and you'll be sure to please W. M. T. The following brief letter was addressed to T. Buchanan Read, an American poet and painter, who was then visiting Mr. William Thornton, of Whalley Range, Manchester. An explanation of the allu- sion to " electioneering " follows the epistle in which it appears : — 36 Onslow Square, August 3, 1857. My dear Read : Thank you for your volume. I did not know where to send you to acknowledge the book. Would say that I have not had time to read it yet — have been away out of town on business, which occupies every hour of my time electioneering — have been ill since my return and so busy that the nurse has had to sit in the ante- . chamber all the while. Tomorrow we go to Brighton and I shall see your icebergs from the sea-shore there. Thank Mr. Thornton for his offer of hospitality, but I am prom- ised if I go to Manchester, to my friend Deane, and when I go it will be in force with my daughters in company. I shall be delighted to have a bill of the ancestral printing : and hope that we may soon have more meetings in our country or in yours. Always yours, W. M. Thackeray. In the summer of 1857, the novelist earnestly endeavoured to enter the House of Commons, and actually stood for the city of Oxford. Fortunately, as his best English' and American friends believed, he was then too far advanced in life to make his 34 2 THACKERAY IN mark at Westminster, and would have been lost in a crowd of mediocrities. He did much better when, addressing the electors after his defeat, he undertook to " retire and take my place with my pen and ink at my desk," which he did immediately. The result was an American novel, the first number of which was issued in the following November, with a whole session full of orations addressed to Mr. Speaker. Just before the election Thackeray sent the following half-dozen droll lines to his daughters, dated Oxford, J ily n, 1 857 : — " My dearest little women, as far as I can see, The independent Woters is all along with me, But nevertheless I own it, with not a little funk, The more respectable classes they go with Wiscount Monck ; But a fight without a tussle it is not worth a pin, And so St. George for England and may the best man win." On the eve of the election Lord Monck with- drew in favour of Mr. Edward Cardwell, a distin- guished public man and a warm friend of Sir Robert Peel. Of his successful adversary Thackeray gal- lantly said : " I never should have stood against Card- well if I had known he was coming down." This contest is otherwise celebrated for a charming refer- ence made to it by Charles Dickens, and for one of the neatest and most graceful compliments paid to him by the " Wiscount." After Thackeray's death ? in his tribute to him, Boz wrote: "He dispatched his agent to me from Oxford with a droll note (to which he afterwards added a verbal postscript), urg- THE UNITED STATES 343 ing me to come down and make a speech, and tell them who he was, for he doubted whether more than two of the Electors had ever heard of him, and he thought there might be as many as six or eight who had heard of me." At the time of the con- test a sort of catchword, "May the best man win," was the constant refrain. Meeting Lord Monck in the street Thackeray had a little friendly talk over the prospects of the fight, and on taking leave re- marked, " May the best man win." "I hope not," said Lord Monck, with a courtly bow and a mean- ing glance at his giant opponent. Apropos of this charming incident, there comes back to the writer the recollection of a Thackeray Irish story as related by Curtis: "An Irishman who appeared after a wedding with a broken head and tattered Thackeray, by Frederick Walker l 1 Sir John Millais said of Walker, who died in 1875, a g e d on 'y thirty-five, that he was "the greatest artist of the century." 344 THACKERAY IN attire, was asked what had happened, and he an- swered, c I met a man at the wedding, that I did n't know, and I said to him " Who are you ? " And he says to me "I 'm the best man," and be me saul, I soon found out he was.' " As an appropriate pen- dant to this may be added the following incident of a more modern date : — " So ye are goin' to marry Garrity's widdy, are yez?" " Oi am." " And fwat will yez do fwin she takes to tellin' yez how much the better mon her first mon was ? " " She won't. Did n't Oi used to be lickin' Gar- rity — God rest 'im — about once a fortnight fer t'ree years ? " Apropos of his contest for Oxford, Thackeray wrote to an English friend in 1858 : "I don't know when I shall have another thousand pounds to spare for an election fight — but having tasted of the excitement, have a strong inclination to repeat it. Novel spinning is not enough occupation for a man of six-and-forty, and though I am so dilatory with my own work, I think I should he all the. better' for having a good deal more. Did you hear that some of your young gentlemen wanted to make a Lord Rector of me ? l e Domine, non sum dignus.' They should go for graver characters than satirical novelists, and Lord Mahon is just the proper man you ought to have for that quaint office." 1 /. e. of Marischal College and University. THE UNITED STATES 345 In place of a Mrs. Trollope or Charles Dickens ac- count of the country, which the latter lived to regret, Thackeray complimented us by writing a delightful story of the days of George the First and George IAOV IOUI1A OH IRE BALConr AWAITINC TH6 AHMVaV. Of T "t nvitfm MAN irUt^r- * tf. V. ^W/&^ G-vtlfU~ to. I$$£ the Second, containing a few of the author's Amer- ican recollections. To John Esten Cooke he said, " I shall write a novel of American life with the title of c The Two Virginians.' The scene is to be in Virginia. There will be two brothers as the prominent characters : one will take the English 34 6 THACKERAY IN side in the War of the Revolution, and the other the American, and they will both be in love with the same girl." Thackeray is believed to have been in part indebted to William B. Reed of Philadelphia, and to Mr. Prescott's crossed swords which he saw in the historian's Boston residence, for the concep- tion of the story which appeared as "The Virginians." In 1857 the first number was published,. and the twenty-fourth and last two years later. This Amer- ican novel, as all readers of this volume are probably well aware, is a continuation of "Henry Esmond." It takes up by no means the story of " Esmond," and hardly the characters. The twin brothers, who are called the Virginians, are grandsons of Henry Esmond and his wife, Lady Castlewood. Their only daughter, born on the estate in Virginia, had married a Warrington, and the brothers are the issue of that marriage. Perhaps the most interesting character in the narrative is the Baroness Bernstein, who in the novel to which " The Virginians " is a sequel appears in her youth as Beatrix Esmond. Many other personages that are included in the earlier work are carried into the American story. Thackeray did this in other instances. Major Dobbin of " Vanity Fair " reappears in " Pen- dennis," and so on. This was his most profitable work, the author receiving about thirty thousand dollars, being more than was paid for " Vanity Fair," " Henry Esmond," and " The Newcomes," " the quadrilateral of Thackeray's fame," as his THE UNITED STATES 347 four chief novels were called by an English con- temporary. After expressing his astonishment at the number of admirable novels Alexander Dumas pere pro- duced, Thackeray alludes to the fact that he was not the author of many -of his books, and writes, " Why not ? Does not the chief cook have aides under him ? Did not Rubens's pupils paint on his canvases ? Had not Lawrence assistants for his backgrounds ? " Then he suggests how convenient it would be if he could give his clerk a few points in the morning, such as : " Mr. Jones, if you please, the Archbishop must die to-day in about five pages. Turn to article Dropsy (or what you will) in the Encyclopaedia. Take care that there are no medical blunders in his death. Group his daughters, phy- sician, chaplains round him. In Wales's London, letter B, third shelf, you will find an account of Lambeth, and some prints of the place. Colour in with local colouring. The daughter will come down and speak to her lover in his wherry at Lambeth stairs." This amusing suggestion is'one that some readers of the "Roundabout Papers," in which it occurs, might be inclined to take seriously in view of the claim made by many Marylanders that John P. Kennedy wrote a portion, if not an entire chapter of " The Virginians." Some faint colour was given to this belief by Thackeray's frequent appeals to American friends for aid, occurring in several communications of this 348 THACKERAY IN period, including the following one, addressed to William D. Robinson, " Cashier of the Customs, New York," which Mrs. Ritchie describes as " a delightful letter," adding as to the Intentique Ora Tenebant chapter : " I think it can be scarcely necessary to contradict the assertion that Mr. Ken- nedy wrote a chapter in ' The Virginians,' which is entirely in my father's handwriting. No doubt Mr. Kennedy gave him the facts about the scenery, but I am sure that my father wrote his own books, for no one could have written them for him." Mr. Dandridge Kennedy writes from Warrenton, Virginia: "While in this country, Thackeray was, for a time, the guest of my uncle, John P. Kennedy, and during that period my uncle took him on a visit to his brother, Mr. Andrew Kennedy, in Vir- ginia. I believe that many of the family have cred- ited the chapter you speak of to my uncle, but I cannot positively assert it. Mr. Latrobe was very intimate with my uncle, and, I think, knew much of his literary and other work, and would be careful in any statement he made. I saw Mr. Thackeray while he was staying with my uncle, and knew that the latter gave him much information as to the Vir- ginia people and country, and that he took him on the visit to Virginia that he might see it for himself. I am not sure that they visited the exact spot of Virginia that Thackeray describes, and about which my uncle had written a great deal." The death of Sir John Millais brought to light THE UNITED STATES 349 an anecdote of his about Thackeray which serves to discredit still more the Kennedy claim, if further comment on the episode is called for. According Thackeray. Punch Picture of Thackeray and Jerrold AUTHORS' MISERIES, No. 6 Old Gentleman : Miss Wiggets : Two Authors Old Gentleman : "I am sorry to see you occupied, my dear Miss Wiggets, with that trivial paper, 'Punch.' A railway is not a place, in my opinion, for jokes. I never joke — never." Miss W. s "So I should think, sir." Old Gentleman : " And besides, are you aware who are the conductors of that paper, and that they are Chartists, Deists, Atheists, Anarchists, to a man ? I have it from the best authority, that they meet together once a week in a tavern in Saint Giles's, where they concoct their infamous print. The chief part of their income is derived from threatening letters, which they send to the nobility and gentry. The principal writer is a returned convict. Two have been tried at the Old Bailey ; and as for their artist — as for their artist . . ." Guard s " Swin-dum ! Sta-tion I " {Exeunt Two Authors. 35° THACKERAY IN to Sir John, " the novelist was girding at the critics, some of whom complained that one of his chapters had been written loosely and without care. c To show how little they know,' remarked Thackeray, 'I may tell you that I wrote that chapter four times over, and — each time it was worse.' " " I hear," observed Thackeray to Douglas Jer- rold, " that you have said ' The Virginians ' is the worst novel I ever wrote." " You are wrong," re- plied Jerrold ; " I said it is the worst novel anybody ever wrote." " And yet," remarked Mr. Curtis, " the work has taken its rightful place among the masterpieces of the English language, although sur- passed by his three more important publications." Thackeray and Jerrold sat near each other at the weekly "Punch " dinners, and there was as little love as space between them, but Thackeray wisely said, " What is the use of quarrelling with a man, if you have to meet him every Wednesday at dinner ? " Apropos of . /frit, /Cwtut / *&*U4/ £ iS / fruA/ fU*v * %l*c«Zi+u -' /ft#u£* 4& 4&4 £*c& ty* aaZi*4y /tenses rtu4 * jUm* <**f ttvuf £#>uu aft* /to&ti&S 6 4%a* M E 2 h J3 - >■. C _Q O ^ S S W a o K -d - c - g c c h THE UNITED STATES 41 need it ? " Fortunately, I had no occasion to avail myself of his generous offer; but I shall never forget the impulsive, open-hearted kindness with which it was made. I have had personal experience of Thackeray's sense of justice, as well as his generosity. And here let me say that he was that rarest of men, a cosmopolitan Englishman, — loving his own land with a sturdy, enduring love, yet blind neither to its faults nor to the virtues of other lands. In fact, for the very reason that he was unsparing in deal- ing with his countrymen, he considered hirnself justified in freely criticising other nations. Yet he never joined in the popular depreciation of everything American : his principal reason for not writing a book, as every other English author does who visits us, was that it would be superficial, and might be unjust. I have seen him, in America, indignantly resent an ill-natured sneer at "John Bull," — and, on the other hand, I have known him to take our part, at home. Shortly after Emerson's " English Traits " appeared, I was one of a dinner-party at his house, and the book was the principal topic of conversation. A member of Parliament took the opportunity of expressing his views to the only American present. " What does Emerson know of England ? " he asked. "He spends a few weeks here, and thinks he understands us. His work is false and prejudiced and shallow." Thackeray happening to pass at the moment, the member arrested him with — " What do you think of the book, Mr. Thackeray ? " " I don't agree with Emerson." " I was sure you would not ! " the member triumphantly exclaimed; " I was sure you, would think as I do." " I think," said Thackeray, quietly, " that he is altogether 42 THACKERAY IN too laudatory. He admires our best qualities so greatly that he does not scourge us for our faults as we deserve." Towards the end of May, 1861, I saw Thackeray again in London. During our first interview, we talked of little but the war, which had then but just begun. His chief feeling on the subject was a profound regret, not only for the nation itself, whose fate seemed thus to be placed in jeopardy, but also, he said, because he had many dear friends, both North and South, who must now fight as ene- mies. I soon found that his ideas concerning the cause of the war were as incorrect as were those of most English- men at that time. He understood neither the real nature nor the extent of the conspiracy, supposing that Free Trade was the chief object of the South, and that the right of Secession was tacitly admitted by the Constitution. I there- upon endeavoured to place the facts of the case before him in their true light, saying, in conclusion, — " Even if you should not believe this statement, you must admit, that, if we believe it, we are justified in suppressing the Rebellion by force." He said, — " Come, all this is exceedingly interesting. It is quite new to me, and I am sure it will be new to most of us. Take your pen and make an article out of what you have told me, and I will put it into the next number of the • Cornhill Magazine.' It is just what we want." I had made preparation to leave London for the Conti- nent on the following day, but he was so urgent that I should stay two days longer and write the article that I finally con- sented to do so. I was the more desirous of complying, since Mr. Clay's ill-advised letter to the London "Times" had recently been published, and was accepted by English- men as the substance of all that could be said on the side of the Union. Thackeray appeared sincerely gratified by THE UNITED STATES 43 my compliance with his wishes, and immediately sent for a cab, saying, — " Now we will go down to the publishers, and have the matter settled at once. I am bound to con- sult them, but I am sure they will see the advantage of such an article." We found the managing publisher in his office. He looked upon the matter, however, in a very different light. He admitted the interest which a statement of the charac- ter, growth, and extent of the Southern Conspiracy would possess for the readers of the " Cornhill," but objected to its publication, on the ground that it would call forth a counter-statement, which he could not justly exclude, and thus introduce a political controversy into the magazine. I insisted that my object was not to take notice of any state- ments published in England up to that time, but to repre- sent the crisis as it was understood in the Loyal States and by the National Government ; that I should do this simply to explain and justify the action of the latter; and that, having once placed the loyal view of the subject fairly before the English people, I should decline any controversy. The events of the war, I added, would soon draw the public attention away from its origin, and the "Cornhill," before the close of the struggle, would probably be obliged to admit articles of a more strongly partisan character than that which I proposed to write. The publisher, neverthe- less, was firm in his refusal, not less to Thackeray's disap- pointment than my own. He decided upon what then seemed to him to be good business-reasons ; and the same consideration, doubtless, has since led him to accept state- ments favourable to the side of the Rebellion. As we were walking away, Thackeray said to me, — " I am anxious that these things should be made public : 44 THACKERAY IN suppose you write a brief article, and send it to the ' Times ; ? " " I would do so," I answered, " if there were any prob- ability that it would be published." " I will try to arrange that," said he. " I know Mr. " (one of the editors), " and will call upon him at once. I will ask for the publication of your letter as a personal favour to myself." We parted at the door of a club-house, to meet again the same afternoon, when Thackeray hoped to have the matter settled as he desired. He did not, however, succeed in finding Mr. , but sent him a letter. I thereupon went to work the next day, and prepared a careful, cold, dispassionate statement, so condensed that it would have made less than half a column of the " Times." I sent it to the editor, referring him' to Mr. Thackeray's letter in my behalf, and that is the last I ever heard of it. All of Thackeray's American friends will remember the feelings of pain and regret with which they read his " Roundabout . Paper " in the " Cornhin Magazine," in (February, I think) 1862, — wherein he reproaches our entire people as being willing to confiscate the stocks and other property owned in this country by Englishmen, out of spite for their disappointment in relation to the Trent affair, and directs his New- York bankers to sell out all his investments, and remit the proceeds to London, without delay. It was not his fierce denunciation of such national dishonesty that we deprecated, but his apparent belief in its possibility. We felt that he, of all Englishmen, should have understood us better. We regretted, for Thackeray's own sake, that he had permitted himself, in some spleenful moment, to commit an in- THE UNITED STATES 45 justice, which would sooner or later be apparent to his own mind. Three months afterwards (in May, 1862), I was again in London. I had not heard from Thackeray since the publication of the " Roundabout " letter to his bankers, 1 and was uncertain how far his evident ill-temper on that occasion had subsided; but I owed him too much kindness, I honoured him too profoundly, not to pardon him, unasked, my share of the offence. I found him installed in the new house he had built in Palace Gardens, Kensington. He received me with the frank welcome of old, and when we were alone, in the privacy of his library, made an oppor- tunity (intentionally, I am sure) of approaching the subject, which, he knew, I could not have forgotten. I asked him why he wrote the article. " I was unwell," he answered, — " you know what the moral effects of my attacks are, — and I was indignant that such a shameful proposition should be made in your American newspapers, and not a single voice be raised to rebuke it." " But you certainly knew," said I, " that the does not represent American opinion. I assure you, that no honest, respectable man in the United States ever enter- tained the idea of cheating an English stockholder." " I should hope so, too," he answered ; " but when I saw the same thing in the -, , which, you will admit, is a paper of character and influence, I lost all con- fidence. I know how impulsive and excitable your people are, and I really feared that some such measure might be madly advocated and carried into effect. I see, now, that I made a blunder, and I am already punished for it. I was 1 " On Half a Loaf." — A Letter to Broadway Battery & Co. of New York. 46 THACKERAY IN getting eight per cent, from my American investments, and now that I have the capital here it is lying idle. I shall probably not be able to invest it at a better rate than four per cent." I said to him, playfully, that he must not expect me, as an American, to feel much sympathy with this loss : I, in common with his other friends beyond the Atlantic, ex- pected from him a juster recognition of the national character. " Well," said he, " let us say no more about it. I admit that I have made a mistake." Those who knew the physical torments to which Thackeray was periodically subject — spasms which not only racked his strong frame, but temporarily darkened his views of men and things — must wonder, that, with the obligation to write permanently hanging over him, he was not more frequently betrayed into impatient or petulant expressions. In his clear brain, he judged himself no less severely, and watched his own nature no less warily, than he regarded other men. His strong sense of justice was always alert and active. He sometimes tore away the pro- tecting drapery from the world's pet heroes and heroines, but, on the other hand, he desired no one to set him be- side them. He never betrayed the least sensitiveness in regard to his place in literature. The comparisons which critics sometimes instituted between himself and other prominent authors simply amused him. In 1856, he told me that he had written a play which the managers had ignominiously rejected. " I thought I could write for the stage," said he ; " but it seems I can't. 1' have a mind to have the piece privately performed, here at home. I'll take the big footman's part." This plan, however, was THE UNITED STATES 47 given up, and the material of the play was afterwards used, I believe, in " Lovel, the Widower." I have just read a notice of Thackeray, which asserts, as an evidence of his weakness in certain respects, that he imagined himself to be an artist, and persisted in supplying bad illustrations to his own works. This statement does injustice to his self-knowledge. He delighted in the use of the pencil, and often spoke to me of his illustrations being a pleasant relief to hand and brain, after the fatigue of. writing. He had a very imperfect sense of colour, and confessed that his forte lay in caricature. Some of his sketches were charmingly drawn upon the block, but he was often unfortunate in his engraver. The original MS. of " The Rose and the Ring," with the illustrations, is admirable. He was fond of making groups of costumes and figures of the last century, and I have heard English artists speak of his talent in this genre : but he never pro- fessed to be more than an amateur, or to exercise the art for any other reason than the pleasure it gave him. He enjoyed the popularity of his lectures, because they were out of his natural line of work. Although he made several very clever after-dinner speeches, he always assured me that it was accidental, — that he had no talent whatever for thinking on his feet. " Even when I am reading my lectures," he said, " I often think to myself, What a humbug you are, and I won- der the people don't find it out ! " When in New York, he confessed to me that he should like immensely to find some town where the people imag- ined that all Englishmen transposed their h's, and give one of his lectures in that style. . . . Of Thackeray's private relations I would speak with a 48 THACKERAY IN cautious reverence. An author's heart is a sanctuary into which, except so far as he voluntarily reveals it, the public has no right to enter. The shadow of a domestic affliction which darkened all his life seemed only to have increased his paternal care and tenderness. To his fond solicitude for his daughters we owe a part of the writings wherewith he has enriched our literature. While in America, he often said to me that his chief desire was to secure a cer- tain sum for them, and I shall never forget the joyous satis- faction with which he afterwards informed me, in London, that the work was done. " Now," he said, " the dear girls are provided for. The great anxiety is taken from my life, and I can breathe freely for the little time that is left me to be with them." I knew that he had denied himself many " luxuries " (as he called them) to accompjish this object. For six years after he had redeemed the losses of a reckless youthful expenditure, he was allowed to live and to employ an income, princely for an author, in the gratification of tastes which had been so long repressed. He thereupon commenced building a new house, after his own designs. It was of red brick, in the style of Queen Anne's time, but the internal arrangement was rather American than English. It was so much admired, that, although the cost much exceeded his estimate, he could have sold it for an advance of a thousand pounds. To me the most interesting feature was the library, which occupied the northern end of the first floor, with a triple window opening toward the street, and another upon a warm little garden-plot shut in by high walls. " Here," he said to me, when I saw him for the last time^ " here I am going to write my greatest work, — a History of the Reign of Queen Anne. There are my THE UNITED STATES 49 materials," — pointing to a collection of volumes in vari- ous bindings which occupied a separate place on the shelves. " When shall you begin it ? " I asked. " Probably as soon as I am done with ' Philip,' " was his answer : " but I am not sure. I may have to write another novel first. But the History will mature all the better for the delay. I want to absorb the authorities gradually, so that, when I come to write, I shall be filled with the sub- ject, and can sit down to a continuous narrative, without jumping up every moment to consult somebody. The History has been a pet idea of mine for years past. I am slowly working up to the level of it, and know that when I once begin I shall do, it well." It is not likely that any part of this history was ever written. What it might have been we can only regretfully conjecture : it has perished with the uncompleted novel, and all the other dreams of that principle of the creative intellect which the world calls Ambition, but which the artist recognises as Conscience. That hour of the sunny May-day returns to memory as I write. The quiet of the library, a .little withdrawn from the ceaseless roar of London ; the soft grass of the bit of garden, moist from a recent shower, seen through the open window ; the smoke-strained sunshine, stealing gently along the wall; and before me the square, massive head, the prematurely gray hair, the large, clear, sad eyes, the frank, winning mouth, with its smile of boyish sweetness, of the man whom I honoured as a master, while he gave me the right to love him as a friend. I was to leave the next day for a temporary home on the Continent, and he was plan- ning how he could visit me, with his daughters. The proper season, the time, and the expense were carefully vol. 11. — 4 50 THACKERAY IN calculated : he described the visit in advance, with a gay, excursive fancy ; and his last words, as he gave me the warm, strong hand I was never again to press, were, " Auf wiedersehen ! " What little I have ventured to relate gives but a frag- mentary image of the man whom I knew. I cannot de- scribe him as the faithful son, the tender father, the true friend, the man of large humanity and lofty honesty he really was, without stepping too far within the sacred circle of his domestic life. To me, there was no inconsistency in his nature. Where the careless reader may see only the cynic and the relentless satirist, I recognise his unquench- able scorn of human meanness and duplicity, — the impa- tient wrath of a soul too frequently disappointed in its search for good. I have heard him lash the faults of others with an indignant sorrow which brought the tears to his eyes. For this reason he could not bear that ignorant homage should be given to men really unworthy of it. He said to me, once, speaking of a critic who blamed the scarcity of noble and lovable character in his novels, — " Other men can do that. I know what I can do best ; and if I do good, it must be in my own way." The fate which took him from us was one which he had anticipated. He often said that his time was short, that he could not certainly reckon on many more years of life, and that his end would probably be sudden. He once spoke of Irving's death as fortunate in its character. The sub- ject was evidently familiar to his thoughts, and his voice had always a tone of solemn resignation which told that he had conquered its bitterness. He was ready at any moment to answer the call; and when, at last, it was given and answered, — when the dawn of the first Christmas holiday THE UNITED STATES 51 lighted his pale, moveless features, and the large heart throbbed no more for ever in its grand scorn and still grander tenderness, — his released spirit could have chosen no fitter words of farewell than the gentle benediction his own lips have breathed : — , " I lay the weary pen aside, And wish you health and love and mirth, As fits the solemn Christmas-dde. As fits the holy Christmas birth, Be this, good friends, our carol still, — Be peace on earth, be peace on earth, To men of gentle will ! " ADSUM l I The Angel came by night, (Such angels still come down !) And like a winter cloud Passed over London town, Along its lonesome streets Where Want had ceased to weep, Until it reached a house Where a great man lay asleep ; The man of all his time Who knew the most of men, — The soundest head and heart, The sharpest, kindest pen. It paused beside his bed, And whispered in his ear. He never turned his head, But answered, " I am here." 1 Suggested by the sudden death of Thackeray. 52 THACKERAY IN ii Into the night they went. At morning, side by side, They gained the sacred Place Where the greatest Dead abide : Where grand old Homer sits In godlike state benign : Where broods in endless thought The awful Florentine. Where sweet Cervantes walks, A smile on his grave face : Where gossips quaint Montaigne, The wisest of his race : Where Goethe looks through all With that calm eye of his : Where — little seen but Light — The only Shakespeare is ! When the new Spirit came, They asked him, drawing near, " Art thou become like us ? " He answered, "I am here." WILLIAM MAKEPEACE THACKERAY Now that his noble form is clay, One word for good old Thackeray, One word for gentle Thackeray, Spite of his disbelieving eye, True Thackeray — a man that would not lie. Among his fellows he was peer For any gentleman that ever was ; And if the lordling stood in fear Monsieur Louis Adolphe Thiers. From a Thackeray Drawing THE UNITED STATES S3 Of the rebuke of that satiric pen, Or if the good man sometimes gave a tear, They both were moved by equal cause, 'Twas Nature's truth that touched the men. O nights of Addison and Steele, And Swift, and all those men, return ! Oh, for some writer that can bid me burn, Like him with his majestic power Of pathos, mixed with terrible attack, And probing into records of the past Through some enchanted hour To show the white and black, And what did not — and what deserved to last ! Poet and Scholar, 'tis in vain — We summon thee from those dim halls Where every death is absolute and holds unquestioned reign. Even Shakespeare must go downward in his dust — And lie with all the rest of us in rust — And mould and gloom and mildewed tomb (Mildewed or May-dewed ever more a tomb), Yet hoping still above the skies To have his humble place among the Just. And so " Hie Jacet," that is all That can be said, or writ, or sung Of him who held in such a thrall With his melodious gifts of pen and tongue, Both nations — old and young. Honour 's a hasty word to speak, But now I say it solemnly and slow, To the One Englishman most like the Greek Who wrote " The Clouds " two thousand years ago, 54 THACKERAY IN Thackeray escaped one of the stern penalties of advanced age, — the loss of friends. His dearest comrades all, I believe, survived him, and Holmes's thought of "the last leaf upon the tree" never touched him. So far as the writer remembers, none of his American correspondents and intimates men- tioned in this volume departed before him with the single exception of Washington Irving, to whom Thackeray rendered the following beautiful tribute in a " Roundabout Paper " when writing on the theme " Nil Nisi Bonum " : — " Here are two literary men gone to their account ; and, laus Deo, as far as we know, it is fair, and open, and clean. Here is no need of apologies for short- comings, or explanations of vices which would have been virtues but for unavoidable, etc. Here are two examples of men most differently gifted : each pursuing his calling : each speaking his truth as God bade him : each honest in his life : just and irreproachable in his dealings : dear to his friends : honoured, by his country: beloved at the fireside. It has been the fortunate lot of both to give incal- culable happiness and delight to the world, which thanks them in return with an immense kindliness, respect, affection. It may not be our chance, brother scribe, to be endowed with such merit or rewarded with such fame. But the rewards of these men are rewards paid to our service. We may not win the baton or the epaulettes, but God give us strength to guard the honour of the flag ! " THE UNITED STATES 55 Commenting on this generous praise of the Eng- lish and American author. Dr. John* Brown writes of Thackeray : " The prayer was granted : he had strength given him always to guard the honour of the flag ; and now his name is worthy /^T. to be placed beside the names of Washington Irving and Lord Ma- A Thackeray Sketch i?«-«W^ft!S,Ulr"3 caulay, as one no whit less deserving ^r%&^''S4$'£ the praise of these noble words." f.M t ''''*&$$X$k> Soon after Thackeray's death, during a dinner-table con- versation in New York, some one complaining that the Eng- lish author had no heart, or at least that it had not been in the proper place, one of the company present sent him a volume the next morning, calling his at- tention to a passage from the pen of a friend of the novelist : " Thackeray is often spoken of by readers who do not understand him as a cynic — and nothing else : as one who took a warped and perverted view of human nature : as a skeptic in morality and so forth. Good Heavens ! Why, there are passages in 1 Pendennis,' in c Vanity Fair ' and ' The Newcomes' which could only have been written by a man of the highest sense of honour, of reverence for virtue, of sympathy with genuine sorrow and human weakness." 56 THACKERAY IN Thackeray's friend and Cambridge classmate, Lord Houghton, styled by Carlyle, " The Perpet- ual President of the Heaven and Hell Amalgama- tion Society," who in turn called his classmate " the gentle censor of our age," in an hour's conversa- tion with an American friend at the Athenaeum Club of London, uttered some pleasant reminis- cences of Thackeray. Houghton, who had recently returned from a visit to the United States, gave his companion, with much amusement, an imitation of Thackeray's "Yes, sir," the last word given with American accent and emphasis, often adopted by the novelist, but of course in no unfriendly spirit. He pointed to the window looking out on Pall Mall, which was his favourite seat, and the exact spot " near the coals " at the foot of the stairs, where the Fielding and Smollett of our century, after an estrangement of several years, caused by the unfor- tunate Yates quarrel, confronted each other, and by a mutual impulse rushed forward, cordially grasped each other's hand, and again became friends. The poet related a story of Byron's friend Lord Brough- ton, better known as Hobhouse, who possessed a peppery temper. Dining with Thackeray, the latter pressed him to take a glass of famous old Madeira, saying, as he patted him on the back, " There, my dear old boy, you drink that." " I am not your dear old boy, I am not old, and d — n your wine," exclaimed the irate Broughton. Speak- ing of Dickens and Thackeray, the English poet THE UNITED STATES S7 expressed the opinion that while the former was suc- cessful as an editor, the other displayed no special gifts in that direction, if, indeed, he may not be said to have been a failure. The editorship was un- doubtedly one of Thackeray's mistakes, as it was clearly a waste of time and strength for a man of his genius. The harness galled him, and the drudg- ery of the work wearied him. It was a constant trial to his generous nature to be compelled to decline contributions accompanied as they frequently were with piteous appeals. " No day passed," he wrote to a friend, " but that word ' misericordium ' is used. Day and night that sad voice is crying for help. Before I was an editor, I did not like the postman much, but now ! " When Thackeray was forming his " Cornhill Magazine " staff he said, " I am afraid there are only a certain number of cabs upon the stand." He said it in no unkind spirit. It was only " his fun." An English clergyman, writing recently of Thack- eray as the editor of the " Cornhill," says : " His own contributions, as well as his name, were, of course, Very valuable, and the magazine was an im- mense success; but the real hard work of the editor was allowed to go much by default. The stern control and unsparing criticism which an editor is bound to maintain were exceedingly unconge- nial to his really kindly temperament. With first- class contributors he got on very well, he said, but the extortioners and revilers bothered the very life 58 THACKERAY IN out of him. Some of the ladies followed him up so closely with their poetical compositions that his house in Onslow Square was never free from interruptions. 'The darlings demanded,' said he, 'that I should rewrite, if I could not understand their nonsense, and put their halting lines into proper form.' ' I was so appalled,' he said, ' when they set upon me, that you might have knocked me down with a feather, sir. It was insupportable, sir, and I fled away to France.' " There is no doubt but that Thackeray distinctly failed to distinguish himself as an editor, neither is there any question that the editorial duties injured his nervous system, perhaps also his kindly nature, and possibly exercised an unfortunate effect upon his writings. This was substantially the view of Curtis, as expressed to the present writer in 1877, and confirmed a quarter of a century later by Thackeray's friend and London publisher, Mr. George Murray Smith. As has been already mentioned, there are, so far as the writer is aware, but two survivors among Thackeray's intimate American friends, but in his own land there are many still living. From one of these, Dean Hole, we heard, when he was in this country on a lecturing tour for the benefit of Roch- ester Cathedral, some pleasant table talk which appears in his delightful " Memories." He and Thackeray first met at the house of John Leech. " I was introduced," said the Dean, " by our host, THE UNITED STATES 59 and for his sake, he gave me a cordial greeting : 1 We must be about the same height,' he said, ' we '11 measure.' And when we stood dos-a-dos, and the bystanders gave their verdict 'a dead heat ' (the length was six feet three inches), and I had meekly suggested that though there might be no difference in the size of the cases, his contained a Stradivarius, and mine a dancing-master's kit, we proceeded to talk of giants." The Dean then told an incident of how. Sir William Don, when quar- tered with his regiment at Nottingham, was walking in the market-place, and was met by two mechanics, one of whom thus addressed him, " Sir William, me and my mate 'as got a bet of a quart of ale about yer, and we want to know your 'ight." And Sir William made answer, " My height is six feet seven, and yours is the height of impudence ! " In the " Memories of Dean Hole," the following unique notelet appears in answer to a request made on behalf of a friend, for his autograph, and in acknowledgment of a gift of some game : — January 26th, 36 Onslow Square. My dear Hole, — Did I ever write and comply with your desire to have a page of autograph ? You 're welcome to a quire. Tell your friend the lady I have no pleasure higher than in writing pretty poetry and striking of the lyre, in compliment to 3. gentleman whom benevolence did in- spire to send me partridges and pheasants killed with shot or wire (but whatever the way of killing them, I equally ad- mire), and who of such practices, I trust, will never tire. 60 THACKERAY IN May you bring your birds down every time you fire, this, my noble sportsman, is the fond desire of W. M. Thackeray, Editor and Esquire. To his friend Herman BiddeH, Edward Fitz- Gerald writes on Guy Fawkes Day, 1869 : "I have thought once or twice that Tennyson himself ought to have that illustration of one of his Poems which Thackeray made, and which I gave to you. If you do not set any particular store by it, let us arrange that, and do you take any other you please from the Book you know of. But if you do set store by that particular drawing, why, keep it by all means. I have never mentioned it to Tennyson, and do not suppose that he would care very much for it. Yet it seems the right thing to do : for he was a great friend of Thackeray's, and admired the man, with- out (I suppose) having ever read any of his Books through. I remember his taking up a No. of * Pendennis ' in my Lodging twenty years ago, read- ing awhile, and then saying — c How mature it is ! * — perfectly ripe, seasonable, and perfect, a produce of the Man's Wit and Experience of the World. I am sure that Thackeray's drawing must be better than any of Dore's — which I have never seen ! " Writing to Baron Pollock in May, 1871, Fitz- Gerald says : " I did see, or do not remember to have seen, much of (Charles Mayne) Young in my younger days, when I might have seen much more. I remember his King John; and remember also how Thackeray, when I first knew him at Cambridge, THE UNITED STATES 61 would troll out some play in Young's roundly- modulated intonation : upon which I always thought Thackeray modell'd his own recitation of Verse. (And tell the Pope) ' that no Italian Priest Shall tithe or T5ll in our Dominions — So tell the Pope.' Perhaps I shall plunge at once into Mcgreedy : (I suppose you don't care for W. M. T — 's sketch of him as Hamlet, with Mile. Bulgardo as Queen, when she reminds him ' Of the least taste in Life of Linen hanging out behind.') " Edward FitzGerald in a letter to Baron Pol- lock dated January, 1875, writes: "Annie Thack- eray now inclines (as also do her Publishers) to do what I begged them all to do any time these ten years : publish a Volume of W. M. T.'s better Drawings — not Caricature — to show the world that he could do something other, if not better. I believe that Annie T. herself would not entertain the project before, out of Piety toward her Father : not wishing to. publish anything which he had not sanctioned. Perhaps Smith and Elder were ani- mated by some sort of Piety too : otherwise, I cannot understand their foregoing a Speculation which would have put into their pockets at least as much as any of the Thackeray Library. Still I don't doubt the thing will be done ; partly from not finding enough Drawings for the purpose. Annie T. ought to have heaps : and several friends 62 THACKERAY IN at any rate as many as I can furnish out of all I have lost : no more than half a Dozen, I think. A Boxfull I left in Coram {Joram) Street thirty years ago : which Box was taken I know not where when W. M. T. left. Another such Box I left for safety at my Father's house in Portland Place, to be sold for waste Paper, I dare say, when he came to smash. Do you know the account of the Sale of the poor old Grandmother's Effects in Crabbe's Maid's Story, when The Wedding ring that to the finger grew Was sold for six and sixpence to a Jew. 1 No, you know nothing of .this-: nor the Cornhill man either." To Baron Pollock, early in 1882, FitzGerald writes : " Your Walter's letter I will answer to himself — I fear very unsatisfactorily to him and to you, I positively know not where, or how, to begin any Records of W. M. T., such fragment, as I do remember (except what have already been published by others) being what you yourself know as well as I — pieces of random Verse, Fun, etc., much of which I would not make public Gossip. I can only revert to what I first promised : that I will answer as well as I can any questions put to me : or look over and annotate any proof sent to me, as I did in Mr. Trollope's case. ' MS. I have not eyes for. I almost wish your Son had not 1 "Tales of the Hall," Book XI. THE UNITED STATES 63 undertaken the job for Scribner, remembering Annie's telling me what her Father said not long before his Death. * * * * Mr. Trollope (unto whom I wish you would make my respects) wrote his Book under Annie's eyes, * * * * and as your Walter is a gentleman as well as Mr. T., I will do all for him I did for the other: and positively I can do no more. Only that I can send him, or you, the two Sir R. de Coverley drawings W. M. T. made when studying Painting in Paris — about 1 834 ? — more characteristic of the French school of that day than of himself ; but still specimens of what he could do in a graver way then Caricature. I gave Tennyson a very graceful pen-and-ink illustration by him of the Lord of Burleigh (probably lost long ago) and when Annie and her Publishers proposed a volume of his Draw- ings some years ago, I advised them to show what he could do in another way than Caricature, of which no better specimens could be found than what [were] already published. But of course I was not listened to." Apropos of the extreme carefulness of Thackeray in matters of pedigree, an English writer calls atten- tion to the fact, pointing out how accurately all the involved relationships of his character fit, and draw- ing up the following instance as an illustration : " Let us suppose that Lady Crawley (nee Sharpe) occupied her retirement with genealogy — a not 64 THACKERAY IN unlikely study for one who professed to be a Montmorency. In that case she probably discov- ered that the second Mrs. Clive Newcome was related to her old friend, George Gustavus first Marquis of Steyne, and that Arthur Pendennis and Laura, his wife, could claim connection with the noble house of Bareacres. The former relationship is easily established. Lady Louisa Joanna Gaunt, sister of the Marquis of Steyne, married the Earl of Kew, and one of the four children of this mar- riage was Anne, who, as wife to Sir Brian Newcome, became the mother of Ethel, the second Mrs. Clive Newcome, who was thus great-grand-niece to Becky's protector." * A well-remembered writer who spent some years in the United States relates the following story of Thackeray in refuting the frequent charge that he was an inordinate admirer of rank, and a first-class snob. The story is of a, real tuft-hunter who claimed to be of good family, and who was continually boasting of the fact. This person made the novel- ist's acquaintance and was proud of it. One day Justin McCarthy, who relates the incident, met him at the Garrick Club, when he immediately began to talk about Thackeray. " Now look here," said the tuft-hunter, " you always refuse to believe that Thackeray worships the aristocracy. I '11 give you a convincing proof that he does, a proof that I got this very day. Do you see this cigar?" He held 1 " One Aspect of Thackeray. " Temple Bar, September, 1901. THE UNITED STATES 65 one out between his fingers, and Mr. McCarthy admitted that he did see it. "Well," he said, " Thackeray's words to me were these : ' Now, my dear fellow, here is a cigar which I know you will be delighted to have because it is one of a box that was given to me by a marquis.' Now what have you to say ? " "I could have said," he adds, " I really did n't know that Thackeray was as well acquainted with you as all that," but I controlled my tongue, and the conversation dropped. Writing of Dickens and Thackeray, Mrs. Lynn Linton, a shrewd observer who was acquainted with both authors, repeats substantially what she had previously expressed to the present writer : " Thackeray, on the contrary, like Moore, loved the grace and delicacy and inborn amenities of what is called ' good society. He was no more of a snob than Dickens, no more of a tuft-hunter, but he was more plastic, more frankly influenced by that kind of social sensuality which finds its enjoyment in good living, good manners, pretty women, and re- fined talk. Dickens had no eye for beauty per se. He could love a comparatively plain woman — and did : but Thackeray's fancy went out to loveliness : and cleverness alone, without beauty — which ruled Dickens — would never have stirred his passions. Both men could and did love deeply, passionately, madly, and the secret history of their loves has yet to be written. It never will be written now, and it is best that it should not be. vol. n. — 5 66 THACKERAY IN " But I repeat again what was said before, in each the intellectual appreciation of life and the personal temperament were entirely antagonistic. The one who wrote so tenderly, so sentimentally, so gush- ingly, had a strain of hardness in his nature which was like a rod of iron in his soul. The other, who took humanity as he found it, who saw its faults and appraised it at its lower value — yet did not despise what he could not admire — was of all men the most loving, the most tender-hearted, the least inflexible." * In a beautiful letter sent by Thackeray to a Brighton clergyman he writes : " I want, too, to say in my way, that love and truth are the greatest of heaven's commandments and blessings to us : that the best of us, the many especially who pride themselves on their virtue most, are wretchedly weak, vain and selfish : and at least to preach such a charity, as a common sense of our shame and un- worthiness might inspire to us poor people. I hope men of my profession do no harm to talk this doctrine out of doors to people in drawing-rooms and in the world. Your duty in church takes you a step higher — that awful step beyond ethics, which leads you up to God's revealed truth. What a tremendous responsibility his who has that mystery to explain ! What a prodigious boon the faith which makes it clear to him ! " In introducing this 1 " Landor, Dickens, and Thackeray." The " Bookman," April, 1896. I THE UNITED STATES 67 letter in the Biographical Edition of Thackeray, Mrs. Ritchie writes, " He looked upon himself as a lay preacher, even more than a maker of stories." A son of Mrs. Brookfield who has sent me a full-length photograph of Thackeray, of which the accompanying is a copy, gives the following version of an amusing Thackerayan incident : " Early in their married life, my father and mother lived in lodgings in Jermyn Street (he was curate at St. James's Church at the time). One evening he unexpectedly brought Thackeray home for dinner, and introduced him to my mother. She was rather overwhelmed by the knowledge that there was nothing in the house but a shoulder of cold mutton. It was too late to contrive anything more elaborate, so to ' give an air' to the table, she sent her maid to a neighbouring pastry cook's for a dozen tartlets of various kinds. ' Which of these may I give you ? ' she inquired, in due course, of Thackeray. * Thank you, Mrs. Brookfield,' said he, £ I '11 have a two-penny one I'" 1 If FitzGerald and Leech were among his own sex Thackeray's dearest friends, Mrs. Jane Olivia Brookfield was his greatest friend among women. She was the wife of the Rev. William Henry Brookfield, a Cambridge classmate and lifelong 1 " Random Recollections," by Charles H. E. Brookfield, Lon- don, 1902. 68 THACKERAY IN friend, and is believed to have suggested the char- acter of Lady Castlewood. Mrs. Brookfield was a famous beauty and a cousin of Arthur Hallam, who inspired Lord Tennyson's "In Memoriam," and was also the subject of a beautiful tribute written in 1898 for an American periodical, by the greatest living Englishman and one of Hallam's Eton comrades, William Ewart Gladstone. For many years Thackeray was Mrs. Brookfield's con- stant correspondent when absent from London. A portion of his letters were published in New York by the Scribners in 1886, but the originals of almost as many more are in the possession of Major Lambert, who contemplates printing them hereafter, with appropriate notes and reproductions of letters and drawings. Mrs. Brookfield died in London very suddenly of heart failure in 1901, and to the last was fond of speaking of " dear Thackeray," who sent her many letters from the United States. Her only daughter married the elder brother of Richmond Ritchie, husband of Anne Thackeray. Attending in London, during the season of 1875, a presentation to Mr. and Mrs. S. C. Hall, the writer observed a broad-chested person, below middle height, with blue-grey eyes, and fierce-look- ing whiskers, strongly resembling Richard Henry Dana, the poet, to whom he was a little later intro- duced. It was the celebrated George Cruikshank. While in conversation with the venerable artist, Thackeray, from the Edwards Photograph THE UNITED STATES 69 Thackeray's name was mentioned, and the writer asked if he had known him. "Why, bless my soul, he was one of my pupils. I taught him etching. We used to dine together on Saturdays in a Drury Lane tavern as long ago as 1837. He was rather clever with his pencil, and great with his pen. Thackeray had a warm heart. He wrote a fine arti- cle about me for the ' Westminster Review,' and not long before his death sent a letter to the ' Times,' calling attention to an exhibition of my works." At a second meeting with the aged artist, he mentioned several amusing incidents cohnected with Thackeray's two visits to the United States, which unfortunately the flood of years have entirely obliterated from the writer's memory. Only the fact is dimly re- called that they were drolleries relating to American art and artists. Frank Lawley was fond of alluding to Thackeray's pathetic passage in " The Journal of Travel from Cornhill to Cairo," when, taking leave of the steamer, he feelingly describes his affection for his fellow- voyagers from the captain and purser " down even to the greasy old cook, who with a touching affec- tion used to bring us locks of his hair in the soup." Some allusion being made to a little difficulty grow- ing out of his story of the Irish criminal Catherine Hayes led Thackeray to relate to Lawley the story of an Irish baronet, Sir Harry Hayes, who during the first year of the nineteenth century was sentenced to transportation for life for running away with a 70 THACKERAY IN young heiress. On his way to Botany Bay, the gallant admirer wrote, taking leave of the object of his affection and the cause of his crime. " Other lovers," he said, "felt momentary raptures for their mistresses : but show me one besides myself, that is transported for life ! " Lawley pointed out to me in a glass case designated " Literary Autographs," in a certain quiet corner of the British Museum, an interesting collection of communications written by many of England's great heirs of fame. Among these is the following brief note from Thackeray, whose anger is aroused, in writing to Mr. T. W. Gibbs, September 12, 1851. He refers to a passage in Laurence Sterne's Letters and his " Bramine's Journal " : " He was not dying, but lying I'm afraid — God help him — a fiercer and wickeder man it is difficult to read of. . . . Of course, any man is welcome to believe as he likes for me except a parson : I can't help looking upon Swift and Sterne as a couple of traitors and renegades . . . with a scornful pity for them in spite of their genius and greatness." " And as for the rest of Society — how the people had drums and routs and balls," wrote Sir Walter Besant in 1887: "how they angled for husbands; how they were hollow and unnatural, and so forth — you may read it in the pages of Thackeray. And I, for one, have never been able to understand how Thackeray obtained his knowledge of these exclusive circles. Instead of dancing at Almack's, THE UNITED STATES 71 he was taking his chop and stout at the Cock ; instead of gambling at Crockford's he was writ- ing c copy ' for any paper which would take it. "When and where did he meet Miss Newcome and Lady Kew and Lord Steyne ? Perhaps he wrote of them by intuition, as Disraeli wrote the c Young Duke.' ' My son, sir,' said the elder Disraeli, proudly, ' has never, I believe, even seen a Duke.'" In the " Reminiscences of Sir Joseph Crowe," brother of the artist who accompanied Thackeray to this country, he writes : " Amongst my father's friends I may notice further the Brookfields, who were intimate with Thackeray, but were most fre- quently to be met with in the company of Alfred Tennyson. Tennyson I saw on some rare occa- sions at my father's house and table. My recollec- tion of him is distant, but I remember being greatly surprised when, after dinner, he pulled out of his tailcoat pocket a very brown and oily specimen of a pipe which he smoked with evident relish. Of Thackeray I saw most at our family place in Hempstead, whither he would direct the paces of a stout cob, which he rode with such grace as his long legs would allow. Once in our drawing-room he. was apt to forget the hours : would stop to partake of an early dinner, though bound to join a later festivity of the same kind elsewhere : and I recollect him now [1895] as if it were yesterday, wiping his brow after trying vainly to help the leg 7 2 THACKERAY IN of a tough fowl, and saying he was ' heaving a thigh.'" 1 William Allingham called attention to the ex- treme carefulness of Thackeray's literary work as displayed in the trouble- some matter of pedigrees. This scrupulous accuracy in respect to all the in- volved relationships of his characters has recently been clearly shown by a writer who has drawn up a number of pedigrees as evidence of this charac- teristic of the great nov- elist. 2 Thackeray, I was told by Allingham, made a happy use of an ancient remark attributed to an A Thackeray Sketch old Roman. Hearing one of his Charterhouse contemporaries assert that he was ten years younger than he really was, Thackeray drily remarked, 1 Soon after Thackeray' s return from the United States in 1853, he was asked to go to the Crimea and send letters and sketches to the "Illustrated London News" of which Charles Mackay was then the editor. "I declined his invitation and recommended Joseph Crowe, brother of my secretary who went with me to America." Their sister, who was for several years an inmate of Thackeray's house as a friend of his daughters, became the wife of their kinsman, Col. Edward Thackeray, V. C. 2 Vide page' 63. THE UNITED STATES 73 " Then at the time you and I were at school to- gether, you were not born." On another occasion soon after his return from the second visit to the United States, he quoted " Tom " Appleton of Boston as saying, that whatever may be the repu- tation of a man when alive, when dead he is uni- versally allowed to be a. finished gentleman. John R. Thompson attributed Thackeray's well- known sympathy with the South in the Civil War to the circumstance of his having so many intimate friends in Richmond, Charleston, and other cities of the Confederate States. This view is confirmed by the author's son-in-law, Leslie Stephen, who writes, "he was received with the characteristic hospital- ity of Americans, and was thoroughly pleased with the people, making many friends in the Southern as well as in the Northern States, — a circumstance which probably affected his sympathies during the subsequent Civil War." James Alston Cabell of Richmond writes, " Mr. Thackeray made many warm friends here, and to the last, always spoke of his visits to Richmond and the friends he had made with the deepest affection, which accounted for his sympathies during the war between the States." William B. Reed, a Northern proslavery sympa- thiser, wrote in 1864 of Thackeray's well-known views : " His American novel and his pictures of life in ancient days at Castlewood on the Potomac show this abundantly. More than any Englishman of letters I have ever known, he was free from that 74 THACKERAY IN sentimental disease, — abolitionism. He had been in the South and met Southern ladies and gentle- men, the highest types of American civilisation. This I may say now in their hour of suffering and possible disaster. He had visited Southern homes and shaped Southern hospitality." In one of Thackeray's fugitive essays he speaks of one of the best friends he had in America, a resident of Savan- nah, — " the most hospitable, kindly, amiable of men, from whom I had twice received the warmest welcome, and the most delightful hospitality, being a prisoner in Fort Warren (Boston Harbour) on charges by which his life might be risked." During his two visits to this country Thackeray certainly carried his caution to an excess when there was the slightest chance of wounding national susceptibilities. Even in private conversation he seldom indulged in criticisms of American absurdi- ties to which he of course could not be less blind than to those of his own country. By his request the burlesque of a celebrated American author was omitted from the New York reprint of 1852 of his " Prize Novelists," and during his first tour his sec- retary was severely reprimanded for seeming to in- terfere with a Southern institution by making a drawing of a slave auction which he witnessed in Richmond. The idem velle atque nolle, of which Sallust speaks, is one of the surest bonds of friend- ship among nations as among individuals, remarked Thackeray, while conversing with Curtis on the THE UNITED STATES 75 friendly relations which in his judgment should always exist between England and the United States. " For my part," added the gentle giant, " I am determined that no spoken or written word of mine shall ever disturb their cordial relations." But in the period of our Civil War, like the large majority of the higher classes in Great Britain, Thackeray's sympathies, it would seem, were strongly with the South. This was to be seen in some of his writings, as well as in his conversation. In a pleasant paper on " The English View of our Society," Mrs. John Sherwood writes : " Thackeray who knew enough to know better, after all the friendly intimacy that grew out of his lectures here, during the sad days of our war, drew a caricature in the ' Cornhill ' of an eagle with a broken wing, and afterwards said he was ' always glad of our national misfortunes.' " Strange to say, Carlyle and Charles Dickens were equally* unfriendly to the North at that time. In July, 1862, the latter wrote to a friend from Gad's Hill Place : " Although you have lately been in America, and although I know what a raging mad topsy-turvy state of things obtain there, I can not believe that the conscription will do otherwise than fail, and wreck the War. I feel convinced indeed, that the War will be shattered by want of Northern soldiers." A year earlier Wilkie Collins was so unwise as to write : " The one chance for that -miserable country on the other side of the y6 THACKERAY IN Atlantic is, that those two blatant impostors, Lincoln and McClellan, will fail to get the three hundred thousand new men they ask for." Some years after the war, when the writer complimented Disraeli on his having been wiser than Gladstone, Thackeray, Dickens, and Carlyle, he replied, "Ah, my dear General, I well knew which side held the heaviest purse ! " Said one of Thackeray's American acquaintances to the author of this volume, " While he was a good if not a brilliant conversationalist, when he was on his feet as a speaker, he was apt to be commonplace. Of this Thackeray was well aware, and in this par- ticular resembled his friend, Fitz-Greene Halleck, who preferred keeping his seat, saying that when he stood up his brains all went to his heels ! He would prepare with the greatest skill an after-dinner speech, polishing it like one of his c Roundabout Papers ; ' and when the time came for its delivery, notwithstanding the discourse had been carefully committed to memory, the chances were that he would forget the charming points and make a mud- dle of his speech." Sir Charles Augustus Murray, who had frequently listened to Thackeray's after- dinner speeches, coincided with the views of his New York friend. Owing possibly to his American associations and experiences, Sir Charles greatly ad- mired " The Virginians," and expressed the highest admiration for Thackeray both as an author and a gentleman. He had known him for thirty years THE UNITED STATES 77 '#?l. ^%0*"\N' 6l\ 2 5 \-%ZJ :-;_-&. JL*-.- Ar A Contest in Microscopic Penmanship 1 1 Thackeray wrote the Lord's Prayer in a circle with a threepenny piece ; Mark Lemon two lines from " Punch ; " and John Leech drew the figures and horses. 78 THACKERAY IN and frequently met him in London society, — at the famous breakfasts of the banker poet Rogers and the Causeries of Lady Blessington in Gore House. He showed me one of Thackeray's microscopic notes, which he treasured as a literary curiosity. It may be remembered that the novelist told the author of " Rab and His Friends " that if all trades failed he could gain sixpences by writing the Lord's Prayer within the small compass of that coin. In- deed, his writing was sometimes so minute that it was almost impossible to read it; indeed, Sir Charles Murray assured me that he had seen examples of Thackeray's penmanship that could not be deci- phered without the aid of a magnifying glass ! * To him I am indebted for the following anecdote, which appeared in a London magazine of a quarter of a century ago. I believe it was " The Belgravia." " It happened once to the writer of this paper to be seated one Winter evening iri the small reading- room of a certain old-fashioned club, which then existed in King Street, Covent Garden. He was in rather a despondent mood, for the world had not been going well with him. He heard a step, and looking round saw Thackeray. 1 Thackeray has during the present year (1903) been surpassed by a Flemish artist who has produced what is believed to be the smallest painting in the world. It is a picture of a miller mounting the stairs of his mill, and carrying a sack of grain on his back. The mill is de- picted as standing near a terrace. Close at hand are a horse and cart, with groups of peasants idling in the road near by. All this is painted on the smooth side of a grain of ordinary white corn. It is necessary to examine it under a microscope, and it is drawn with accuracy. THE UNITED STATES 79 " ' What is the matter ? You look gloomy. Atra cur a, eh ? Tell me, perhaps I can help you.' " I had really nothing I could tell, and I said so. Thackeray put his hand in his pocket, and pulling out a small leather book gave it me. "'Take that little volume,' he -said; 'you may find something in it which will do you good, and when you have read it, then give it back to me.' " I opened the little pocket-book, and, lo, it was full of Bank-of-England notes. I have never yet heard that great writer's name mentioned without telling this story, and adding my humble record to the worth of his kindly nature. As I write now, the whole scene rises as freshly before me as if it had happened only yesterday, instead of twenty years ago. And I write no more." To Sir Charles I was also indebted for the following first verses of Thackeray and the accom- panying note which he had extracted from its hiding- place in a London paper of 1864, and which he said he had never met with again. This was at Cannes in 1883. When a boy the novelist was sent to a school at Ottery St. Mary, near which place his stepfather, Major Carmichael Smith, rented a small estate. " The scenery of Clavering St. Mary and Chat- teris, in ' Pendennis,' corresponds in minute partic- ulars with that of Ottery St. Mary and Exeter. One 80 THACKERAY IN of the little marginal vignettes in that famous novel is a picture of the clock tower of Ottery Church. Thackeray describes the youthful Pendennis as galloping through ' the Iliad and Odyssey, the tragic playwriters, and the charming wicked Aristophanes, whom he vowed to be the greatest poet of all.' When the author was about the age of his young hero he borrowed of Dr. Cornish Carey's transla- tion of ' The Birds of Aristophanes,' which he read, says the doctor, with intense delight, and re- turned it with three humorous illustrative drawings. Thackeray says in 'Pendennis': 'It was at this period of his existence that Pen broke out in the poet's corner of the county " Chronicle " with some verses with which he was perfectly well satisfied.' Dr. Cornish says that when the great Catholic emancipation meeting took place on Pendenen-heath, Thackeray brought him some verses which were af- terwards forwarded to an Exeter paper for insertion, and duly appeared. These verses, the doctor thinks, were the first composition of the great humourist that was ever published. "IRISH MELODY " Air : ' The Minstrel Boy ' " Mister Shiel into Kent has gone, On Pendenen Heath you '11 find him; Nor think you that he came alone, There's Doctor Doyle behind him. . Ln i» U »« w i. i*i Uiu /LuwJc i{- g * jj £) i tU^Xu^ toil k * 4 w wm. wW y*.«. *, "w«^ Cl«ft ^v- f.v Several Military Portraits by Thackeray, and Facsimile of Criticism on a work by N. P. Willis, probably " Pencillings by the Way " THE UNITED STATES 81 ' Men of Kent,' said this little man, ' If you hate Emancipation, You 're a set of fools ; ' he then began, A ' cut and dry ' oration. " He strove to speak, but the men of Kent Began a grievous shouting, When out of his wagon the little man went, And put a stop to his spouting. •What though these heretics heard me not,' Quoth he to his friend Canonical, ' My speech is safe in the "Times," I wot, And eke in the " Morning Chronicle." ' " Thackeray having complimented Sir Charles on his charming American Indian story, " The Prairie Bird/' it led him to speak of his having spent a year in early life among the Pawnees, and of an in- teresting conversation that occurred with Fenimore Cooper, who, in allusion to " Prairie Bird," said to its author : " You have had the advantage of me, for I never was among the Indians. All that I know of them is from reading, and from hearing my father speak of them. He saw a great deal of them when he went to the western part of New York State, about the close of the eighteenth century." Thackeray expressed admiration for the writings of the American novelist, praising his Leather- stocking and several other characters as among his particular favourites. To this Sir Charles added : " Cooper remarked to me : ' If anything from my pen is to outlive me, it is unquestionably the series of Leatherstocking stories.' " In conclud- VOL. II. — 6 82 THACKERAY IN ing the conversation Thackeray said (this was in 1850), "I must see Cooper and his great country some day before I cross a certain stream with old Charon." In a letter to Miss Procter 1 — " golden-tressed Adelaide," she is called in her father's famous song — Thackeray remarks : " I am writing in this queer way I suppose, because I went to St. Paul's yesterday — Charity Children's day, miss, and the sight and the sound immensely moved and charmed yours affectionately, dear Adelaide, W. M. Thack- eray." No man could be more moved by the army of children on the occasion of their annual gathering in London's great cathedral than our author, who in his later years rarely failed to be present. Of one of these he wrote : " There is one day in the year when I think St. Paul's presents the noblest sight in the whole world : when five thousand charity children like nosegays, and with fresh sweet voices, sing the hymn which makes every heart thrill with praise and hap- piness. I have seen a hundred grand sights in the world, — coronations, Parisian splendours, Crystal Palace openings, Pope's chapels with their proces- sions of long-tailed cardinals and quavering choirs of fat soprani — but think in all Christendom there is no such sight as Charity Children's Day, non angti, 1 Lord Houghton dedicated his biography of Keats to Mrs. Procter as " a poet's wife, a poet's mother, and herself of many poets the fre- quent theme and valued friend." Both mother and daughter were Thackeray's correspondents and highly esteemed by him. Lamb speaks of Procter as " candid and affectionate as his own poetry." THE UNITED STATES 83 sed angeli. As one looks at that beautiful multitude of innocents ; as the first note strikes : — indeed one may almost fancy that cherubim are singing." When Bayard Taylor accompanied Thackeray to the last of these exhibitions that the latter witnessed, the American was surprised to see him moved to tears! Meeting a procession of young school-girls in 1862, Thackeray exclaimed, " Four and twenty little girls ! They must have four and twenty bright little sixpences." And he - spoke to the governess having them in charge, and the rosy- cheeked children were made happy with the small silver coins. Pages might be written on Thackeray as a solace in periods of sickness and sorrow. Fitz-Greene Halleck said to his biographer, " I would rather have been the author of Thackeray's masterpieces ' Vanity Fair ' and ' Henry Esmond ' than any two novels by Scott, Dickens or Cooper, much as I admire many of their romances." The last book read by the poet the day before he died was " The Irish Sketch Book." l William B. Reed mentions the words of a Massachusetts lady for years a help- 1 This volume, to which the writer fell heir, contains a correction in Chapter XI. made by the genial poet. In the sentence, " Your mighty spirit finds nothing too comprehensive, spurns what is humble and unworthy, and only like Foote's bear dances to the genteelest of tunes," Halleck substitutes Gpldsmith's for Foote's, adding in a footnote, " She Stoops to Conquer." It occurs in Messrs. Chapman and Hall's new London T2tno edition of 1857, presented to him by "Sam" Ward. 84 THACKERAY IN less invalid, who wrote : " Often when I have closed one of Thackeray's books I sit thinking with a full heart how much I owe him of what is best in me, of the purest pleasure I have ever known, rilled with thankfulness for the power which has been given me to appreciate him in my poor way." Another American lady, a great leader of fashion and one of those fortunate persons who are able to lose themselves completely in a book, told a friend that Thackeray's works were her only alleviation while suffering recently from a severe attack of rheumatism, at the same time giving a graphic description of her- self propped up in bed by means of pillows, groan- ing with pain, and reading the large library edition of " Vanity Fair," held in front of her by the well- trained hospital nurse. An American passed away within a few years reading the same book on his death-bed, and all his children are equal admirers of Thackeray's writings. Lord Macaulay, it may be added, died with a copy of the " Cornhill Maga- zine," opened at the last page of Thackeray's un- finished story of " Denis Duval," at his bedside. An American correspondent favours the writer with the following rhymes to Thackeray, which he has collected from various sources as a contribution to this volume on the great man's two visits to the United States: — " Who sees but ridicule in good like Thackeray, And gloats on human stains in black array, Of heaven's light most sorely doth he lack a ray." THE UNITED STATES 85 The writer of the following lines has exercised a rhymer's license : — " Ah ! blest relief from pages soft and sacchaiy Give me the writings of that foe to quackery " The bold, the keen-eyed, entertaining Thackeray." Another maker of verses has manufactured the following lines : — " With trenchant wit our William Makepeace Thackeray Heaps caustic truths in anything but slack array, And in each gibe of genius we can track a ray." Herbert Stockbore, the Eton mock poet-laureate, who, describing an event of 1823, highly praised " Marshal Thackeray Dress' d out in crack array ; Ain't he a whacker, eh ? " Thackeray died at the same age as Shakespeare. His literary life was more brief than those of Scott and Dickens, but during his quarter of a century of authorship, his pen produced at least four works of fiction that are likely to live as long as any equal number written by Sir Walter and the author of " David Copperfield." To a distinguished Ger- man visitor in London who spoke to Thackeray of " Vanity Fair " as the work from which he had learned to read English, the author is represented to have promptly replied, " And that 's where I learned to write it." An amusing scene occurred between Thackeray and an ancient scholar of the old school, who maintained that all that was really 86 THACKERAY IN valuable in English literature was owed to Pindar. " But, my dear sir," pleaded the novelist, " you surely do not mean to say that Pindar wrote ' Van- ity Fair * ? " " Yes, I do," he replied, " in the high- est and noblest sense ; and if it is a good .book, Pindar wrote ' Vanity Fair.' " Dr. John Brown, writing of Thackeray's literary career, remarks : " His greatest work, one of the masterpieces of genius in our, or indeed in any language, without doubt is 'Vanity Fair.' ' On Thursday, Dec. 17, 1863, Thackeray dined with his friend and physi- cian, who walked home with him. On the way, in answer to Dr. Merriman's inquiry, he said, " I be- lieve ' Vanity Fair ' is my greatest work, and c The Cane-bottomed Chair' my best ballad." Passing by 13 Young Street, Kensington, where he had once lived, Thackeray exclaimed to his compan- ion with mock gravity, " Down on your knees, you rogue, for here ' Vanity Fair ' was penned ! And I will go down with you, for I have a high opinion of that little production myself." 1 Writ- ing to Mrs. Brookfield while " Vanity Fair " was in progress, Thackeray says : " You know you are only a piece of Amelia, my mother is another half, my poor little wife y est pour beaucoup." Mrs. E. W. Latimer, of Baltimore, in a letter to the "London Spectator" of Jan. 14, 1899, con- tributed the following incident connected with " Vanity Fair " : " May I, as an old lady, en- 1 " Yesterdays with Authors," by James T. Fields, Boston, 1872. THE UNITED STATES 87 titled to be reminiscent and garrulous, ' bestow my tediousness upon you ' in a little anecdote which relates to the 'Spectator'? In 1847, we were ^ v " ing in Paris in the Rue Neuve de Berri. One morning I saw my father (Admiral, then Captain, Wormeley) putting the ' Spectator ' in his coat pocket. ' Oh, father ! ' I cried, ' please don't take it away. It only came this morning.' ' Yes, yes, my dear,' he answered : ' I must take it at once to Mrs. Carmichael Smyth. It has a nice review of her son's serial in it. Only yesterday she was lamenting to me that no notice seemed to be taken by the Press of William's book, while so much was being said of Dickens' new novel, and, for her part, she did not see that " Dombey and Son " was more worthy of notice than " Vanity Fair." ' They were both coming out as serials, — ' Vanity Fair' in yellow covers, ' Dombey ' in green." Warrington in " Pendennis " is believed by Mrs. Ritchie to be a partial likeness of her father, and also of his friend, Edward FitzGerald; James T. Fields was confident the character was founded in " Barry Cornwall." Thackeray told a Philadel- phian that Warrington was an English professor of Latin, and in a letter to George Moreland Crawford accompanying a copy of " Pendennis " when first published, he said, " There is something of you in ' Warrington.' " While on a visit to Washington Irving at Sunnyside in 1859, he spoke, of " The Virginians " as a work that had afforded 88 THACKERAY IN him great pleasure. When I inquired which he preferred of Thackeray's writings, he expressed admiration for " Pendennis," and alluded to its unusually long title, which he repeated : " The History of Pendennis — His Fortunes and Mis- fortunes, His Friends and His Greatest Enemy." Fitz Gerald said, " I like ' Pendennis ' much," adding " and Alfred [Tennyson] thought it was quite ' de- licious ' it seemed so mature," he said. " You can imagine Alfred saying this over one's fire, spreading his great hand out." A " Pendennis " story which I heard a younger brother of Dickens relate two- score years ago reappeared substantially as he told it in Stephen Gwynn's introduction to an English edition of " Pendennis " published in 1901. In an early chapter Thackeray had written that the wicked- est characters always found some one to love them, and mentioned as probable cases in point, Bluebeard, Nero, and Catherine Hayes. Now the Catherine Hayes whom Thackeray had in his mind had com- mitted a murder of singular atrocity, but he had for- gotten that there was another Catherine Hayes, " an amiable young lady of Irish origin," who was then singing in the opera. " The Freeman's Journal," of Dublin, denounced him as "guilty of unmanly grossness and cowardly assault." Thackeray re- plied with a letter headed " Capers and Anchovies," in which he told the story of an Irishman who called out a stranger for questioning his assertion that anchovies might be seen growing on the Rock THE UNITED STATES 89 of Gibraltar. He killed his opponent, who sprung into the air as the bullet struck him, and his second exclaimed, " You are making him cut capers." " Bedad," said the Irishman, thoughtfully, " it was capers I meant." " Henry Esmond," as an American critic said, " is a marvel of literature." There was what Carlyle called " vehement acceptance " of this matchless and immortal work. The artistic perfection of " Henry Esmond " surpasses all Thackeray's other writings, perhaps also that of all other nineteenth- century novels. Dr. " Rab " Brown has written : " As a work his ' Esmond ' is probably the most consummate ; it is a curious tour de force, — a mira- cle not only of story-telling, but of archaic insight and skill. . . . Thackeray stood and stands alone and matchless." The careful reader of this volume will remember what Thackeray said to an Ameri- can friend, who met him carrying a copy of " Es- mond," to the historian Prescott : " Here is the best I can do. . . . I stand by this book, and am willing to leave it, where I go, as my card." In Lady Constance Russell's recently published " Swallow- field and its Owners " (London, 1901) is a pleasant Thackeray reminiscence. She received it from her late husband, Sir George Russell. " One evening at the author's house about two years before his death, when I was talking with him and his daughter, I said : ' Tell me, Thackeray, which is your own favourite among your own works ? ' He said : 90 THACKERAY IN ' Tell me first, which is yours ? ' I replied : 1 " The Newcomes." ' Miss Thackeray expressed her preference for ' Pendennis,' and her sister, I think, shared her opinion. Thackeray, after a pause, said with emphasis — I give his very words — 'Well, I should like to stand or fall by "Es- mond." "' " This is an instance of an author know- ing his best work. From the same interesting volume comes the statement that Sir George asked Dickens, within a year of his death, which of all his works he deemed the best. " Unquestionably c David Copperfield,' " he replied. Russell and Dickens attended Thackeray's funeral together, and as they were driving home the latter spoke tenderly of him, gladly recalling their reconciliation after their long estrangement, caused chiefly by the unfortunate Yates controversy. Sir George lamented that they should have allowed tale-bearers to destroy their friendly relations, when the novelist answered emphatically : " Well, I am bound to say that nothing ever took place between Thackeray and me, face to face, which was not to his honour." For " The Newcomes " Thackeray received twenty thousand dollars. The Chelsea philosopher said of this work and " Esmond," " They are two of the >fe l^UMwfc. I ' >rv Caricature Portrait in Water-Colour of Thackeray, painted by himself for Lady Molesworth THE UNITED STATES J 39 may be seen a similar statement as coming from Thackeray to him. When Thackeray first came to this country in the autumn of 1852, he was a frequent visitor at the house of an American friend. The Philadelphian's only daughter, then an attractive girl of twenty and devoted to ^rt, one evening when he was dining with the family, requested the novelist to give her a list of the ten best, or most famous, pictures in the world. The next day he sent her the following memorandum which has never before been printed. Thackeray being an artist, as well as an author, his list of paint- ings, all of which he stated that he had seen, is certainly an interesting one, and it may be doubted if it could be much, or at all, improved since it was made, — more than half a century ago. The vener- able painter Huntington, to whom Thackeray's list was shown by the present writer, was so much charmed with it that he wished a copy for preserva- tion, and to show to his friends. The Last Judgment Angelo The Adoration of the Shepherds Correggio The Last Supper Da Vin.ci The Immaculate Conception Murillo The Transfiguration Raphael The Sistine Madonna Raphael The Lesson in Anatomy Rembrandt The Descent from the Cross Rubens The Assumption of the Virgin Titian The Surrender of Breda Velasijuez Ho THACKERAY IN FitzGerald sent a copy of Thackeray's letter of 17 October, 1852, containing words of "noble kindness," to his friend Archdeacon Allen, accom- panied by the following note : — My dear Allen, — I won't send you Thackeray's own letter because it is his own delegation of a little trust I would not hazard. But on the other side of the page I write a copy : for your own eyes only : for I would not wish to show even its noble kindness to any but one who has known him as closely as myself. SOME ALLUSIONS TO THACKERAY When Thackeray crossed the Atlantic on his first visit to the United States, he had for fellow- passengers, as will be remembered, James Russell Lowell and Arthur Hugh Clough. In his first letters to his wife from the New World, the English poet makes occasional mention of Thackeray : On board the "Canada," Friday, November 5, 1852. Here you see my first written words on board H. M. S. " Canada," which is tossing like fury against a dead-ahead wind. Saturday night we passed Holyhead, Sunday coasted Ire- land, and passed the Asia steamer with all her sails set. This day week we, are to be in port, spite of head wind. Sunday, November 7. A very Sunday-like Sunday indeed : fair wind and bright weather; church service in the chief cabin, read by the surgeon, with sermon by the Rev. Dr. Cook, of the Presby- terian Established Church of Quebec : the lieutenant in Alf, the Assassin. From a Sketch by Thackeray THE UNITED STATES 141 his uniform, and some ten or twelve broad-chested sailors, in their blue woollen shirts, occupying the end of the cabin, aft — fine fellows as need be seen. Since then, a deal of promenading on the quarter-deck. I get sick of the publicities, however, about 2 o'clock, and come down to my cabin to scribble. Lowell, who is on board, is very friendly indeed. Thackeray and I also get on. We have on board a Dragoon officer and a young engineer officer, bound for Bermuda; two American med- ical students; a young half-English New York candidate for orders ; a Manchester youth, on his first trip to New Orleans ; a Cambridge travelling bachelor, with his brother, an Oxford man, knocked up with work in the University crew, going to Montreal ; a Comptroller of the Customs in Halifax, and perhaps a well-to-do Halifax merchant, both well-bred Englishmen ; a south country Merchant, also English, with an American wife ; a Boston chronometer maker; a Virginian, with wife, son, and little niece. Sundry American brokers, &c. &c. make up bur party. November 8. No sun to-day, and no observation ; but we are running thirteen knots ; and the sea is a very gentle beast, and hardly rocks at all, and we are all good-humoured and hungry. November 9. The ship is plunging like a porpoise. Last night came on a sort of gale, with cloud and fog, and we moreover just off Cape Race, and, I believe, really running straight upon it, which you know, is a great mass of Cliff 300 or 400 feet high. However, we stopped and sounded, and stopped and sounded again, and changed our course southward, and were safe past before bedtime, but have been going slowly, with a strong head wind. 142 THACKERAY IN November n. Off the coast of Nova Scotia. Last night at i o'clock we got to Halifax. We had a very noisy night of it — boxes going out and boxes coming in, and passengers ditto. I have walked one lady about the deck for an hour, and talked half-an-hour to another, and another half-hour with Thackeray, who was laid up in his berth. I was called on deck to see the Niagara steaming away eastward from Halifax, some eight miles to the south of us. I am per- haps a little sick of the amount of intimacy which enforces itself upon one under the circumstances of fellow-pas- sengership. It is to be ended, however, to-morrow. There was speechifying and toasting at dinner yesterday in the usual approved style. All our healths were drunk at the lunch-dinner. Thackeray, of course, was drunk ; then Mr. Degen proposed Lowell, the American poet ; and Lowell, in returning thanks, proposed the English poet — me ! — and all the people stared at this extraordinary piece of information, and I made my very modest speech, &c. &c. I have been interrupted by a discourse on the Fugitive Slave Law by a citizen of Hartford, Connecticut, who takes, not the Anti-slavery view, and affirms that the North is quite satisfied. The Lowells meantime are fervent abolitionists. Tremont House, Boston, Monday, November 15', 185a. Here I am an established Bostoni'an. Friday, arrived at sunset; found Thackeray already at this hotel, and that I had been enquired for. Supped with Thackeray and Co., and went to bed. Saturday. — Lady Lyell takes me to the Ticknors ; go THE UNITED STATES 143 to Dr. Howe's office, close by here, and see him ; presently in comes young Mr, Norton, and afterwards Mrs. Howe. Leave letters on the Appletons and Abbott Lawrences. In returning meet Norton, with whom I swear eternal friend- ship; he takes me and introduces me at the Athenaeum, and at a Club, and we walk and talk till 2.30. Then I dine' at the hotel, at the " Ladies' Ordinary," with Thackeray and the Lyells ; then lionise with Thackeray and his friend Crowe through the streets, till it is time to go to the railway, which at 6.45 carries me off to Concord, to Emerson. Mrs. Emerson is out, with her eldest girl. Old Mrs. Emerson, called " Madam," is sitting in the room — a small, benevolent-looking, large-eyed old lady, the original of Ralph Waldo. Under date of January 3, 1853, he writes : " Last night I read my lecture, and it seems to have done very well. Afterwards I went to supper to James R. Lowell, and stayed there from 8.30 to 1 a. m. Thackeray came at 10; Longfellow, Dana, Cjuincy, Estes, Howe, Felton, Fields, and others. Puns chiefly, but Dana is really amusing. Thackeray does n't sneer ; he is really very sentimental ; but he sees the silliness sentiment runs into, and so always tempers it by a little banter or ridicule. He is much farther into actual life than I am ; I always feel that, but one can't be two things at once, you know." Writing to Charles Eliot Norton six months later from Combe Hurst, Surrey, England, Mr. Clough says : " Thackeray, they tell me, is full of the kind-heartedness and generousness of the Americans, and is faithful to his purpose of writing no book." 144 THACKERAY IN THACKERAY NOTE AND SKETCH OF 1856 The accompanying letter was addressed to " Mrs. Dunlop, The Elms, Albany Road, West Troy," who entertained Thackeray when he lectured in Troy, N. Y., on his second visit to this country. The drawing which was sent with the note repre- sents a scene from Mrs. Stowe's " Uncle Tom's Legree whipping Uncle Tom Cabin," a book that was attracting the attention of the American and British reading world at that time. It represents Legree whipping " Uncle Tom," with little Eva as a spectator. 36 Onslow Square, London, Dec. 1 zth [1856]. That "s my address, though I really write from Manches- ter: My dear Mrs. Dunlop, — Do you remember a big Englishman peculiar in his drinks and taste for beer, whom THE UNITED STATES 145 you entertained this time last year ? He has been think- ing all along how he would write and thank his kind hosts for their beer and their bed and their beef and their delight- ful drive through the glittering Albany snows — but here is about the day and he is unwell and tired of writing 40 letters on business already, and of travelling and receiving visits and repeating those stale old lectures which you re- member (they are being more popular here than in America and are making me quite as much money) and so I have only time to say, How do you do, my good kind host and hostess, and how is pretty Jessie ? May you have a pleasant Christmas and many, many happy New Years is the hearty wish of Yours very faithfully and gratefully, W. M. Thackeray. 1 GEORGE WILLIAM CURTIS ON THACKERAY In Clinton Hall, New York, on Friday evening, March 8, 1856, Mr. Curtis delivered an address on Thackeray, at that time giving his lectures on the Georges in this country. Hundreds of people were turned away from the doors for lack of room in the hall, which the writer found crowded to its fullest capacity before the speaker appeared, to behold an enthusiastic and fashionable audience assembled and a bouquet awaiting him at the reading-desk. Mr. Curtis began by saying that he had not mentioned, in his previous addresses of the course, many well- 1 For contributing this note and sketch to "Thackeray in the United States," the author is indebted to the courtesy of a kinsman of Mrs. Dunlop, the Canadian poet, the Rev. Frederick George Scott of St. Matthew's Church, Quebec. vol. n. — 10 146 THACKERAY IN known novelists in his survey of English fiction, because his intention had been to give the general significance of that literature. He had not there- fore mentioned Captain Marryat — whose heroes were as much like seamen as the Tom Bowline of the stage was like the actual English sailor, — or Lever, whose Irishmen were as true to nature as Sam Slick's Yankees, and no truer, — or Mr. Ains- worth, whose popularity was as enormous as his ingenuity in forms of robbery, torture, and murder. An ingenious professor in Cambridge had calculated, in cold blood, from the statistics of railway accidents, that a man who travelled five thousand miles owed a broken arm to keep the statistics straight ; another who had ventured ten thousand was liable for both his legs, while some unfortunates whose professions or necessities compelled them to live in cars, like lecturers and others, were in arrears for the whole body to these terrible statistics, — so that you might any day find yourself travelling by the side of a man who, by the most careful scientific computation, ought to have had his neck broken a year or two before. The same calculation might be made with Ainsworth's novels. For every ten pages there was at least one thumb screwed ; for every chapter a state procession or a black intrigue; for every book, poison, daggers, dungeons and rattling of armour, and for every volume the assassination or execution or marriage of all the characters not reserved to satisfy the rigorous imprisonments, racks, weddings, THE UNITED STATES 147 and scaffolds of the next volume. Ainsworth was a kind of inverted Bulwer; he fed the same kind of perverted taste in the kitchen that Sir Edward gratified in the parlour. One other name he could not omit : Mr. G. P. R. James — who had grown to be an amiable literary institution. We had a perfectly kindly feeling toward him as toward a good old family-horse. It could not be said that he had not enriched English literature ; for he had presented it with a pair of untiring horses which at any time during the afternoons of the last four or five centuries "might have been seen slowly ascending a hill," and still seemed as far from the top as ever. He should have mentioned many more novelists, had not his purpose been to characterise rather than to catalogue the English fiction of our day. He came to speak of Thackeray with some trepidation, because he knew all the fans and flounces were against him. Already he heard their indignant rustle. Already he heard Blanche among them asking if there could be such a being as Becky Sharp and protesting that she wished to think better of human nature. Yonder in the corner he saw the Reverend Charles Honeyman sitting by the side of the lovely widow of the late Captain George Osborne, now the happy wife of Major Dobbin, and whispering to her in the most pastoral manner that to draw a character so replete with milk and water as Amelia was to libel the sex. Lady Beatrix Esmond also could no longer counte- 1 48 THACKERAY IN nance a story-teller who habitually maligned women, and who insinuated that even ladies of birth and position had sometimes an eye to the spoons in their matrimonial treaties. Major Pendennis, too, who had read a few numbers of "The Newcomes," thought it bad taste to speak so severely of a highly respectable family, and trusted, as he put in his best teeth and slipped on his brownest wig, and fitted the plumpest calves .to the back of his legs, that the world was not getting false and fond of shams in its old age. And so, when we had called Thackeray a cold-blooded anatomist, a grunting surgeon flourishing a scalpel, a traducer of women, and a dealer in humorous gossip and low morals and trivial details, had we quite disposed of that sad sagacity, that tender humanity, that tragical truth- fulness, that exquisite wit, that quaint simplicity, that genial wisdom, that charity and humour? When Lady Blessington fled to Paris, and Gore House with all its furniture and pretty things was sold, her French valet wrote to her, after describing the scene and those who came to see, " Mr. Thackeray came also, and there were tears in his eyes as he went away. He is perhaps the only person whom I have seen really affected at your departure." Did they remember the author of Pendennis and Madame de Florae, and did they believe that there were tears in his eyes only because there was to be no dinner in his mouth at the Gore House? Thackeray had long been an author before his fame THE UNITED STATES 149 crossed the sea. He was one of the founders of " Punch," in which he had written a great deal, as well as in " Fraser's Magazine," and at one time in " The London Times." His acknowledged works would make not less than twenty good-sized volumes. But it was not until the publication of" Vanity Fair," in 1848, that Thackeray rose to a general English and American reputation. His works previous .to that time might be called those of his first manner. They were studies which assisted him in the elabo- ration of his larger works, and several of the char- acters now familiarly known to us figured in the earlier sketches. If Dickens was the exponent of the . Humanity of cotemporary English fiction, Thackeray represented its Reality. He was a great novelist because he was a great realist. The ten- dency of the time was the restoration of Art to its true basis, — a faithful adhesion to Nature. In France it dethroned classicism in art a quarter of a century ago, and in literature by Victor Hugo, whom it superseded by Balzac and George Sand. In English literature and art the same spirit was evident. The Photograph and Daguerreotype were harmonious with it. It seemed as if the eye sus- pected some trick in colour and an unnatural elegance in engraving, and so turned on the remorseless sun to tell the truth about things and people. Thack- eray's novels were daguerreotypes of life. His satire was the relentless satire of the daguerreotype applied to the snobbery and flunkeyism of English 150 THACKERAY IN society. He was a university man, a club man, a man of the world. His honest English heart was outraged by the inhumanity, the pretence, and mean subservience of " the world " in which he lived, and so he stepped out of the club, planted his batteries, and rained upon the enemy his squibs, parodies, burlesques, and rhymes, — every form of literature which could serve his sanitary purpose. His satire blazed along the line of society, and seized upon everything which the spirit of snobbery had tainted. " The Book of Snobs " made all the clubs turn pale. " The Paris Sketch Book " and " The Journey from Cornhill to Cairo" stung the tourists. "The Luck of Barry Lyndon " and " The Tremendous Adven- tures of Major O'Gahagan " outbragged the Irish genius. " Rebecca and Rowena," " The Great Hoggarty Diamond," " Men's Wives," " The Shabby Genteel Story," " Mrs. Perkins's Ball," and "The Contributions of George Fitz Boodle" to " Fraser " and of " Don Pacifico " to " Punch " left no rest to the soul of the snob. He pursued Bulwer, the great literary snob, with relentless fun ; he bur- lesqued his novels, his style, his sentiment, and his name. And this tremendous battery of satire was so controlled by good sense, and had such meaning when it seemed most unreasonable, that it was not to be dismissed as merely extravagant. It was not the glitter of persiflage, as in Horace's satire, nor the cold gleam of sarcasm as in Pope's, nor the fire of ambition and of disease as in Swift's, that lighted THE UNITED STATES 151 the world upon its way. It was only manly and humane satire which did that. And this he found Thackeray's to be. He was a dangerous and uni- versal democrat. Mr. Curtis had heard the wonder expressed lately whether Thackeray would dare repeat in London his lectures on the Georges. But long before he was famous he had given the same theory of the Four Georges in some inscrip- tions which he had proposed for their statues, as stinging as they were true. Mr. Curtis did not suppose that Thackeray began writing with a pro- found consciousness that he was to benefit the world at large, and the life and literature of England by satire. He had made too much sport of Bulwer's pompous claims to literary missions to be guilty of the same absurdity. But he was used, as all men of genius were, by a superior power. Shakespeare wrote his plays to supply the theatre in which he was interested. Fielding wrote " Joseph Andrews " to parody " Pamela." Dickens wrote " Pickwick " to supply text for some drawings. What Emerson said of Michael Angelo was true of all great artists : " He builded better than he knew." And so, while Thackeray was bombarding Bulwer- ism in every direction and under whatever form it appeared, he was only pursuing his profession and making his living from day to day. The sting was that it was not feeble fun. It was Hercules seizing Pelham by the nape of the neck and shaking him 152 THACKERAY IN until he slipped shivering out of his dress-coat and varnished boots and showed what a manikin he was. And the satirist did not assume to be a saint. He said frankly, " It is in the air, gentlemen. Snob- bishness has infected England, and we all have the disease more or less. I have no doubt that I should be very glad to be seen walking down Pall Mall with a Duke on each arm." Such tremendous truth-telling was sure to provoke recognition if the nation were not actually moribund. Yet how slowly it came. He was not mentioned in Home's " Spirit of the Age," which spoke of such gentlemen as Westland Marston and Monckton Milnes. But to a shrewd eye the germ of the novels was in the sketches, and it was not surprising therefore that when he was only known as a funny man in " Punch," and a clever man in " Fraser," Charlotte Bronte^ the shy Yorkshire governess, instinctively fixed her eye upon him just after he had published "Vanity Fair," and saluted him in the remarkable dedication to the second edition of " Jane Eyre." It was the sharpest-eyed woman in England recog- nising the sharpest-eyed man. The general scope and drift of the novels were the same as that of the sketches, — they grew out of them, — but the gen- eral treatment was broader and deeper. The rol- licking sarcasm of the earlier sketches disappeared, and they could hardly be legitimately called satires. Thackeray was no more a satirist for drawing Becky Sharp than Shakespeare was for drawing Iago. Thackeray's last Photograph From the Original given by his daughter Anne (Mrs. Ritchie) to Bayard Taylor, after Thackeray's death THE UNITED STATES 153 That there were no perfect persons in the world did not make it a satire. Mr. Curtis did not ask whether there were perfect persons in the world; he asked if this one aspect of the world were true. For a novel had limitations and could only deal with certain characters in certain relations. Truth- telling was not necessarily satire. Fielding was not satirical when he described Parson Adams saying of Vanity, " Vanity, Sir, I despise it ; my best sermon is upon Vanity, Sir." And Thackeray's novels were strictly panoramas of life, like " Gil Bias," " Rod- erick Random," " Don Quixote," and " Nicholas Nickleby." " I have no head above my eyes," Thackeray had once said to a friend of Mr. Curtis ; but he had a heart below his eyes, and that vitalised the story. When we read Thackeray, we seem to be in contact with life. Characters and events strike us as they do in the world, and we have that serious and intimate interest in them. To know Ethel Newcome is to know a lovely, humane girl, and not a heroine with spangled wings folded under her baby waist, but a being who is no more intended for an ideal than our cousins Griselda and Titania. Cousin Griselda was a good girl, full of honesty and sweetness and intelligence ; and yet if Rasselas, Prince of Abyssinia, young, handsome, and noble, should alight from his palanquin and offer his heart full of love and his hand full of diamonds and opals and rubies, he did not say that she would take them, but he thought that even Cousin Griselda 154 THACKERAY IN might worfder whether esteem for Rasselas would not do for love, considering all things ; and he thought her parents, not being at all heartless people, might advise their daughter to think very seriously before she said that esteem would not do for love, while, if there were only Rasselas, and nothing but his heart in his hand, the same parents might say, " My dear Grizzel, a woman should do more than esteem her husband — she should love him." And in a country where there was no Prince Rasselas, but only rich Old Bottom, the weaver, if lovely little Titania were educated in a society whose real principle was love of wealth and social position, and heard the principle inculcated in a hundred ways, and was hemmed in and entangled on every hand by its subtle sophistries, Cousin Titania, although seeing and protesting and calling her fate by its right name, might yet yield to that fate, marry Old Bottom, after all, and try to forget his ears. We all understood this perfectly. We all knew how insidious the snare was. It was this story of actual, general life which Thackeray told. The story moved on, with no machinery or clap- trap, but like life. If we smiled, it was quite un- awares. If we wept, the tears oozed from our eyes as they did when we sat in the parlour and saw the young people dancing merrily about the room, — Griselda with Rasselas, Romeo with Juliet, Titania with Bottom. It was because we saw a partner which they did not see ; it was because we saw THE UNITED STATES 155 them moving down the dance with Time ; and as they whirled, Time breathed upon the lustre of his partner's hair ; Time touched the roses in his part- ner's cheek ; Time dimmed the light in his partner's eye, and the music that was so gay died away as you listened — died from a dance into a dirge. To write a novel was to copy life so as to have the moral in the picture as we have it in fact. Fielding and Smollett and Cervantes emptied the streets into their books. Thackeray's novels went very much into the details of life, but then life was made up of trivial details. Pendennis and Henry Esmond and Clive Newcome were no more busy with de- tails than every man was. The books* were so sternly real that when we saw the errors and sins of the characters, we recognised our own, and we hated to have those things which we ought to cor- rect in ourselves held up to scorn in literature. Some people objected to Thackeray, and demanded pictures of the ideal to show to what we might at- tain. But the Idealists had always had it their own way in literature. Virtue had been triumphant all the way down from "Pamela" to "The Lamplighter" — Virtue drawn through a key-hole and coming out larger upon the other side. Novelists had paraded whole battalions of ideal men and women. Even Dickens had given us Cheerybles and Little Nells and Paul Dombeys. But what was gained by it ? If we were sick, let us know it, and not get oblivion from champagne. Nature was a wicked wag. In 156 THACKERAY IN life we found philosophers growling over the under- done chops, and poets caught in the rain. Women who were loveliest and truest were not always doing angelic deeds. They sometimes took medicine and scolded the cook. Even Jeanie Deans had to eat her dinner ; and, naturally, Byron, who was one of the so-called idealists, said that he could not bear to see a woman eat. But the great artist was he who was not afraid of the fact, and in whose hands Jeanie Deans did not cease to be a being of beautiful moral heroism because she was subject to human necessity. This was emphatically true of Thackeray. Major Dobbin was a man who made us all prouder of being men, although he had large feet and could not bow gracefully. Thackeray was accused of always mak- ing heroism ridiculous, by allying it with some little defect ; but if a reader could so entirely escape catching the tone of these novels as to suppose that Dobbin was made to tumble over a sofa that his goodness might be made ludicrous, instead of seeing that it was to make the goodness real by making the good man human, that reader could no more catch the meaning of life than he did of the story. If Thackeray inclined to draw the Iago in life rather than the Prince Prettyman, it was because he hated Iago, and knew there was no charm against him so true as his faithful portrait. Hence came the melancholy moral. The eyes of many a noble woman filled as she read. It was too true. She could not finish the story. The heart of many a THE UNITED STATES 157 man ached as he shut the book, and he went down to his desk or the drawing-room a little sadder and a good deal wiser. For as he read, page by page, and paragraph by paragraph, the tragic story, he whispered to his own heart, "It is bad ; it is bad ; but the worst is that it is true." Mr. Curtis knew the fans and flounces would make a stand upon Thackeray's women, but he was sure that a mo- ment's consideration would correct this misappre- hension. Thackeray became first famous by his portrait of Becky Sharp, and his readers forgot to survey the whole range of his female creation. No women in English fiction were more real than his. Becky Sharp was not their type; the mother of Pendennis, though she had the weak tenderness of a mother; the patient Laura, although she seemed commonplace because virtue was not piquant; old, beautiful, high-bred Madame de Florae, with her lifelong martyrdom of the heart ; vigorous, homely, and hearty Mrs. O'Dowd; young, susceptible, proud Ethel, with her pure instincts and really lovely na- ture, thinking right and doing wrong; these were women who, for naturalness and exquisite details of portraiture, and for those qualities which were most womanly, were not surpassed in the whole range of English fiction. Thackeray loved the excess of what was most womanly in woman better than the least swerving the other way ; consequently he very much overpraised Fielding's Amelia. He did not re- quire great genius and brilliant talent in his heroines. 158 THACKERAY IN He coldly commended Portia while he loved and worshipped Juliet and Desdemona. Still he had the profoundest reverence for that noblest type. Er- minia was a direct and Becky Sharp an indirect hom- age to what was abstractly most excellent in woman. No man who had not a sensitive adhesion to every- thing essentially lovely in female character could have portrayed Becky Sharp. Mr. Curtis was confounded at that theory of Thackeray which made him a jeerer at human frailty. For, however well- bred we might be, we were not quite saints, and, whether innately depraved or not, Satan must have great satisfaction in contemplating ■ human society. And if " Pendennis " and " The Newcomes " made one sigh over men and women, what did " Ivanhoe," " Jonathan Wild," "Clarissa Harlowe," and "Oliver Twist " ? Were " Pel ham " and " Peter Simple" and " Charles O'Malley " not to be condemned as malign- ing human nature, and "Vanity Fair" to be scorned as a libel upon life ? For his own part, Mr. Curtis found no author in English fiction who wrote with more humane and sad and tender sincerity than Thackeray. He could not consider an author a misanthrope who had drawn Colonel Newcome, and who loved Dick Steele; nor a sceptic of womanly loveliness, who said of Stella's hair, " Only a woman's hair, — only love, truth, and devotion." And as he closed the volumes of the finest hovel of society ever written, he heard the author saying : What a world it might be, and what a world we Thackeray, by Sir Edgar Boehm, in the National Portrait Gallery THE UNITED STATES 159 have made it ! What powers we have, and behold, spite of poetry and philanthropy and Christianity, here is the great Prime Minister officially lying in public, and little Mrs. Smith politely lying in pri- vate, and the lie is so ingrained and rank that it taints sweet, girlish natures ; and good girls may be too weak for it. They give two dollars to weep at the woes of an actress playing an actress, and Would not give two cents for either of the actresses in real life ; they go listlessly to charity schools, partly for the fashion, partly for the conscience ; there is no heart or hope in it. And with the same listlessness they hear a Rev. Honeyman on Sundays preach that " the poor ye have always with you," means the poor ye always must have, and there is no helping it. Young men are readier to disbelieve than to believe; wealth and worth are confused in their minds, and knowledge of the world has come to mean a profound scepticism of men and motives. Poetry, or the conversation of the highest genius with the highest subjects, has come to mean an impossible dream ; and all this while authors and artists have been talking about improving upon nature, and giving us ideal beings to model our lives upon. Now what is to be done ? I know other things are true, and they have had their historians and poets ; but these are true, and they must be . remedied. Do you really suppose the world ever better deserved a deluge than it does to-day ? My plan is to see just what we are, 160 THACKERAY IN and then we can better know how to become what we ought to be. Plenty of gentlemen and ladies have shown us what we might be if we were per- fectly rich, beautiful, and splendid, with no tendency to toothache or gray hairs. But being men and women, each with his thousand feelings, let us see our life as it is, — the good held in abeyance by the bad. Mrs. Rawdon Crawley succeeding in society ; the amiable Lady Esmond loving her daughter's lover; Ethel Newcome deliberately agreeing to marry a fool ; Major Pendennis a toady and loving but his own flesh and blood ; Dobbin capable of an affection from which Romeo's might have been studied ; Colonel Newcome an apotheosis of human character, and the tearless tragedy of Madame de Florae — and as we look I think we shall turn away neither Diogenes nor Mephistopheles, but bowing our heads and saying, ' God be merciful to me, a sinner.' " That was the still sad music of humanity that he heard sounding through all the stories of Thackeray. Mr. Curtis concluded by reading the reference to Thackeray in the preface to the second edition of "Jane Eyre," and Thackeray's poem com- mencing, "The play is done, the curtain drops." The remarkable dedication to Thackeray by " the sharpest-eyed woman in England," which expresses the final and mature verdict upon the character and power of his genius, is as follows : " There is a man in our days whose words are not framed to tickle delicate ears : who, to my THE UNITED STATES 161 thinking, comes before the great ones of society, much as the son of Imlah came before the throned Kings of Judah and Israel ; and who speaks truth as deep, with a power as prophet-like and as vital — a mien as dauntless and as daring. Is the satirist of ' Vanity Fair ' admired in high places ? I cannot tell ; but I think if some of those amongst whom he hurls the Greek fire of his sarcasm, and over whom he flashes the levin-brand of his depreciation, were to take his warnings in time — they or their seed might yet escape a fatal Ramoth-Gilead. " Why have I alluded to this man ? I have alluded to him, Reader, because I think I see in him an intellect profounder and more unique than his con- temporaries have yet recognised ; because I regard him as the first social regenerator of the day — as the very master of that working corps who would restore to rectitude the warped system of things ; because I think no commentator on his writings has yet found the comparison that suits him, the terms which rightly characterise his talent. They say he is like ' Fielding : they talk of his wit, humour, comic powers. He resembles Fielding as an eagle does a vulture : Fielding could stoop in Carrion, but Thackeray never does. His wit is bright, his humour attractive, but both bear the same relation to his serious genius, that the mere lambent sheet lightning playing under the edge of the Summer- cloud does to the electric death-spark hid in the womb. Finally, I have alluded to Mr. Thackeray, VOL. II. — II 162 THACKERAY IN because to him — if he will accept the tribute of a total stranger — I have dedicated this second edition of ' Jane Eyre.' " » In October, 1848, Thackeray writes to Mrs. Brookfield: "Old Dilke of the Athenaeum vows that Proctor and his wife, between them, wrote ' Jane Eyre ; ' and when I protest ignorance, says, ' Pooh ! you know who wrote it — you are the deepest rogue in England.' I wonder if it can be true? It is just possible. And then what a curi- ous circumstance is the cross fire of the two dedica- tions." (" Jane Eyre " to Thackeray : " Vanity Fair" to Barry Cornwall.) 17 Cambridge Terrace, Hyde Park. Monday 18 Nov, /$6. Mv dear Brookfield, — Will you accept a very small consignment of cigars ? I am almost ashamed to offer them, but as you like smoking perhaps you may find these worthy of being smoked. Not being a judge in the matter, it is impossible for me to say whether they be good or bad, but the fact of their not having" paid any duty on coming into this country ought, at all events, as human nature is at present constituted, to impart some little additional flavour to them. The history of the " weeds " is briefly as follows — Capt. M of the American Packet ship " Southampton," having invited me to an entertainment, from the docks to Gravesend, on board his vessel bound for the U. S., took me below, as we were on the point of parting, and from some secret receptacle in his private cabin produced A Box of Smuggled Cigars ! and proceeded in spite of my entreaties THE UNITED STATES 163 and remonstrances to fill my pockets with contraband goods, so that on presently joining my friends on deck I was ob- served to be much stouter than any one remembered to have seen me before. Some time after this event Miss L a young ,lady living at St. J — W — d, who is never tired praising the ser- mons, which she regularly attends every Sunday evening, of a Rev. Mr. B d, presented me with a small bundle of cigars which had been given to her "to make presents with " by my nautical friend, who seems to be a kind of Magic Captain with power to make smuggled cigars to any amount at a moment's notice. Then it was that an idea entered my head, which was that by adding " these.here " to " those there " already in my possession a little wooden box might nearly be filled, and so I said " Although I do not smoke myself / think I know some- body who does" and took the proffered gift with cheerfulness. I take this opportunity to send the remaining half of the " Manners and Customs of the English." I don't know which of the two volumes may be the "better half" but if Mrs. Brookfield will allow me to present this one to her, it will gratify me very much. Ever sincerely yours, Richard Doyle. The Rev. W. H. Brookfield. 36 Onslow Square, S.W. (i860?) My dear Faulkner, Will you send the wine and the bill to me at $>. I am just out of bed after an illness else I would have sooner written to you. The girls send with Papa, their very kind regards to Mrs. Faulkner and I am Yours always ^^ W. M. Thackeray. With all my Q/ 164 THACKERAY IN * • - /*• 4 J*. '£ 0~»4* ,* .., — .4 &vH • ^ o^ au*~r„ .{ /i.'~.* «a. Wu>3f»€ t? a~~C Art M, f~fr*~x ^* aw& ft**. J CU*. o± CU<4. . ?n/fct fci«^i,< i /fee Crk^uMMt 4qyuMi*K (uthulf THE, UNITED STATES 165 ' & .m., „ . m « ■ c*, a *+ f /*« £./**?* • s ***** A—** */*•*« g s*z ►•» A / ttf —.A S*** ***• & 4~* . tit 4rUi ^. T^ /»** *m*^ &uX A4£u*. flur^-^l *»4r ^ * 166 THACKERAY IN ON HALF A LOAF A LETTER TO MESSRS. BROADWAY, BATTERY AND CO., NEW YORK BANKERS Is it all over ? May we lock up the case of instru- ments ? Have we signed our wills ; settled up our af- fairs ; pretended to talk and rattle quite cheerfully to the women at dinner, so that they should not be alarmed; sneaked away under some pretext, and looked at the chil- dren sleeping in their beds with their little unconscious thumbs in their mouths, and a flush on the soft-pillowed cheek ; made every arrangement with Colonel MacTurk, who acts as our second, and knows the other principal a great deal too well to think he will ever give in ; in- vented a monstrous figment about going to shoot pheas- ants with Mac in the morning, so as to soothe the anxious fears of the dear mistress of the house ; early as the hour appointed for the — the little affair — was, have we been awake hours and hours sooner ; risen before daylight, with a faint hope, perhaps, that MacTurk might have come to some arrangement with the other side ; at seven o'clock (confound his punctuality !) heard his cab-wheel at the door, and let him in looking perfectly trim, fresh, jolly, and well-shaved ; driven off with him in the cold morn- ing, after a very unsatisfactory breakfast of coffee and stale bread and butter (which choke, somehow, in the swallow- ing) ; driven off* to Wormwood Scrubs in the cold, muddy, misty, moonshiny morning ; stepped out of the cab, where Mac has bid the man to halt on a retired spot in the common ; in one minute more, seen another cab arrive, from which descend two gentlemen, one of whom has a THE UNITED STATES 167 case like MacTurk's under his arm ; — looked round and round the solitude, and seen not one single sign of a policeman — no, no more than in a row in London ; — deprecated the horrible necessity which drives civilised men to the use of powder and bullet ; — taken ground as firmly as may be, and looked on whilst Mac is neatly loading his weapons ; and when all ready, and one looked for the decisive One, Two, Three — have we even heard Captain O'Toole (the second of the other principal) walk up, and say, " Colonel MacTurk, I am desired by my principal to declare at this eleventh — this twelfth hour, that he is willing to own that he sees he has been wrong in the dispute which has arisen between him and your friend ; that he apologises for offensive expressions which he has used in the heat of the quarrel ; and regrets the course he has taken " ? If something like this has happened to you, however great your courage, you have been glad not to fight ; — however accurate your aim, you have been pleased not to fire. On the sixth day of January in this year sixty-two, what hundreds of thousands — I may say, what millions of Englishmen, were in the position of the personage here sketched — Christian men, I hope, shocked at the dread- ful necessity of battle ; aware of the horrors which the conflict must produce, and yet feeling that the moment was come, and that there was no arbitrament left but that of steel and cannon ! My reader, perhaps, has been in America. If he has, he- knows what good people are to be found there ; how polished, how generous, how gen- tle, how courteous. But it is not the voices of these you hear in the roar of hate, defiance, folly, falsehood, which comes to us across the Atlantic. You can't hear gentle i68 THACKERAY IN voices ; very many who could speak- are afraid. Men must go forward, or be crushed by the -maddened crowd behind them. I suppose after the perpetration of that act of — what shall we call it? — of sudden war, which Wilkes did, and Everett approved, most of us believed that battle was inevitable. Who has not read the American papers for six weeks past ? Did you ever think the United States Government would, give up those Comr- missioners ? I never did, for my part. It seems to me the United States Government have done the most cour- ageous act of the war. Before that act was done, what an excitement prevailed in London ! In every club there was a parliament sitting in permanence : in every domestic gathering this subject was sure to form a main part of the talk. Of course I have seen many people who have trav- elled in America, and heard them on this matter — friends of the South, friends of the North, friends of peace, and American stockholders in plenty. " They will never give up the men, sir," that was the opinion on all sides ; and, if they would not, we knew what was to happen. For weeks past this nightmare of war has been riding us. The city was already gloomy enough. When a great domestic grief and misfortune visits the chief person of the State, the heart of • the people, too, is sad and awe- stricken. It might be this sorrow and trial were but presages of greater trials and sorrow to come. What if the sorrow of war is to be added to the other calamity ? Such forebodings have formed the theme of many a man's talk, and darkened many a fireside. Then came the rapid orders for ships to arm and troops to depart. How many of us have had to say farewell to friends whom duty called away with their regiments ; on whom we strove to look Thackeray, by Nevill Burnard, in the National Portrait Gallery THE UNITED STATES 169 cheerfully, as we shook their hands, it might be for the last time ; and whom our thoughts depicted, treading the snows of the immense Canadian frontier, where their in- trepid little band might have to face the assaults of other enemies than winter and rough weather ! I went to a play one night, and protest I hardly know what was the entertainment which passed before my eyes. In the next stall was an American gentleman, who knew me. " Good heavens, sir," I thought, "is it decreed that you and I are to be authorised to murder each other next week ; that my people shall be bombarding your cities, destroying your navies, making a hideous desolation of your coast ; that our peaceful frontiers shall be subject to fire, rapine, and murder ? " " They will never give up the men," said the Englishman. " They will never give up the men," said the American. And the Christmas piece which the actors were playing proceeded like a piece in a dream. To make the grand comic performance doubly comic, my neighbour presently informed me how one of the best friends I had in America — the most hospitable, kindly, amiable of men, from whom I had twice re- ceived the warmest welcome and the most delightful hos- pitality — was a prisoner in Fort Warren, on charges by which his life perhaps might be risked. I think that was the most dismal Christmas fun which these eyes ever looked on. Carry out that notion a little further, and depict ten thousand, a hundred thousand homes in England saddened by the thought of the coming calamity, and oppressed by the pervading gloom. My next-door neighbour perhaps has parted with her son. Now the ship in which he is, with a thousand brave comrades, is ploughing through the stormy 170 THACKERAY IN midnight ocean. Presently (under the flag we know of) the thin red line in which her boy forms a speck, is wind- ing its way through the vast Canadian snows. Another neighbour's boy is not gone, but is expecting orders to sail ; and some one else, besides the circle at home maybe, is in prayer and terror, thinking of the summons which calls the young sailor away. By firesides modest and splendid, all over the three kingdoms, that sorrow is keeping watch, and myriads of hearts beating with that thought, " Will they give up the men ? " I don't know how, on the first day after the capture of the Southern Commissioners was announced, a rumour got abroad in London that the taking of the men was an act according to law, of which our nation could take no notice. It was said that the law authorities had so declared, and a very noble testimony to the loyalty of Englishmen, I think', was shown by the instant submission of high- spirited gentlemen, most keenly feeling that the nation had been subject to a coarse outrage, who were silent when told that the law was with the aggressor. The relief which presently came, when, after a pause of a day, we found that law was on our side, was indescribable. The nation might then take notice of this insult to its honour. Never were people more eager than ours when they found they had a right to reparation. I have talked during the last week with many English holders of American -securities, who, of course, have been aware of the threat held over them. " England," says the New York " Herald," " cannot afford to go to war with us, for six hundred millions' worth of American stock is owned by British subjects, which, in event of hostilities, would be confiscated ; and we now call upon the compa- From a Photograph. J. C. Armytage, London THE UNITED STATES 171 nies not to take it off their hands on any terms. Let its forfeiture be held over England as a weapon in terrorem. British subjects have two or three hundred millions of dollars invested in shipping and other property in the United States. All this property, together with the stocks, would be seized, amounting to nine hundred millions of dollars. Will England incur, this tremendous loss for a mere abstraction ? " Whether " a mere abstraction " here means the abstraction of the two Southern commissioners from under our flag, or the abstract idea of injured honour, which seems ridiculous to the " Herald," it is needless to ask. I have spoken with many men who have money invested in the States ; but I declare I have not met one English gentleman whom the publication of this threat has influenced for a moment. Our people have nine hundred millions of dollars invested in the United States, have they ? And the " Herald " " calls upon the companies " not to take any of this debt off our hands. Let us, on our side, entreat the English press to give this announcement every publicity. Let us do everything in our power to make this " call upon the Americans " well known in England. I hope English, newspaper editors will print it, and print it again and again. It is not we who say this of American citizens, but Ameri- can citizens who say this of themselves. " Bull is odious. We can't bear Bull. • He is haughty, arrogant, a braggart, and a blusterer ; and we can't bear brag and bluster in our modest and decorous country. We hate Bull, and if he quarrels with us on a point in which we are in the wrong, we have goods of his in our custody, and we will rob him ! " Suppose your London banker saying to you, " Sir, I have always thought your manners disgusting, and your 172 THACKERAY IN arrogance insupportable. You dare to complain of my con- duct because I have wrongfully imprisoned Jones. My answer to your vulgar interference is, that I confiscate your balance ! " What would be an English merchant's character after a few such transactions ? It is not improbable that the mor- alists of the " Herald " would call him a rascal. Why have the United ' States been paying seven, eight, ten per cent for money for years past, when the same commodity can be got elsewhere at half that rate of interest ? Why, because, though among the richest proprietors in the world, creditors were not sure of them. So the states have had to pay eighty millions yearly for the use of money which would cost other borrowers but thirty. Add up this item of extra interest alone for a dozen years, and see what a pro- digious pejnalty the states have been paying for repudiation here and there, for sharp practice, for doubtful credit. 'Sup- pose the peace is kept between us, the remembrance of this last threat alone will cost the states millions and millions more. If they must have money, we must have a greater interest to insure our jeopardised capital. Do American companies want to borrow money — as want to borrow they will ? Mr. Brown, show the gentlemen that extract from the New York " Herald " which declares that the United States will confiscate private property in the event of a war. As the country newspapers say, " Please, coun- try papers, copy this paragraph." And, gentlemen in America, when the honour of your nation is called in ques- tion, please to remember that it is the American press which glories in announcing that you are prepared to be rogues. And when this war has drained uncounted hundreds of THE UNITED STATES 173 millions more out of the United States exchequer, will they be richer or more inclined to pay debts, or less willing to evade them, or more popular with their creditors, or more likely to get money from men whom they deliberately announce that they will cheat ? I have not followed the " Herald " on the " stone-ship " question — that great naval victory appears to me not less horrible and wicked than suicidal. Block the harbours for ever ; destroy the inlets of the commerce of the world ; perish cities, — so that we may wreak an injury on them. It is the talk of mad- men, but not the less wicked. The act injures the whole Republic : but it is perpetrated. It is to deal harm to ages hence ; but it is done. The v Indians of old used to burn women and their unborn children. This stone-ship business is Indian warfare. And it is performed by men who tell us every week that they are at the head of civili- sation, and that the Old World is decrepit, and cruel, and barbarous, as compared to theirs. The same politicians who throttle commerce at its neck, and threaten to confiscate trust-money, say that when the war is over, and the South is subdued, then the turn of the old country will come, and a direful retribution shall be taken for our conduct. This has been the cry all through the war. " We should have conquered the South," says an American paper which I read this very day, " but for Eng- land." Was there ever such puling heard from men who have an army of a million, and who turn and revile a people who have stood as aloof from their contest as we have from the war of Troy ? O.r is it an outcry made with malice prepense ? And is the song of the New York " Times " a variation of the " Herald " tune ? " The conduct of the British in folding their arms and taking no 174 THACKERAY IN part in the fight has been so base that it has caused the prolongation of the war, and occasioned a prodigious ex- pense on our part. Therefore, as we have British property in our hands, we," etc., etc. The lamb troubled the water dreadfully, and the wolf, in a righteous indignation, " con- fiscated " him. Of course we have heard that at an undis- turbed time Great Britain would never have dared to press its claims for redress. Did the United States wait until we were at peace with France before they went to war with us last ? Did Mr. Seward yield the claim which he con- fesses to be just, until he himself was menaced with war ? How long were the Southern gentlemen kept in prison ? What caused them to be set free ? and did the cabinet of Washington see its error before or after the demand for redress ? 1 The captor was feasted at Boston, and the cap- tives in prison hard by. If the wrong-doer was to be pun- ished, it was Captain Wilkes who ought to have gone into limbo. At any rate, as " the cabinet of Washington could 1 " At the beginning of December the British fleet on the West In- dian station mounted 850 guns, and comprised five liners, ten first-class frigates, and seventeen powerful corvettes. ... In little more than a month the fleet available for operations on the American shore had been more than doubled. There-enforcements prepared at the various dock- yards included two line-of-battle ships, twenty-nine magnificent frigates — such as ' The Shannon,' ' The Sutlej,' « The Euryalus,' « The Or- lando,' 'The Galatea ;' eight corvettes, armed like the frigates in part, with 100 and 40 pounder Armstrong guns ; and the two tremendous iron-cased ships, * The Warrior * and • The Black Prince ; ' and their smaller sisters 'The Resistance' and 'The Defence.' There was work to be done which might have delayed the commission of a few of these ships for some weeks longer ; but if the United States had chosen war instead of peace, the blockade of their coasts would have been sup- ported by a steam fleet of more than sixty splendid ships, armed with 1800 guns, many of them of the heaviest and most effective kind." — •« Saturday Review," January 11. THE UNITED STATES 175 not give its approbation to the commander of ' The San Jacinto,' " why were the men not sooner set free ? To sit at the Tremont House, and hear the captain after dinner give his opinion on international law, would have been better sport for the prisoners than the grim salle-a-manger at Fort Warren. I read in the commercial news brought by " The Teu- tonia," and published in London on the present 1 3th January, that the pork market was generally quiet on the 29th Decem- ber last; that lard, though with more activity, was heavy and decidedly lower ; and at Philadelphia, whiskey is steady and stocks firm. Stocks are firm : that is a comfort for the English holders, and the confiscating process recommended by the " Herald " is at least deferred. But presently comes an announcement which is not quite so cheering : — " The Saginaw Central Railway Company (let us call it) has post- poned its January dividend on account of the disturbed condition of public affairs." A la bonne heure. The bond and shareholders of the Saginaw must look for loss and depression in times of war. This is one of war's dreadful taxes and necessities ; and all sorts of innocent people must suffer by the misfortune. The corn was high at Waterloo when a hundred and fifty thousand men came and trampled it down on a Sabbath morning. There was no help for that calamity, and the Belgian farmers lost their crops for the year. Perhaps I am a farmer myself — an innocent colonus ; and instead of be- ing able to get to church with my family, have to see squad- rons of French dragoons thundering upon my barley, and squares of English infantry forming and trampling all over my oats. (By the way, in writing of " Panics," an inge- nious writer in " The Atlantic Magazine " says that the 176 THACKERAY IN British panics at Waterloo were frequent and notorious). Well, I am a Belgian peasant, and I see the British running away and the French cutting the fugitives down. What have I done that these men should be kicking down my peaceful harvest for me, on which I counted to pay my rent, to feed my horses, my household, my children ? It is hard. But it is the fortune of war. But suppose the battle over ; the Frenchman says, " You scoundrel ! why did you not take a part with me ? and why did you stand like a double-faced traitor looking on ? I should have won the battle but for you. And I hereby confiscate the farm you stand on, and you and your family may go to the workhouse." The New York press holds this argument over English people in terrorem. " We Americans may be ever so wrong in the matter in dispute, but if you push us to war, we will confiscate your English property." Very good. It is peace now. Confidence, of course, is restored between us. Our eighteen hundred peace, commissioners have no occa- sion to open their mouths ; and the little question of con- fiscation is postponed. Messrs. Battery, Broadway, and Co., of New York, have the kindness to sell my Saginaws for what they will fetch. I shall lose half my loaf very likely ; but for the sake of a quiet life, let us give up a certain quan- tity of farinaceous food ; and half a loaf, you know, is better than no bread at all. THE UNITED STATES 177 UNPUBLISHED VERSES BY THACKERAY 1 REFORM CLUB, W. STRANGER O, stranger, if it be thy will My life's whole course to know Listen in silence seated still, While with my tale the hours I fill, Over the goblet's flow. The long and tedious night's career Leaves time enough for sleep, Enough a pleasant tale to hear Which those who lend attentive ear From slumber dull will keep. Repose not till the hour assigned ; Harm by much sleep is done. Let him who feels of drowsier mind Departing outward, lie inclined, Till the updawning sun. When, with the portion of his lord He from his meal may go ; We, seated here beside the board, Eating and drinking, will record Each other's tales of woe. The original manuscripts of these four hitherto unpublished poems were acquired by an American collector, — Mr. Lowell M^ Palmer of New York. They are not included in any collection of Thackeray's poetical writings. The first of them appears to have been written in the Reform Club, London. VOL. II. — 13 178 THACKERAY IN Sweet is of perils past and o'er, The story treasured well, — Of all the sufferings that we bore ; Our wanderings on a foreign shore, — Such as I now shall tell. Where turns the sun to set and rise, All to Ortygia's north Thou may'st have heard that Syra lies, An isle of no surpassing size, But excellent of worth. In flocks and kine, in corn and wine Abundant is its soil ; There never famine makes to pine No maladies to woe consign The dwellers of the soil. Sweet Bird ! What sudden burst of melody Startles the still silence of the night ? It comes again — hush ! hush ! It comes from yonder bush, Rife with sound, as that with light Which Moses spied afar, on Horeb's height — I will draw near, as he, Slowly — silently ; For within such sweet sound This, too, is holy ground. Hark ! it comes again ; A long low wail of more than mortal pain And more than mortal sweetness: — it must be Thackeray in i860, by Sir Edgar Boehm, R.A. THE UNITED STATES 179 One of those Angels lured by woman's love And banished evermore from heaven above To pine in earthly prison. Hark again ! The wail has died, and gushing joyously From the same source, A blessed resurrection of glad notes, Rich and tumultuous as from many throats Or many bubbling brooks in headlong course, Like childhood's laughter, innocent and clear, Tells of no sorrow there. Sweet did she smile and graceful did she move My blue eyed Adela, my first dear love ! I thought that day my life I would resign When Addy took another name than mine. Go to ! I live my folly to disown And my dear Adela weighs eighteen stone. THE PAST — LOOKING BACK! I 'm free from the city's noises now, And the city cares that bound me; I chase the shadows off my brow 'Mid the rural scenes around me. Alone in the evening's shadow-light In the deepening gloom and sadness, I roam the paths of past delight, Of youth's wild dream of gladness. I see that panorama vast That to these eyes is giving — The joyous scenes of that dead past Still in my bosom living. 180 THACKERAY 1 N I call those thoughts and mem'ries back That stern-faced toil has banish'd, And wander o'er the beaten track Of happy days long vanish'd ! It will be new to many American Thackerayans that Dr. James McCosh, for a score and two years the successful President of Princeton University, New Jersey, and a distinguished philosophical writer, was the subject of the following verses. At the time when the effort was made to put Protestant educa- tion into the Queen's Colleges, Dr. McCosh was a pastor in Scotland, and had already published two important works. He was called to the professor- ship of logic and metaphysics in the College of Belfast, and the consequence was a great outcry on the part of Irishmen because one of their own nationality had not been chosen for the position. Ridiculing this outcry, Thackeray wrote the ballad entitled " The Last Irish Grievance." The unique and characteristic preface is as follows : " On read- ing of the general indignation occasioned in Ireland by the appointment of a Scotch professor to one of her Majesty's godless colleges, Master Molly Molony, brother of Thaddeus Molony, Esq., of the Temple, a youth only fifteen years of age, dashed off the following spirited lines." Master Molly Molony is an Irishman of the true stamp, and he wipes " red tears of rivinge " from his face as he upholds to the THE UNITED STATES 181 " world's daytistation, The sleeves that appointed Professor MacCosh." and he stoutly declares " And if you 've no neetive Professor to taych me, I scawurn to be learned by the Saxon MacCosh." The learned University President, who was an ad- mirer of Thackeray's writings, died in Princeton in November, 1894. " As I think of the insult that 's done to this nation Red tears of rivinge from me faytures I wash, And uphold in this pome, to the world's daytistation, The sleeves that appointed Professor MacCosh. " I look round me countree, renowned by exparience, And see midst her childthren, the witty, the wise,- — Whole hayps of logicians, potes, schollars, grammarians, All ayger for pleeces all panting to rise ; " I gaze around the world in its utmost diminsion ; Lard Jahn and his minions in Council I ask, Was there ever a Government-pleece (with a pension) But children of Erin were fit for that task ? " What, Erin beloved, is thy fetal condition' ? What shame in aych boosom must rankle and burrun, To think that our countree has ne'er a logician In the hour of her deenger will surrev her turrun ! " On the logic of Saxons there 's little reliance, And rather from Saxon than gather its rules, I 'd stamp under feet the base book of his science, And spit on his chair as he taught in the schools ! 182 THACKERAY IN " O false Sir John Kane ! is it thus that you praych me ? I think all your Queen's Universities Bosh; And if you 've no neetive Professor to taych me, I scawurn to be learned by the Saxon MacCosh. " There 's Wiseman and Chume, and his Grace the Lord Primate, That sinds round the box, and the world will subscribe : 'T is they '11 build a College that 's fit for our climate, And taych me the Saycrets I burn to imboibe ! " 'T is there as a student of Science I '11 enther Fair Fountain of Knowledge of Joy and Contint ! Saint Pathrick's sweet Statue shall stand in the centher, ' And wink his dear oi every day during Lint. " And good Doctor Newman, that praycher unwary, 'T is he shall priside the Acadamee School And quit the gay robe of St. Philip of Neri, To wield the soft rod of Sir Laurence O'Toole ! " a famous feast at the cafe foy John Bulwer, a quaint writer of the seventeenth century, especially recommends the following three dinner rules : — Stridor dentium — Ahum silentium — - Remor gentium ; which has been humorously trans- lated by Thackeray, " Work for the jaws — A silent pause — Frequent Ha-ha's ! " On the same occa- sion something led the novelist to allude to what Athenaeus records of Philoxenus, the dithyrambic poet, who, having nearly completed at one meal a large polypus, was seized with spasms, and being No. 1 ] [NOVEMBER.] [ Price Is, A TALE OF THE LAST CENTURY. BY W. M. THACKERAY. LONDON : BRADBURY AND EVANS. 11, BOUVERIE STREET. 1857, THE UNITED STATES 183 told his last hour was at hand, exclaimed : " Since Charon and Atropos are come to call me away from my delicacies, it is best to leave nothing behind, so bring the remainder of the Polypus." The above reminiscences were given at a little dinner by "Sam" Ward, one of the wisest of gourmets, and the most critical connoisseurs of the cuisine, as well as the most artistic and accomplished chefs, who could dis- cuss Homer with Gladstone, Dante with Long- fellow, and converse in his own tongue with a Chippewa chief, as an introduction to the reading of the following description by Thackeray of a feast at the Cafe Foy. Alas ! of all the famous bon vivants, seven guests on that memorable occasion, the writer is the sole survivor. At that dinner, Ward told us , of the conversations he had carried on with Thack- eray concerning Francatelli and other celebrated chefs, whose cooking they appreciated and had enjoyed in London and Paris. One of these, famous for superior salads, Thackeray facetiously called " Sultan Saladin." " We had a half dozen sardines while the dinner was getting ready, eating them with delicious bread and butter for which the place is famous. . . . After the soup we had what I do not hesitate to call the very best beefsteak I ever ate in my life. By the shade of Heliogabalus ! As I write about it now, a week after I have eaten it, the old rich, sweet, piquant, juicy taste comes smacking on my lips again, and I feel something of that exquisite sensa- 184 THACKERAY IN }■ ?umkmuU. BtAtL. of \U*i4~ IM j\mc \vuiCuXi Vvt, CotmKol. t 4UOU. i kfu>Ufc. t 'Hu- b>fc» Live |u4 tfufr "ttte. IHxlo jei- laiu. • eAiut IIukujCi. itl ChuJuJn. btSjLem. , h/tu*l jou lu ttu- V^aT«^ua |t«. lotfct Awe kectx . TuucvtulL (k^S lui <&uiu lb llw. Czcuc OuuJ. m u*uaI_ THE UNITED STATES 185 tion I then had. I am ashamed of the delight which the eating of that piece of meat caused me. G and I had quarrelled about the soup ; but when we began on the steak, we looked at each other and loved each other. We did not speak — our hearts were too full for that ; but we took a bit and laid down our forks and looked at one another and understood each other. " Every now and then we had a glass of honest, firm, generous Burgundy, that nobly supported the meat. As you may fancy, we did not leave a single morsel of the steak ; but when it was done we put bits of bread into the silver dish and wistfully sopped up the gravy. I suppose I shall never in this world taste anything so good again. But what then ? What if I did like it excessively ? Was my liking unjust or unmanly ? Is my regret now puling or unworthy ? No. Laudo manentem. Any dispute about the relative excellence of the beef- steak cut from the filet, as is usual in France, and of the entrecote must henceforth be idle and absurd. . . . Always drink red wine with beefsteaks ; port, if possible, if not, a Burgundy of not too high a flavor — a good Beaune say. This fact, which is very likely not known to many persons, who, for- sooth are too magnificent to care about their meat and drink — this simple fact I take to be worth the whole price I shall get for this article. " But to return to dinner. We were left I think sopping up the gravy with bits of bread, and declar- 186 THACKERAY IN ing that no power on earth could induce us to eat a morsel more that day. At one time we thought of countermanding the pudreaux aux (ruffes. Poor blind mortals that we were ! We were kept wait- ing between the steak and the partridges some ten minutes or so. Then we began to fiddle with a dish of toothpicks ; then we looked out of the win- dow, then G -got in a rage, rang the bell vio- lently, and asked : ' Pourquoi diable nous fait-on attendre si longtemps ? ' . . . Auguste grinned and disappeared. Presently we were aware of an odour gradually coming toward us, something musky, fiery, savoury, mysterious — the truffes were coming! Yonder they lie, caverned under the full bosom of the red-legged bird. My hand trembled as after a little pause I cut the animal in two. G said I did not give him his share of the truffes, I don't believe I did. . . . What wine shall we have ? I should like some champagne. It's bad here. Have some Sauterne ? Very well. (Auguste, opening the Sauterne) Cloo-oo-oop ! The cork is out ; he pours it into the glass : glock, glock, glock ! Nothing else took place in the way of talk. The poor little partridge was soon a heap of bones." In the following letter written by FitzGerald to his friend Frederic Tennyson, dated June, 1879, incidental mention is made of Carlyle, Dickens, Lowell, Thackeray, and Bayard Taylor : " Mr. Lowell lately observed in a Letter to me what a Pity THE UNITED STATES 187 that so few were of Gray's mind in seeing how much better was too little than too much. But I fancy Gray would have written and published more had his ideas been more copious, and his expression more easy to him. Dickens said that never did a Poet come down to Posterity with so little a Book under his arm. But the ' Elegy ' is worth many vol- umes. I have got through Sir Walter's Scotch Novels : and am now with Dickens, who delights me almost as much in a very different way. I cannot revert to Thackeray : he is too melancholy and saturnine : we are old enough to prefer the sunny side of the wall now. Carl yle's Niece wrote Me lately that her Uncle, who had been feeble in the winter, had picked up in the Spring and had been reading Shakespeare right through. I do not hear of his going through his Goethe. I made another shot at another translation (Bayard Taylor's) of Faust : but remained as indifferent as before. Pray how is it with you as to Goethe ? " In an earlier letter addressed to George Crabbe, January, 1864, FitzGerald speaks of the frontispiece to our first volume, and other Thackeray petso- Tbackeray 188 THACKERAY IN nalia : " Laurence sent me so fine a photograph of his last drawing of Thackeray for Baron Pollock that I have commissioned him to try and paint me a sketch of it, having before him the beautiful sketch of Dupont by Gainsboro' that was in the Great Exhibition." To the same friend he says in March : " I went to London to see Thackeray's house before the auction cleared all off. To the auction I did not go. . . . Bence Jones talked to me a good deal of W. M. T., having known him of late years. He thought he had a foible for Great Folks : I wonder if this was really so." Savile Morton, an early friend of Tennyson and Thackeray, describing a London dinner given by the novelist to the poet, says : " Forster, the liter- ary critic of the ' Examiner,' Emerson Tennant, M. P., Crowe, an author, and Maclise were of the party. Lover, the Irish ballad and story writer, came at the beginning and told Alfred that he was greatly pleased to meet a brother poet, the cool impudence of which amused the party greatly." Writing of an earlier period, Sutherland Edwards says : " Charles Lever was no friend of Thack- eray's ; and after Thackeray had published a bur- lesque imitation of Lever's style in his c Modern Novelists,' he was himself caricatured most offen- sively in one of Lever's novels as * The Rev. Elias Howe.' Samuel Lover, on the other hand, was one of Thackeray's intimate friends. As singer of his own songs, Lover was a reproduction, though a Casts of Thackeray's hand from the Dean Sage Collection THE UNITED STATES 189 very faint one, of Tom Moore. ' He throws into them,' said Thackeray one day to a friend of mine, 1 the whole of his little soul.' " To Augustin Daly, New York. (35 Wimpole St. W.) Sept. 30, 1891. Dear Mr. Daly, — On the morning on which my poor friend Thackeray (Xmas day, 1863) was found dead in his bed, I was sent for to see him. He had evidently been dead some 4 to 6 hours, and I went to Brucciani, a famous artist here at that time, in cast-production from the body, to take one each of his face & of his right hand. By some mischance the former was npt agreeable, none of the charm of expression so attractive during life, and it was rejected. But the hand is a portrait and recalls to me very strongly the character of the original. Please accept it, in the little case, as a mark of my great respect for one who so highly appreciates the master and his writings, and who possesses those invaluable autographs. ... Yours very sincerely, (Sir) Henry Thompson. But a few years before his death in 1892, Chris- topher P. Cranch, the painter and poet, contributed to the New York " Critic " the following pleasant reminiscences of Thackeray, with whom he became acquainted at the Century Club during his first visit to this country in 1852, and occasionally met after- wards in London and Paris. The singer of the sentimental songs with guitar accompaniment, which so much pleased Thackeray, was the author of these 190 THACKERAY IN interesting recollections. They appeared in June, 1887, and were entitled "A Few Reminiscences of Thackeray." Mr. Cranch writes : — " Many years ago I had the pleasure of occasion- ally meeting Mr. Thackeray in New York at the rooms of the Century Club, at that time in Clinton Place. This Club, of which I was an early member, was then confined to one hundred persons — whence its name — and was largely composed of artists, ama- teurs and literary men. The distinguished novelist, when there, was always in some corner surrounded by a crowd, and a mere introduction to him was all I could at first expect. "One evening I remember his leaving the Club rooms at an early hour for him, for he often staid late, and seemed to enjoy these hours with the zest of a younger man. There had been a good deal of light talk and fun, in which he joined, in his quiet way, and as he. was going I recollect his tall com- manding figure, his gold-rimmed spectacles and his white silky hair, as he stood near the door, and turning lifted his arms and spread his hands with a playful air of benediction, saying 'Well — good night boys: receive an old man's blessing.' It was with regret we saw him leave y for it need not be said how heartily he was welcomed among us, and what new life his conversation gave to these gatherings at the Club rooms. "And another evening I often recall, when he was a guest at a party of artists, at the studio of THE UNITED STATES 191 Mr. Thomas Hicks, then in White Street. It was a pitiless wild night in midwinter, with a driving snow-storm which prevented some of the invited guests^ at a distance from coming. But the studio was full in spite of the weather. It was too rare a . chance of meeting Thackeray to be missed. There were greetings as warm as the large but cosy room we met in ; and we all felt as free in our little circle as the winds that roared outside. And how they roared ! But who can describe the blithe spirits, the fun, the frolic of that night ? Our host did everything in the way of hospitality a not very rich artist-host could do. We had punch and cigars, of course ; was there ever an artist's entertainment without them ? But these were only an accompani- ment to the talk, the stories, the songs, and the general festivity, in which the, walls of ceremony were levelled, and the soul of congenial companion- ship exalted. There was no piano. But one of the painters brought his guitar, and trilled dainty senti- mental songs that seemed to hit the fancy of our distinguished fellow-guest. By and by he himself was persuaded to sing. He had no voice as a •singer — but how uniquely he did his part! He sang us his own rare ballad ' Little Billee,' without accompaniment, to a quaint melody which was only half a tune, and every verse was greeted with roars of laughter; and after that he gave us 'Who Loves Not Wine, Woman, and Song ? ' in which all joined who had voices. I have pleasure in recording this 192 THACKERAY IN night's entertainment as a perfectly decorous and sober one, however convivial. Of course we sepa- rated late, but I can remember no one who mistook his neighbour's arctics, overcoat and umbrella for his own, as we plunged out of the light into the spectral darkness and the storm, on our way to our respective homes. " It was some years afterwards (1855) that I met Mr. Thackeray in London. Mr. James Russell Lowell, Mr. William Wetmore Story, and the writer of this sketch were spending the evening at Mr. Russell Sturgis's. Thackeray was there and invited us three to dine with him next day at the Garrick Club-house. This Club was, I believe, frequented, or had been at one time by actors. If I remember it was decorated from top to bottom with portraits of distinguished gentlemen and ladies of the stage, dating a long way back. It had a cosy and comfortable look. We, however, saw none of the Club members. Our dinner was simple, but excellent, and was spiced by our host's conversation. But it was our after-dinner experi- ence that I chiefly recall. After we had risen from the table Thackeray said: 'Come, — let's us ad- journ to the Cider Cellar ' I immediately began to conjecture what sort of a place, this Cider Cellar might be. Was it another cellar of Auerbach, and should we meet Faust and Mephistopheles ? We left the Club rooms, and a short distance oiF entered a house where we were conducted not to a cellar, THE UNITED STATES 193 but to a very plainly furnished but comfortable par- lour on the second floor. Here our host ordered Arthur Pendennis and Blanche Amory, by Thackeray some punch and cigars, and while we were enjoying this pleasant post-prandial luxury, Thackeray said : ' By the way, have you seen the last number of VOL. II. — 13 194 THACKERAY IN "The Newcomes " ? ' We said we had not. ' Then,' said Thackeray, e I should very much like to read you some of it. It is just out.' " We all of course expressed an eager pleasure in this opportunity of hearing him read anything from his own books. Whereupon he summoned a waiter and said: 'Here, waiter — here's a shilling — I want you to go out and buy for me the last number of "The Newcomes." ' It was soon brought; and Thackeray began to read, and read for an hour, I should think, in his quiet half-plaintive voice, some of the closing scenes in this novel. We were all deeply interested. I think the last page he read described the death-bed of Colonel Newcome. As he closed we thanked him cordially and Mr. Lowell begged for the number from which he had read, that he might keep it as a souvenir of this delightful afternoon. I have recorded this meeting exactly as it occurred — as there has been another version published, not quite correct. Thackeray's reading had a charm peculiar to itself. It recalled his ap- pearance as a lecturer in New York some years before, when he gave us those delightful chapters in the ' English Humourists ' which are still just as delightful in print. His delivery was perfectly simple and unambitious of effect and stood in marked contrast in this respect to that of Mr. Dickens. " He had hardly got through his reading from ' The Newcomes,' and our thoughts were all full of THE UNITED STATES 195 the pathos of the closing scenes, and toned by his artless rendering of it, when a door opened, and in rushed half a dozen young men — artists and small authors, I think, who in a boisterous way sur- rounded him, and gave vent to all sorts of small shallow talk in a free and familiar style of man- ners — all of which jarred on my feelings. I began to remember that Thackeray had two sides to him, the thoughtful, the tender, the purely lit- erary, and — well, call it the Bohemian. For he seemed to be on intimate terms with this noisy matter-of-fact crowd, and I could not notice that their irruption into the room had any jarring effect upon him. " I remember that my two friends and I very soon took our leave: for we found nothing at all edifying in the chatter of these young Philistines, and we did not want^to have the effect of the pre- vious, hour disturbed by such an uncongenial breeze, and decline upon any lower range of feeling than we had been enjoying. " I think it was three years later that I met Thackeray again in Paris, where I was then resid- ing. But I saw him only a few times — once in Story's studio, once in my own, and once when I called to see him in his lodgings in the Rue de Rivoli. And the last time I ever saw him was in the crowded Rue Faubourg St. Honore, just before I was to leave for Rome in the autumn of 1858. I told him I was going to Rome. ' Lucky fellow,' 196 THACKERAY IN he exclaimed : ' I wish I were going with you.' We merely shook hands, each going his own way, and I never saw him again. " This is not much to record. How many others could open whole budgets of reminiscences of him ! But it has always been a great deal to me : and even so imperfect a record may be interesting to those who value his character and his works." Apropos of "Vanity Fair," a friend relates the following entertaining Thackeray incident : " He did not mind speaking of himself: and in answer to my inquiries (after a conversation which had lasted some time) as to whether the success of ' Vanity Fair ' had taken him at all by surprise — ' Very much so,' he replied. { And not. myself alone,' he added. ' When a little time before I had asked for permission to republish some tales from " Fraser's Magazine," it was given to me with a smile — almost *an ironical — as much as to say " Much good may you get out of them." They bring me in three hundred a year now.' He told me moreover, that Turguenieff had called upon him without an introduction, simply in the character of a foreign admirer of his works and without saying one word about his own literary position." x Mr. Edwards also writes of Thackeray's failure in the dramatic field. He was an unsuccessful competitor 1 " Personal Recollections of H. Sutherland Edwards," London, 1 900. THE UNITED STATES 197 for the prize of five hundred pounds offered by the Haymarket Theatre for the best comedy. • " The Wolves and the Lamb," Thackeray's dramatisation of " Lovel the Widower," was a failure, and the fol- lowing anecdote shows how completely unfitted the great writer was for work for the stage: " Many years afterward Thackeray wrote another comedy brought up to date. It was entertained for a time at the Olympic, and it need scarcely be added,, was not brought out. A friend of mine was complain- ing to Thackeray that he had written a piece in which there were only four characters, and yet could not get it produced. " ' Why there were seventeen in mine,' replied Thackeray, 'and they would n't have it ! '" The most successful dramatisation of Thackeray in the United States was the stage version of "Vanity Fair" given in New York in 1899. Lang- don Mitchell prepared the play and, says " The Book- man," " he struck an equation between Thackeray and the exigencies of the situation with which no one who loves the story and knows the limitation of modern drama could quite seriously quarrel. He gave the story in four acts and four scenes. The first took place in Miss Crawley's town-house, and was necessarily introductory in point of story and character. The second scene showed the Duchess of Richmond's historical ball at Brussels, and the action departed markedly from the book. But it was good drama and was faithful to the char- 198 THACKERAY IN acters, if not to the story of ' Vanity Fair.' He exercised a license which the good-tempered author would have probably been the first to countenance. Act Three was devoted to the Marquis of Steyne episodes. ' It was literally Thackeray. Not only the situations, but most of the dialogue was Thack- eray's own. The fourth and last act showed the poverty of Pumpernickel. It was the poorest act of the play, though relieved as the curtain came down by a daring act of fidelity which should have earned the author much more general praise. Becky's path had not fallen in pleasant places. She felt just a little desperate. But her whole life had been a train- ing in meeting desperate situations. Of course, in the book the Pitt Crawleys had nothing to do with her at this time, but it was a happy liberty which Mr. Mitchell took in bringing Jane and Pitt Craw- ley on at the end to carry Becky off, to church. The artful woman's sense of expediency recognised a for- lorn hope. There was a fine touch by the dramatist and the actress in the way Becky dissembled and resumed her hypocrisy, leaving the amorous Jos concealed in her room while she tripped off to devotion between the two Crawleys as the curtain came down." * On the beautiful brick mansion built in the Queen Anne style for Thackeray in 1861, repre- sented in this volume and known as No. 2, Palace Green, Kensington, alone of all his many London 1 Paul Wilstach in "The Bookman," January, 1903. A posthumous Portrait of Thackeray, by Sir John Gilbert, R.A. THE UNITED STATES 199 homes, has the privileged Society of Arts placed its commemorative oval tablet in its front wall, an- nouncing that here the novelist lived and died. The housewarming occurred in February, 1862, when Thackeray's " rrrejected " play of " The Wolves and the Lamb," was admirably acted by amateurs. Among them were the author himself, Sir Henry Cole, Mrs. Caulfield, Fo'llett-Synge, Horace Twiss, and Morgan O'Connell. Frederick Walker drew a pretty picture of one of the scenes, and Eyre Crowe contributed a painting of Mrs. Milliken as she leans upon the harp, an adaptation from an outline illustration in " Lovel the Wid- ower," the story founded by Thackeray upon the play, which he designated " a rejected masterpiece in two Acts." The building was large, with many scantily furnished rooms on the ground-floor, open- ing into one another, lending itself to such an occasion, and was called by its owner " The W. empty (W. M. T.) House." The play was per- formed a second time in the author's Queen Anne house in which he found so much pleasure. Writing to his mother, July 5, 1862, Thackeray says: "I can tell you one person of the congrega- tion was thankful for our preservation, and all the blessings of this life which have fallen to us. Think of the beginning of the story of the c Little Sister,' in the 'Shabby Genteel Story,' twenty years ago, and the wife ill, and the publisher refusing me ^15, who owed me ^13 ios. } and the 'times, to which I 200 THACKERAY IN applied for a little more than five guineas for a week's work, refusing to give me more — and all that money difficulty ended, God be praised, and an old gentleman sitting in a fine house like the hero at the end of the story ! " A friend who visited Scotland in the summer of 1902, and saw the burial-place in Ayr of Thack- eray's stepfather, the original, as generally believed, of Colonel Newcome, sends us the following in- teresting memorial of him copied from the original on the south wall of the choir in the Scottish Epis- copal Church of the Holy Trinity. The brass tablet bears the following inscription : " SACRED TO THE MEMORY OF MAJOR HENRY WILLIAM CARMICHAEL-SMYTH Of the Bengal Engineers, who departed this life at Ayr 9th September, 1861, Aged 81 years. Adsum " ' And lo.he whose heart was as that of a little child, had answered to his name, and stood in the presence of the Master.' — Newcomes, Vol. in. Ch.xxvi. " On the rebuilding of the church his grave was brought within the walls. He was laid to rest immediately beneath this place by his step- son, William Makepeace Thackeray. This memorial was put up in 1887 by some members of the family." In the course of an appreciation of Anthony Trollope, James Bryce writes : " Like most of his THE UNITED STATES 201 literary contemporaries Trollope was a politician, and indeed a very keen one. He once contested in the Liberal interest — in those days literary men were mostly Liberals — the borough of Beverley in York- shire, a corrupt little place, where bribery proved too strong for him. It was thereafter disfranchised as a punishment for its misdeeds ; and his costly experiences doubtless suggested the clever election- eering sketches in the story of ' Ralph the Heir.' Thackeray also was once a Liberal candidate. He stood for the city of Oxford, and the story was cur- rent there for years afterwards how the freemen of the borough (not an exemplary class of voters) rose to an unwonted height of virtue by declaring that though they did not understand his speeches or know who he was, they would vote for him, ex- pecting nothing, because he was a friend of Mr. Neate's." 1 This would seem to verify Thackeray's own statement made to Dickens, as mentioned in the first volume, that he doubted whether more than two of the electors had ever heard of him ! Many persons have been mentioned as the origi- nal of Colonel Newcome, but it was always under- stood in the author's family that his stepfather, Major Carmichael-Smyth, possessed many of the Colonel's characteristics, including a weakness for rash speculations. He wasted money in various schemes, and the liabilities incurred by " The Con- stitutional " were for a long period a source of 1 Studies in Contemporary Biography, London, 1903. 202 THACKERAY IN anxiety. Thackeray's son-in-law says : " Colonel Newcome no doubt drawn in part from his step- father, may be taken as embodying the Anglo- Indian traditions in which the family was so rich ; " and Mrs. Ritchie writes, " It is almost touching to. realise how many people have found the original of Colonel Newcome, to their personal satisfaction, in various individuals." The ever beloved Colonel Newcome was, it is certain, formed upon the two Anglo-Indian officers, Major-General Charles Montauban Carmichael and Thackeray's stepfather, Major Henry Carmichael- Smyth. An interesting note from a nephew of these two officers is quoted by Mr. A. F. Baillie in his recently published annals of the old Oriental Club, to which they- — and Colonel Newcome and Mr. Joseph Sedley — once belonged. Mr. Carmichael writes : " When ' The Newcomes ' were coming out I said to Thackeray, ' I see where you got your Colonel.' ' To be sure you would,' he replied, c only I had to angelicise the old boys a little.' " As this chapter is drawing to a close, there comes across the Atlantic news of the death in Brighton, during July, of another of Thackeray's intimate English friends, for whom is claimed the credit of suggesting to him the plot of " Pendennis." Born in the same year as the novelist, Miss Horace Smith survived him for twoscore years. To her father of " Rejected Addresses " fame, she owed her youth- ful acquaintance with many of the literary celebrities -(«*: .«S I iiiiia ,^« 'w > ■ »V t " ■ IP 11 ■>" ,; ! : -' ::/ :' :? ::Si':-£ ;. : ..,; .^ ^> 4U fy&uiy o7.ii0jfe &t^.JLa* The Widow, a Valentine, by Thackeray's Daughters, sent to Sir Henry Cole THE UNITED STATES 203 of the time, including Keats, having seen, as a child, the poet, in her father's garden at Fulham. Among her other early memories were those of meeting FenimOre Cooper, Fitz-Greene Halleck, and Wash- ington Irving ; also of being taken into the carriage of the Princess Charlotte. The venerable lady in- herited her father's warm friendship with Thackeray, and when past fourscore and ten she continued her intimacy with his surviving daughter. Al- though Miss Smith steadfastly declined to be in- terviewed, or to prepare her reminiscences for publication, she was famous among her friends for her fund of anecdote and animated flow of con- versation. Her death at ninety-two not only re- moved an interesting link with Thackeray, but also with the social and literary life of London and Brighton. Mrs. Ritchie wrote of an illustration that ap- peared in the "Century" article for December, 1901 : " There is a Valentine to Sir Henry Cole on elegant lace paper, which I and my sister used to buy with our pocket money, and which seems more like her drawing and my writing, than my Father's. He used to touch up our productions in the way of Valentines, and I dare say this one was a joint affair." In the same letter Mrs. Ritchie remarks : " I was perfectly delighted when I began to read what you had written, and I recognised the reality of it all. How happily you, have brought back the feel- 204 THACKERAY ing and atmosphere of those old times. My Father, who went away to America so ill and de- pressed, came back cheered and made happy by the friend's welcome he found there. I think indeed it has gone on till now ! and the welcome and friendship he so appreciated have not ceased. I often wish he could have known how many people to come, there were to understand and appreciate not him so much as the thing he loved and believed in and respected. For he cared more for under- standing sympathy than for actual personal apprecia- tion, though he loved friendship too. . . . How often have I heard my Father speak of his many good friends in America." INDEX INDEX [Contents of notes are included in this Index without mention as such.] Abbotsford, 52 Abou Ben Adhem, 155 Addison, Joseph, 66 African Waiters, 1 14 Agassiz, Prof. Louis, 141 Ainsworth, William H., ii. 136, 146 Alabama River, 292, 295 Albany Manor House,- 143 " Albion, New York," 27, 215 ; ii. 22 Allan, Archdeacon, ii. 140 Allingham, William, ii. 72 All the Year Round, 212 Alnwick Castle, 226 American Authors, 89 American, Cairo, 304 American Civil War, 202 American Collectors, ii. 124 America's Cup, 78 American Memphis, 304 American Ministers, 119 American Oysters, 114 American Publishers, 62 American Self-command, 47 American Settlements, 29 American Tours, 135 Angelo, Michael, 20, 251 ; ii. 151 "Anglo-Saxon Review," 182 Antoinette, Marie, 297 Appleton, D., and Company, 27, 63- 64, 180; ii. 94 Appleton, Thomas G., 85, 180,242; "• S» 73 Appleton, William H., 56, 58, 71 Appleton!* Journal, 256 Appomattox Court House, 306 Arcedeckne, Andrew, 229 ; ii. 98-99, 100 "Arctic" wrecked, 169 Ashburton, Lady, 4, 84, 112 Ashburton, Lord, ii. 139 Astor House, 198 Astor, John Jacob, 43 Athenaeum, Boston, ii. 143 Athenaeum Club, 243, 328, 372 ; ii. 56 Athenaeum Hall, 128, 135 Athos, Porthos, and Aramis, 200 " Augusta Chronicle," 284 Augusta, 6a., 275, 283 Austrian Hapsburgs, 47—48 Bacon, Francis, 210, 212 Bacon, Miss Delia, 210-21 1 Baconians, 212 Baden-Powell, General, 249 Bailey, Gamaliel, 124 Ballads and Poems, 181 Ballantyne, Sergeant, 87, 213, 229 Baltimoreans, 126 Balzac and Thackeray, 120 Bancroft, George,. 17-18, 21, 84, 319 Barbauld, Mrs., ii. 17 Baring Brothers, 10, 53 Baring, Thomas, 313 Barstow, Mayor, 246 Barton, Bernard, 291, 293 Battle of New Orleans, ii. 133 2o8 INDEX Baxter Family, 53, 151, 155; ii. n Baxter, Miss Sally, 153 Beacon Street, Boston, 17, 98 Bearded Woman, 305 Beaver Island Light, 1 5 Beck, Dr. Romeyn, 144 Beecher, Henry Ward, 134 Belgrayia or Broadway, 156 Bellows, HenryW., 18, a8 ; ii. 91-92 Bellows Menders' Banquet, 240 Benjamin, Judah P., 297, 300 Bennett, James G., 18 Beranger, Pierre Jean de, ii. 120 Bernstein, Baroness, 346 ; ii.' 93 Berry, Miss, 5 Besant, Sir Walter, ii. 69 Biddell, Herman, ii. 60, 121 Biddle, Clement C, 109 Bigelow, Mrs. John, ii. 9 Birch, Doctor, 178, 179 Blackie, John S., 35 Blanchard, Laman, ii. 22 Blessington, Countess of, 152, 364; ii. 78, 148 Bobadil, Captain, 1, 42 Boehm Statuette, ii. 109 Bohemian Dinner, 89 Bohemians, 258 Bonneville, Capt. B. L. E., 306 Book of Ballads, ii. 139 Booth, Edwin, 70 Borrow, George, ii. 105 Boston Brahmins, 92 BoswelTs Johnson, 217 Boucher, Jonathan, 274 Bouillabaisse, 56-57, 89, 184, 274, 297, 299 Bower of Virtue, 132, 312-313,316, 328 ; ii. 17 Bowery Boy Story, 48 Bradbury and Evans, ii. 19, 35 Bramine's Journal, ii. '69 Brevoort House, 89 British Fleet, ii. 174 British Legation, 104, 118, 124 British Museum, 10 British Vice-Consul, 78 Broadway, Battery & Co., ii. 166, 176 Broadway Delineator, 27-, 30 Brobdingnags, 196 Bronson, Miss, 170 Bronte, Charlotte, 4, 75, 381 ; ii. 8, 108, 152 Brookfield, Charles E. R., ii. 67 Brookfield, Mrs. W. H., 23, 26, 53, no; ii. 67-68, 86, 105, 119, 123, 162 Brookfield, William H., ii. 67, 112, 164 Brooks, Phillips, 134 Brooks, Shirley, 60 ; ii. 118 Broughton, Lord, ii. 56, 134 Brown, Dr. John, 75, 141, 2185 ii. 55, 86, 89 Browne, Sir Thomas, 354 Browning, Mrs. R., 202 Browning, Robert, 118 Brummell, Beau, 33 Brunette " Shin,'* 207 Brussels Convent Cemetery, 233 Bryarft, John Howard, 306 Bryant, William C, 3, 18, 23, 46, 49, 51, 90, 210, 212 Bryce, James, ii. 200 Buffalo Revolver, 32 Burgess, Sir J. B., 93 Bull, Ole, 91, 242 Bulwer, John, ii. 182 Bulwer, Lytton, 61 ; ii. 22 Burnard, Harry C. , ii. 98 Burns, Robert, 226 Butler, Pierce, 112 Byron, Lord, 17, 93, 195, 222; S. 56, no Cabell, Henry C, 255 Cabell, James Alston, ii. 73 Cambridge Terrace, 4, 10 INDEX 209 Cane-bottomed Chair, 131, 226; ii. 86, 120 Canning, George, ii. 23 Canvas-back Ducks, 14, 252 Cape Danger, 233 Capers and Anchovies, ii. 88 Captain of Canada, 14, 15 Cardwell, Edward, 54, 342 Carlisle, Lord, 30 Carlton House, 207 Carlyle, Mrs. T., 150 ; ii. 114 Carlyle, Thomas, 4, 7, 50, 118, 202, 212, 218, 248 ; ii. 56, 75-76, 90, 114, 127 Carruthers, Robert, ii. 118 Carusi's Hall, Washington, 119 Cary, Dr. Cornish, ii. 80 Castlewood, Lady, 23, 152, 257, 346 Castlewood, Virginia, 128 ; ii. 73 Catherine, A Story, ii. 31 Caulfield, Mrs., ii. 199 Caunt, Ben, 35 Cave of Harmony, ii. 27 Central Park, New York, 339 Centurians, 70, 72, 74, 81, 335 Centurians, Nestor of, 69 Century Club, 66, 68, 71, 132, 210, 226 ; ii. 102, 189 Century Magazine, 3 ; ii. 103, 203 Cervantes, Miguel de, 16, 28, 52 Chambers, Charles E. S., 213 Chambers's Journal, 213 Chambers, Robert, 212 Chambers, William, 212 Champs Elysees, 228 Chapman and Hall, ii. 83, 98, 109 Charity and Humour, 41, 44, 54, 172, 186 ; ii. 107 Charity Children's Day, ii. 82 Charleston Courier, 273 Charlotte and Werther, 100, 103 Charlottesville, Va., 135 Charterhouse, ii. 18, 28 Chelsea, London, 7 VOL. II. — 14 Chesham Place, 85, 119 Chestnut Cottage, 42, 44 Childs, George W., ii. 107 Chippewa Chief, ii. 183 Chouteau, Pierre, 305 Christmas Carol, 55 Chronicle of the Drum, ii. 103 Church of the Messiah, 22, 53, 219 Church Porch, The, ii. 108 City Hall Park, 216 Civil War Days, 306 Clarendon Hotel, 17, 26, 27, 37, 45, 54. 79. '43, 194, =»>6, "3 Clarendon, Lord, 171 Clark, Louis Gaylord, 44 Clavering, St. Mary, ii. 79 Clay, Gen. Cassius M., ii. 42 Clinton Place, 22, 69, 72 Clive and Ethel, 332 Clough, Arthur H., 12, 13, 15, 16, 155 i »• I4°> H3 Clytemnestra, 259 Cole, Sir Henry, 336 ; ii. 199, 203 Coleridge, Samuel T., ii. 133 Collingwood, Admiral, 235 Collins Steamer " Baltic," 328 Collins, Wilkie, ii. 75 Columbia College, 195 Columbus, Christopher, 43, 176 Confederates, lean-faced, ii. 20 Congreve and Addison, 139 Coningsby, Disraeli's, 65 Conway, Judge Eustace, 272 Conway, Moncure D., 274 Cooke, John Esten, 256, 345 Cooper, J. Fenimore, 18, 64, 80, 481, 482 ; ii. 8, 15, 16, 26, 203 Cooper, John, 178 Cooper, Paul F., 144 Corkran, Miss Henrietta, 249 " Cornhill Magazine," 80, 181, 396; ii. 3-4, 29, 42, 43, 57, 84 Cornhill to Cairo, 59; ii. 69, 112 Cornwall, Barry, ii. 18, 87, 133, I 6a 2IO INDEX Cornwallis, Marquis of, 265 " Corsair, The," Willis, 203 Costigan, Captain, 225, 398; ii. 27 Courtenay, William C, 275 Covent Garden Clubs, ii. 28 Coverley, Sir Roger de, 80 ; ii. 28, 63 Cozzens, Frederick S., 41, 43, 67, 81, 208, 321, 335, 355 Cozzens, Mrs. F. S., 46 Crabbe, George, ii. 62, 187 Crampton, Sir John, 118, 144, 252 Crampton, Sir Philip, 119 Cranch, Christopher P., 67, 321, 331 ; ii. 189 Crawford, George M., ii. 87 Crawley, Rawdon, 13; ii. 26 Crescent City, 296 Crimean War, 118 Criterion, New York, 266 Crowe, Eyre, 11, 57, 106, 112, 131, H3. 'S3. '55. '74, *° 2 S »• i°. 43. '99 Crowe, Eyre Evans, 58 Crowe, Sir Joseph, ii. 70, 188 Cruikshank, George, 4 ; ii. 68 Crusoe, Robinson, 65 Cunarder, "Africa," 180, 203 Cunarder, "Asia," ii. 140 Cunarder, "Canada," II, 12, 14; ii. 140 Cunarder, " Europa," 145 Cunarder, "Niagara," ii. 142 Curtis, George W., 20, 47-48, 65, 67, 69» "34. 197, '9 8 . a °9> " 8 > a3 2 -*34, 316-317, 3", 33 8 , 343> 350; ii. 3, 58, 125, 145 Custis, John Parke, 274 Cutting, Francis B., 18 Cyder Cellar, London, 332 Daly, Augustin, 336—337; ii. 109, 122, 189 Daly, Charles P., 44, 47, 67, 71, 215, 321 Dana, Charles A., 306, 321 ; ii. 101, 102 Dana, Richard H., 2, 95, 180 ; ii. 68, '43 Dance, George, 329 Daniel, John M., 255 Dan to Beersheba, 399 D'Artagnan, M., 261 Dartmouth, Lord, 31 Davidson, Sir Henry, ii. 9 Davis, Charles A., 46, 49, 322 Davis, George T., ii. 10 1 Davis, J. C. Bancroft, 10, 310, 313, 337 Davis, Jefferson, ii. 2 1 Dead March in Saul, 176 Dejanira's Robe, 32 Delmonico's, 46, 136, 197, 198 Democracy in America, 367 Denbigh, Earls of, 47 De Quincey, Thomas, 212 Derby, the Earl of, 365 De Stael, Madame, 93 De Tocqueville, Count, 366 De Vere, Prof. Scheie, 136 Dickens, Augustus N., ii. 98 Dickens, Charles, 1—3, 13, 20, 27, 3°, 3°, 49, 55, 88 , !72, '73, «>5, 212, 231—232, 263, 267, 278, 34 2 > 345, 35 2 > 359 i "• 9, ", a 3, 6 5> 75-76, 8 5, 88, 90, 121, 138, 201 Dickson, Frederick S., 116; ii. 107 Disraeli, Benjamin, 65 j ii. 70, 76 Don Quixote, 90 j ii. 16, 92 Don, Sir William, ii. 59 Dore, Gustave, ii. 60 D'Orsay, Count, 33, 365 Doyle, Richard, 3—4, 9-11, 314; ii. 109-110, 163 Drexel Institute, The, ii. 106 Dryden, John, 241 Du Chaillu, Paul, 368 Duer, Denning, 321, 329 INDEX 211 Duggan, Paul, 70 Dumas, Alexander, 200, 261, 347 Du Maurier, George, 131 Dunlop, Mrs., ii. 144-145 Durand, Asher B. , 18 Dutchman's Fireside, The, 294 Duval, Denis, 232; ii. 93, 119 Duyckinck, Evert A., 27 ; ii. 107 Earl of Crabs, 259, 260 Educated Edinburgh, 141 Edwards, Sutherland, ii. 188, 196 Elgin, Lord, ii. 2 Elliot, Lady F., 119, 120; ii. 123 Elliot, Sir Frederick, 119 Elmwood, Cambridge, 13 Emerson, R. W., 7, 50, 91, 134, 212, 243 ; ii. 41, 143 English Authors, 21 English Bluntness, 97 English Humourists, 3, 5, 23, 54, 65, 92, 106, 134, 186, 206, 279, 320 ; ii. 96, 112, 120, 194 English Traits, ii. 41 Escurial, Palace of, 47 Esmond, Beatrix, III-II2, 346 ; ii. 93 Esmond, Henry, 8, 12, 17, 23, 27, 31. 5*> 9°. 'S'i l6g > 2 4 J » 346; ii. 89 Este, Judge A. K., 307 Eton, England, 195 Ettrick Shepherd, 238; ii. 133 Evans's, London, 86, 89 ; ii. II, 18 Evans, Thomas C, 20 " Evening Post," 23, 26 Everett, Edward, 21 Exquisites, The, ii. 121, 125 Eyre, Jane, ii. 108 Falstaff, Sir John, 80 Famous Feast, ii. 182 Fauntleroy of Virginia, 267 Fauntleroy the forger, 29 1 Felt, Willard S., 168 Felton, Cornelius C, 49, 95 Ferrer, Lord, executed, 177 Field, Maunsell B., 226 Fielding, Henry, 47 ; ii. 120 Fields, James T., 81, 242 ; ii. 86-87 Fillmore, Millard, 119, 144 Fish, Hamilton, 119, 155 Fisher, Rodney, ii. 102 FitzGerald, Edward, 7, 8, 196, 290, 363 ; ii. 40, 60-61, 88, lai, 138, 139 Fladgate, Frank, 213, 329 Flore et Zephyr, ii. ill, 122 Follett, Sir William, ii. 126 Foker, Harry {see Arcedeckne) Fonblanque, Albany, ii. 116 Foote, Samuel, ii. 83 Ford, Onslow, ii. ill Forster, John, 351 ; ii. 188 Fort Warren, ii. 74, 169, 175 Four Georges, 173, 180, 186, 206, 212, 219, 230, 239, 241, 275 ; Jl. 118 Fox, Charles James, ii. 23 Francis, John W., 37, 40, 236 Francis the First, 207 Franklin, Benjamin, 240 Franklin Lyceum, 246 Fraser, James, ii. 133-134 "Fraser's Magazine," 27, 28 ; ii. 133, 196 Frederick the Great, 166, 331 Frothingham, Rev. O. B., 221 Fugitive Slave Law, ii. 140 Fulton Market, New York, 81 Furness, Horace H., 209, 210 Gad's Hill Place, ii. 75 Gainsborough, Thomas, ii. 188 Gardner, Thomas, 134 GarrickClub, 213, 329, 331, 353 j ii. 12, 64, 192 Garrick, David, 210 212 INDEX George the First, 214, 242, 345 ; ii. 104 George the Second, 214, 345 George the Third, 39, 202, 207, 214, 256, 307 ; ii. 104, 106 George the Fourth, 51, 202 ; ii. 38-39 German Princes, 241 Gibbon's Panegyric, 47 Gladstone, W. E., ii. 68, 76 Gleig, George R., ii. 133 Goethe, Johann W., 17, 93 ; ii. 187 Goldsmith, Oliver, 20 ; ii. 83 Goodnight to Julia, 48 Gordon, Lady Duff, ii. 112 Gore, Captain, ii. 9 Gore House, 364 ; ii. 78 Gore, Mrs. Catherine, ii. 10 Governor Dudley, 137 Governor Hutchinson, 99 Grant, Gen. U. S., 306, 363 Grant of Laggan, Mrs., 238 Granville, Lord, 11 Gray, Thomas, ii. 187 Great Thacker, 105, 215 Greeley, Horace, 18 Green, Paddy, 87-89 ; ii. 18 Greenough, Richard S., 69 Green Park, London, 87 Greenwood, Frederick, ii. 17 Greville, Henry, 330 Grey, Elliott, 319 Grimshaw, James G., 206 Grimshaw, Mrs. J. G., 297 Griswold, Rufus W., 223-224 Guicciola, Countess, 222 Gulliver, Lemuel, 30 Gumbo Soup, 252 Guy Fawkes' Day, ii. 60 Gwynn, Stephen, ii. 88 Hacjcett, James H., 81, 321 Hall, Mrs. S. C, ii. 68 Hall, S. Carter, ii. 68 Hallam, Arthur, ii. 68 Hallam, Henry H., 4 Halleck, Fitz-Greene, 2, 1 8, 46, 49, 50, 80-82, 89, 118, 183, 196, 207, 226, 26S, 321, 327 ; ii. 76, 83, 138 Halleck Monument, 208 Halsey, Frederick R., ii. 107 Halstead, Murat, 307 Hamilton, Alexander, 316 Hamlet and Macbeth, 212 Hampton, Gen. Wade, 152 Hampton, Mrs. Frank, 152 Hans BreitmarTs Ballads, ii. 102 Harcourt, Vernon, 283 Harper and Brothers, 27, 56, 320 ; ii. 96 Harrow, England, 195 Harvard University, 103, 202 ; ii. 107 Haud, Immemor, Reed, 108 Havelock, Sir Henry, ii. 20 Hawthorne, Nathaniel, 86 ; ii. 106 Hayes, Catherine, 127 ; ii. 69, 88 Hayes, Sir Henry, ii. 69 Head, Sir Edmund, 24 Heenan and Sayres, 368—369 Heliogabalus, ii. 183 Henry the Sixth, 109 Hertford, Marquis of, 336 Hibernian Hall, 138 Hicks, Thomas, 18, 47, 67, 237; ii. 191 Higgins, Matthew J., 9, 196-197 5 ii. 105 Hodder, George, 174 Hole, Dean, S. R., 196; ii. 9, 58, 59 Holland, Dr. J. G., 204 Holland House, 93, 243 Holland, Lady, 4, 243-244 Holland, Sir Henry, 238 Hollingshed, John, 65 Holmes, Oliver Wendell, 91, 243 ; ii. 54, 101 Home's Spirit-rappings, 17 INDEX 213 Hood, Thomas, 1, 9, 47, 88 ; ii. 19 Hooper, Samuel, 253 Houdon's Washington, 128 Houghton, Lord, 4, 9, 92, 243, 268, 365 ; ii. 56, 82 Household Words, 212 Houston, Gen. Samuel, Houston Street, No. 604, 312-313 Howard Hall, 245-246 Howe, Dr. Samuel G., ii. 143 Howe, Mrs. Julia Ward, 152, 297; ii. 143 Howe, Rev. Elias, ii. 188 Howell's Letters, 335 Hudson River, 42, 45 Hugo, Victor, ii. 149 Hunt, Leigh, ii. 19 Hunt, Thornton, 155 Huntington, Daniel, 172 Hutton, Laurence, 142 Hyde Park Corner, 313 Ibrahim Pasha, 31 Imaginary Conversations, 330 Irish Sketch Book, ii. 83, 112 Irving, Sir Henry, 212 Irving, Washington, 1, 18, 21, 42- 49. 77. 88. 1Q 7, Il8 > iq8 . *93~ 294, 359. 3 6 5 i »• 3. 55. 8 7. *°3 Ivanhoc, Scott's, 90 Jackson, General Andrew, ii. 133, 137 Jackson's Equestrian Statue, 240, 254 Jacob Omnium ( see Higgins, M.J.) James, G. P. R., 56, 226, 256, 257 jii. 147 James, Hannah, 60 ; ii. 25 Jameson, Mrs. Anna, 366 Jay, John, 46, 77 Jerrold, Douglas, 54, 88, 115, 186, 212, 314, 349-350; ii. 23, 100 Jerrold, William, ii. 118 Johnson, Reverdy, 118 Johnson, Samuel, 241, 308 5 ii. 93 Jones, Ball, and Co., 154 Jones, Bence, ii. 188 Jones, Daniel T., 124 Jones, Mrs. D. T., 123-124 Jones, Mrs. Eliza L., ii. 102 Jones, George B., 154 Jones, Mrs. George B., 154 Jorum (Coram) Street, 363 ; ii. 62 Jonson, Ben, 212, 241 Junius Letters, 34 Juxon, Bishop, ii. 123 Kane, Elisha Kent, 67, 70, 195, 337 Kathleen Mavourneen, 46 Kean, Edmund, 70 Keats, John, ii. 82, 203 Kemble, Charles, 184, 207 Kemble, John, 1 8 3-1 84 Kemble, Mrs. Francis, 5, 7, 183-184, 207-208, 210, 363 Kennedy, Andrew, ii. 348 Kennedy, Dandridge, ii. 348 Kennedy, John P., 118, 25 I-252, 347-348 Kensal Green Cemetery, ii. 19 Kensett, John F., 18, 44, 47, 85 Kimball, Richard P., 222 King, Charles, LL.D., 18, 37, 46, 195 King Charles the First, ii. 123 King Edward VII., 2 King Glumpus, ii. 112, 121 King's Sons, J. G., 284, 319, 354 King, Miss Grace, 297 King, Mrs. Charleston, 137 King, Rufus, 319 Kinglake, Alexander W., 4 Kingsley, Henry, ii. 19 Kipling, Rudyard, 225 Knighton, Lady, 117 Lafayette, Marquis, 297 Lake Pontchartrain, 297-299 Lamb, Charles, 290, 292 ; ii, 82 214 INDEX Lambert, William H., 3, 13 ; ii. 68, 93, 107, 110-112 Lampson, Sir Curtis, 274 Landor, Dickens, and Thackeray, ii. 66 Landor, Walter Savage, 330 Landseer, Sir Edwin, 4, 368 Landseer, Thomas, 368 Lansdowne, Marquis, 336 Larousse's Dictionary, 58 Lesesne, Joseph, 288 Latimer, Mrs. E. W., ii. 86 Latrobe, J. H. B., 252, 348 Laurence, Samuel, 13, 75; ii. 126, 139, 188 Laurence, Sir John, ii. 21 Lawley, Francis C, 267 ; ii. 69 Lawrence, Abbott, ii. 143 Leacock Madeiras, 279 Leatherstocking, 80 j ii. 15, 81 Lee, Gen. Robert E., 306 Leech, John, 9, 115, 138, 314, 370; ii. 18, 19, 58, 77, 109-110 Leland, Charles G., ii. 102 Lemon, Mark, 311, 339; ii. 19, 77, 121 Lenox Library, 59 ; ii. 107 Leslie, Charles Robert, 4 Letts' s Diary, ii. 11 7-1 18 Leupp, Charles M., 50 Leutze, Emanuel, 228 Lever, Charles, 225 ; ii. 188 Le Vert, Madame, 290, 293 Lewis, William D., 127, 164 Limerick, Battle of, 225 Lincoln, Abraham, 3065 ii. 76, 106 Lincoln's Inn Fields, 240 Lind, Jenny, 30, 32 Linton, Mrs. Lynn, ii. 65 Liston, Robert, 1 84 Little Billee, 67, 88, 114, 127, 131, 132 ; ii. 191 Locke, John, 241 Locker-Lampson Frederick, 274 ; ii. 117 Lockhart, John Gibson, ii. 19, 133 London Diary, Thompson's, 266 London Litterateurs, 88 Longfellow, Henry W., 85, 86, 91, 95, 180, 242 ; ii. 3-5 Long Walk, Windsor, 99 Lord's Prayer, The, ii. 77, 123 Lothrop, Thornton K., 103 Louise de Savoy, 207 Lover, Charles, ii. 188 Lovel the Widower, ii. 47, 197-199 Lovet, Lord, beheaded, 177 Low, Andrew, 141, 143 Lowell, J. R., 13, 15, 91, 154, 180, 235. 268 » 33 1 i "• H°-H3, i g 3» 192-194 Lowell, Mrs. J. R., 12, 14, 16 Lucas, Edward V., 293 Lunt, George, 97, 153, 184 Luscombe, Bishop, 57 Luther, Dr. Martin, 67, 70, 197, 253 Lyell, Lady Charles, ii. 142-143 Lyndon, Barry, ii. 129 Lyons, James, 255 Lyons, Samuel E., 313 Lyra Hibernica, 224 Lyveden, Lord, 267 Mac Ad am, George, 41, 46 Macaulay, Lord, 4, 35, 181, 238, 243, 246, 365 j «• *3, 55. 8 4 Mackay, Charles, 308; ii. 18, 72 Mackayan Letter, ii. 118 Mackintosh, Sir James, 85 Maclise, Daniel, ii. 133, 138 Macready, William C, 37, 177; ii. 112 Maginn, Dr. William, 362 Magdalen College, 36 Mahogany Tree, The, 252 ; ii. 17 Mahon, Lord (see Stanhope) Malaprop, Mrs., 164 Marco Bozzaris, 226 Marco Polo, 70 INDEX *i$ Marcy, William L., 118, 124 Marischal College, 344 Marlborough, Duke of, 31 Marochetti, Baron, ii. no Marquis of Bath, 229 Marquis of Farintosh, 229 Marryat, Captain, ii. 146 Martin, Sir Theodore, ii. 108 Massinghi, Italian artist, ii. 119 Master Molly Malony, ii. 180 Maximilian, Prince, 87 Mayhew, Horace, ii. 17 McCarthy, Justin, ii. 64 McClellan, General, ii. 76 McCosh, Dr. James, ii. 1 80-181 McKenzie, Henry, 237 McMichael, Morton, 11 3-1 14, 164 Meagher, Thomas Francis, 224-225 Mercantile Library Association, 21, 28 Merivale, Herman C, ii. 33 Merriman, Doctor, ii. 86 "Messenger, Southern Literary," 128 Michigan Bonds, 357 Millais, Sir John £., 4, 343, 348 Milnes, Monckton [see Lord Hough- ton) Milton, John, 218, 241 Mississippi Bubble, A, 299 Mitchell, Langdon, ii. 197-98 Mitchell, S. Weir, 127 Molesworth, Lady, ii. 138 Monck, Lord, 342-343 Montaigne and Howell, 217, 399 Monte Christo, 200 Moon, Sir F. G., 175 Moore, Thomas, 52, 58, 88, 243 ; ii. 189 Moorish Coins, 42 Morgan, J. Pierpont, ii. 107, 109 Morris, George P., 18 Morse, Samuel F. B., 18 Morton, Savile, ii. 188 Motley, John Lothrop, 65 ; ii. 3, 19 Mulligan of Ballymulligan, ii. 114, 116 Murray, Sir Charles A., ii. 76, 81 Murray, John, 93, 366 Nadaud's " Carcassonne," 268 Napoleon, 35, 93, 166, 201, 206 ; ii. 121. National Capital, 118 National Gallery, 75 Nebuchadnezzar, 207 Neville, Lady Dorothy, 182, 183 Newcome, Colonel, 68, 87, 161, 166, 168, 190, 193, 332; ii. 16, 91, 201 " Newcomes, The," 161, 166 ; ii. 90, 92, 194 Newton Gordon Madeira, 279 New Englanders, 50 New Year's Day, 1853, 314 New Year's Eve, 93 New York Centrals, 357 New York Society, 49 " New York Tribune," 28 Niagara Falls, 144, 215, 308 ; ii. 137 Nil Nisi Btmum, ii. 54 North American Republic, 174 North or South, 156 Northumberland, Duke of, 3 1 Norton, Charles E., 155, 290, 291, 331 ; ii. 143 Norwood, Judge, 285 Nott, Dr. J. C, 289 Novel without a Hero, A, 77 Novum Organum, 211 Numismatics, Errors of, 34 Nunc Dimitlis, no O' Conor, Charles, 18 O'Connell, Morgan John, 332 ; ii. 199 O'Gahagan, General, 31 O'Gahagan, Major, 203 ; ii. 28 O' Gorman, Richard, 134 O'Malley, Charles, ii. 158 On a Peal of Belli, So 2l6 INDEX On Haifa Loaf, 263 ; ii. 45, 166 On some late Victories, 368 On two Children in Black, 154 One more Unfortunate, 47 Onondaqua, Lady, 124 Oregon Question, The, 138 Orphan of Pimlico, ii. 136 Orrery, Lord, Letters, 25 Osborne, Capt. George, ii. 147 Osgood, Dr. Samuel, 21 O'Toole, Larry, 67, 1 14 Ottery, St. Mary, ii. 79 Our Mutual Friend, ii. 106 Oxford, Bishop of, 35 Palace Green, Kensington, ii. 198 Pall Mall Clubs, ii. 28 " Pall Mall Magazine," ii. 98 Palmer, Lowell M., ii. 177 Palmerston, Lord, 118 Paris Sketch Book, 31, 200 ; ii. 121 Parker, Theodore, 92 Parkman, Francis, 91 Parrhasius, 30 Parson, Dr. T. W., ii. 34 Paulding, James K., 294 Peel, Sir Robert, 195, 342 Peg of Limavaddy, ii. no Pell, Alfred, 50 Pen and Album, The, 152 ; ii. 123 Pencillings by the Way, 204 " Pendennis," 69-71, 195 ; ii. 88 Pendennis, Helen, 229 ; ii. 25 Pendennis, Major, 168 Pepys, Samuel, 217 Perry, Miss Kate E., 119, 120; ii. 122-124 Perry, William, 119, 127 Philip, Adventures of, 71, 131 j ii. 107 Philippe, King Louis, 138 Phillips, Wendell, 134 Pierce, Franklin, 119 Piozzi, Madame, 70 Pitt, William, ii. 23 Poe, Edgar Allan, 255 Polk, James K., 138 Polk, Bishop Leonidas, 297 Pollock, Baron, ii. 60, 126, 188 Pope's Epigram, 207 Porter, Thomas O., 203 Potter, Henry Codman, 109 Power, Miss Marguerite, 152 Powers, Sir Alfred, 132 Prairie Bird, The, ii. 81 Prescott, William H., 16, 17, 91, 180, 341, 360 ; ii. 89 Prime, Dr. I. S., 239 Prince Regent, The, 207 Princess Charlotte, 206 Princeton University, 212; ii. 180, 181 Procter, Adelaide, ii. 82 Procter, Bryan W., ii. 82 Procter, Mrs. B. W., 3, 52; ii. 82 Prohibition Party, 246 Proser and other Papers, 58 Prout, Father, 70 Proverbial Philosophy, 243 Putnam, George P., 41, 44, 222, 223 " Putnam's Magazine," ii. 5 Quaker City Press, 108 Queen Anne, 1, 8, 31, 140, 241 ; ii. 48 Queen Victoria, 78, 241 5 ii. 120, 121 Queen of Sheba, 108 Quincy, Edmund, ii. 143 "Rab and his Friends," ii. 78 Railway Share Market, 169 Ralph the Heir, ii. 20 1 Reach, Angus B., 54, 186 Read, T. Buchanan, 341 Read, William A., 272 Reade, Charles, 362 INDEX 217 " Rebecca and Rowena," 11. 112 Reed, Professor Henry, 169, 248 Reed, William B. , log, 161, 209, M7. 3*°> 346, 37°i »■ 73i i°9 Regis, Rodwell, 178, 179 Richardson, Samuel, ii. 93 Richmond, Duchess of, ii. 197 Ritchie, Mrs. Richmond, 9, 36, 75, 120, 127, 131, 231, 232, 336, 33»» 356, 37° J >>• 9. 33. «>» 6 3> 67, 68, 107, 108, in, 122, 203. Robinson, Beverley, 356 Robinson, William Duer, 209, 312, 318, 319, 321, 328, 348; ii. 12 Rochester Cathedral, ii. 9, 58 Rodney, Caesar, ii. 102 Roebuck, Arthur, M. P., 72, 74 Rogers, Samuel, 87, 88 " Rose and the Ring," 164, 321 ; ii. 47. I°7 " Rosedale," Wallack's, 319 " Roundabout Papers," 217, 347 5 ii. 76, 129 Rue Faubourg St. Honore, ii. 195 Rue Neure de Bern, ii. 87 Rue Neuve du Petits Champs, 56 Rue Neuve St. Augustin, 57 Rush, Madame, 49 Ruskin, John, 218 Russell, Lady C, ii. 89 Russell, Lord John, 138, 366 Russell, Sir George, ii. 89, 90 Russell, Sir William H., ii. 8, 12, 13 Sala, George Augustus, 299 ; ii. 22-32 Sand, Madame George, ii. 149 Sargent, Charles, 312; ii. 16 Sartoris, Adelaide, 363 Sartoris, Greville, 363 St. Andrews Hall, 285 St. Charles (Lamb), 290, 293 St. Charles Hotel, 298 St. George's Society, 78 St. James' Church, 72 St. Louis, Mo., 305 St. Paul's Cathedral, 238 ; ii. 82 St. Valentine, 284 " Scarlet Letter," The, ii. 106 Schiller and Goethe, 201 Schiller's Sword, 201 Schuyler, George L., 78 Scott, Gen. Winfield, 119 Scott, Major Thomas, 1 Scott, Rev. Frederick G., ii. 145 Scott, Sir Walter, 1, 3, 74, 80, 93, 238, 261 ; ii. 85, 187 Sedgwick, Professor, 35 " Serapis," capture of, 232, 233 Seventieth Regiment, 1 Seward, William H., 119; ii. 174 Seymour, Horatio, 144 Shabby Genteel Story, 17, 60 ; ii. 199 Shakespeare, William, 82, 209-210, 218, 241, 329; ii. 85, 187 Sharp, Becky, 13, 258, 259, 267; ii. 15, 26 "She Stoops to Conquer," Ii. 83 ' ' Sheaf of Recollections, " 182 Sherwood, Mrs. John, ii. 75 Siddons, Mrs. Sarah, 210 Simms, William Gilmore, 275 Sinbad the Sailor, 67 Slave Market, 131 Slavery, American, 183 Slidell, John, 297, 300 " Small Beer Chronicle," 255 Smith, Elder, and Co., ii. 61 Smith Family, 238 Smith, George, 104, 153 ; ii. 58, 139 Smith, Harry B., ii. 114, 119 Smith, Horace, ii. 202—203. Smith, Sydney,28, 74, 268; Ii. 19, 117 Smyth, Major Carmichael, ii. 79, 120, 202 Smyth, Major Henry C, ii. 202 Smyth, Mrs. Carmichael, 321 ; ii. 13, 87 Snobs, The Book of, ii. 122 2l8 INDEX Society of Arts, The, ii. 197 Some Gentlemen in Fiction, 168 " Song of the Shirt," 47 Sontag, Madame, 27 Sorrows of Werther, 128 Soule, Pierre, 296, 299 South African War, 249 South Carolina, 77, 141 ' ' Southern Literary Messenger," 74, 25 6 Southey, Robert, 93 ; ii. 105, 133 Souvenirs of Travel, 290 " Sparrowgrass Papers," 335 Sprague, William, 246 Stanard, Hugh, 267 Stanard, Mrs. R., 255 Stanard, Robert, 255 Stanhope, Lord, 4, 108, 344, 372 Stars and Stripes, 64 Steers, George, 78 Steevens, G. W., 225 Stella, Swift's, 19, 182 Stephen, Sir Leslie, 206 ; ii. 73, 107, 127 Sterne, Laurence, 20 Stevens, Commodore, 78 Stevenson, Robert L., 168 Stewart, Dugald, 237 Steyne, Marquis of, 260, 336 ; ii. 64, 198 Stockbore, Horace, ii. 85 Stoddard, Richard H., 74, 76, 81, 197; ii. 34 Stoddart, Mrs. W. W., ii. 112 Stoddart, Rev. W. W., ii. 116 Story, William W., 240, 242, 331 ; ii. 192 Stowe, Mrs. H. B., 124, 149, 183 ; ii. 144 Stuart, Lady Louise, 1 Sturgis, Russell, 10, n ; ii. 192 Stratford-on-Avon, 210 Strathfieldsaye, 331-32 Street, Alfred B., 144 Strong, Chevalier, 398 Sumner, Charles, 134, 253 ; ii. 5 Sunnyside, 42, 45 Sutherland, Duchess of, 4 Swift, Jonathan, 18, 19, 24, 25, 26; ii. 120. Synge, Follett, 105, 106, 124-127; ii. 199 Synge, Mrs. Follett, 106 Tavchnitz, Baron Bernard, 326, 362 Taylor, Bayard, 85, 86, 145, 196, 198, 208, 212, 216, 306, 312, 336, 338, 340; ii. 16, 34, 83, 187 Taylor, John, ii. 125 Taylor, Thomas, 314 Temple, Sir William, 182 Tennent, Sir Emerson, ii. 188 Tennyson, Alfred, 338-340; ii. 60, 63, 68, 71, 88, in, 188 Tennyson, Frederick, 8; ii. 125, 183 " Ten Thousand a Year," 72 Terrapin in Baltimore, 252 Terre's Restaurant, 56, 58, 252 Tracker, Thomas, 215 Thackerayans, 115 Thackeray and Vallance, 215 Thackeray Family, ii. 112 Thackeray, Sir Edward, ii. 72 Thackeray, W. M., quoted, 1 ; his lectures, 2 ; his age and manuscripts, 3 ; note to Doyle, 4 ; first lecture, 5,6; mentioned, 7 j letter to Fitz- Gerald, 8 ; to Milnes, 9 ; mentioned, 10 ; drawings, 12; dispatch-box, 13 ; health proposed, 15 ; in Boston, 16; in New York, 17; first ap- pearance, 1 8 ; last lecture, 20 ; a genuine Yankee, 22 ; in Brook- lyn, 23 ; Bryant's tribute, 24; John Small's letter, 27 ; writes to Mac- ready, 37 ; Yonkers lecture, 41 ; visits Irving, 42 ; dines with Coz- zens, 43 ; New York letter, 45 ; public dinner, 46 ; meets Ken* INDEX 219 V tuckian, 48 ; Boston breakfast, 48 ; dines with Davis, 49 ; another dinner, 50; tells good story, 52; lectures for charity, 53 ; calls on Harpers, 56 ; marriage, 57 j New York pre- face, 59 ; Thackeray's Works, 60 ; his candour, 64 ; at Century Club, 66 j as a singer, 70 ; memo- rials of, 72 ; portrait, 75 ; anecdote, 78 ; makes speech, 79 ; " Round- about Papers," 80; eating oysters, 81 ; writes Mrs. Brookfield, 83 ; dines with Ticknor, 85 ; at Evans's, 86 ; De yuventute, 90; in Boston, 91 ; anecdotes, 92 ; at Lowell's, 95; Boston walks, 99 ; a drawing, 102 ; anecdote, 103 ; " Great Thacker," 105; his prayer, 106; in Philadel- phia, 108; anecdote, 117; goes to Baltimore, 118; in Washington, 119; the Pen and Album, 120; dinners, 1 26 ; in Richmond, 1 3 1 ; his lectures, 132; rude remarks, 135; Charlottesville, 135; in Charleston, 137; criticised, 139; meets Agas- siz, 141 ; in Savannah, 142 ; re- turns North, 143 ; visits Albany, 144; writes poem, 151 ; sails for home, 155; letter to "Times," 161 ; Dickens to T , 173 ; sails for Boston, 173; farewell dinner, 1 74 ; settling accounts, 1 80 ; writes preface, 181; his nose, 183; a Thackeray jest, 186 ; awful escape, 195 ; Delmonico breakfast, 198 ; describes Dumas, 200 ; disloyal, 202; writes for " Corsair," 203 ; about Shakespeare, 209 ; lectures in New York, 219; rhyming, 222 ; Am I a Snob ? 224 ; Irish brogue, 225 ; defends Dickens, 232; anecdotes, 237 j droll story, 239 ; returns to Boston, 241 j four Georges, 242 ; about Wordsworth, 243 ; in Phila- delphia, 247 ; schoolboys, 248 ; Dickens' tribute, 248 ; in Balti- more, 251; in Richmond, 255; republican simplicity, 255 ; in Charleston, 274 ; his lectures, 275 ; in Augusta, 282—284; Savannah, 285 ; his description, 286 ; in Mobile, 288 ; an accident, 289 ; arrives in New Orleans, 296 ; entertainments, 297 ; slavery question, 301 ; on the Mississippi, 304 ; St. Louis, 305 ; Cincinnati, 308 ; Bower of Virtue, 309 ; gift to Robinson, 314; New York dinner, 320 ; departure, 322 ; writes en voyage, 323 ; at home, 325 ; expects war, 325; "Punch" din- ner, 350.J stands for Oxford, 341 j defeated, 342 ; an Irish story, 344 ; Yates quarrel, 352 j Dickens drawn m > 353i Oxford election, 354; his kindness to Leech, 370 ; editing "Cornhill," ii. 3$ writes to Long- fellow, 4 ; caricature of poet, 5 ; proud of daughter, 9 ; Yates contro- versy, 10 5 at Dickens party, 12 ; literary gains, 13; praises Cooper, 16; sickness and death, 17; favourite lines, 17; Mackay's tribute, 18; burial in Kensal Green, 19 ; Kings- ley's tribute, 19 ; Sala's tribute, 22 ; American tributes by Taylor, Stoddard, and Parsons, 34 ; as an editor, 57 ; personalia, 58 ; his portrait, 60 ; as a genealogist, 63 ; Thackeray and Dickens compared, 65 ; anecdotes, 69 ; sympathy with South, 73 ; as a speaker, 76 ; mi- croscopic writer, 77-78 ; emotion at St. Paul's, 83 ; early death, 85 ; his favourite work, 90 ; original Colonel Newcome, 92 ; Thackeray treasures, 106 ; Stephens' opinion of, 127 j portrait, 133 ; curious letter, 135 ; caricatures himself, 138 ; 220 INDEX Clough's allusion to, 140 ; Curtis on Thackeray, 145 ; unpublished poems, 177 ; a Cafe Foy feast, 182; described by C ranch, 189; as a leader, 194; his American friends, 204 Thackeray letters addressed to — Ainsworth, William H., ii. 136 Bayne, Mrs., 144, 147 Biddle, Clement C. , 109 Bradenburgh, William, 244 Broadway, Battery & Co. , ii. 166 Brookfield, Mrs. William H., 53, 83, no, 121 ; ii. 105, 119, 162 Brown, Dr. John, 141 Carlyle, Mrs. Thomas, 1 50 Carruthers, Dr. Robert, ii. 118 Cole, Lady Henry, 329 Cozzens, Frederick S., 46, 335 Curtis, George W., 208 Davidson, Sir Henry, ii. 9 Doyle, Richard, 4 Dunlop, Mrs., ii. 144 Editor " Fraser's Magazine," 28 Editor "The Times," 164 Elliot, Lady, and Miss Perry, 134, 269 ; ii. 125 Faulkner, Henry, ii. 163 Felt, Willard S., 168 FitzGerald, Edward, 8, ii. 1 39. Fladgate, Frank, 213, 214 Fonblanque, Albany, ii. 116 Fraser, James, ii. 1 34 Gibbs, Theodore W., ii. 70 Hole, Rev. Dean, ii. 59 Houghton, Lord, 9 Imaginary letter from New York, ii. 135 Jameson, Mrs. Anna, 366 jay, John, Hon., 77 Jones, George B., ii. 154 Le Vert, Madame Octavia W., 292 Londonderry, Countess of, 129 Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth, ii. 4 Macready, William C, 37 Mazzinghi, Signor, ii. 119 McMichael, Morton, 113 Molesworth, Countess, ii. 138 Perry, Miss Kate E., 279 Procter, Miss Adelaide, ii. 82 Procter, Mrs. Bryan W., 52 Read, T. Buchanan, 341 Reed, William B., 125, 162, 170, 250, 322, 372; ii. 15 Robinson, William Duer, 309, 323, 354; ii. 10, 12 Secretary of Dining Club, 66 Smith, Sir George, 104 Smyth, Mrs. Carmichael, ii. 13 Stanley, Lady Augusta, 115 Synge, W. W. Follett, 105, 124; ii. 101 Synge, W. M. T., 105 Taylor, Bayard, 197, 339 To an Unknown Lady, ii. 116 Trulock, Miss Alice, ii. 148 Welles, Edward Livingston, 82 Whom it may concern, ii. 135 Thackeray Ballads and Poems — And when Jack prayed, ii. 117 Ballad of Bouillabaisse, 57 Chronicle of the Drum, ii. 103 Jacob Homnium's Hoss, 197 King Fritz, at his Palace, 181 Little Miss Perkins, ii . no Lucy's Seventeenth Birthday, 151 Luther, Doctor Martin, 252 Mister Shi el into Kent has gone, ii. 80 My blue-eyed Adela, ii. 1 79 My dearest little Women, 342 Oh, for all I have suffered, ii. 33 O Stranger, if it be thy will, ii. 179 Sorrows of Werther, 101 The Battle of Limerick, 225 The Church Porch (from << Penden- nis"), 319 INDEX 221 The End of The Play, ii. 51 The Last Irish Grievance, ii. 181 The Past — Looking Back, ii. 1 79 Well, I thought as sure, ii. 123 What Sudden Burst of Melody,ii. 178 Thackeray, Mrs. W. M.,ii. 134 Thompson, Sir Henry, 356; ii. 109, 189 Thompson, John R., 74, 118, 131, 255, 266, 268 ; ii. 73 Thornton, William, 341 Three Sailors of Bristol, 70, 132 Thurlow, Chancellor, ii. 104 Ticknor, George, 85, 91, 92, 93, 98, u8, 119, 234, 241, 243 Times, The Lonjon, 78, 161 ; ii. 42, 69 Timothy Titcomb, 204 Tipton Slasher, The, 35 Titmarsh, Michael Angelo, 183 ; ii. 136 Tom Brown at Oxford, 88 Tom Jones (Fielding), 47, 90 Torrigiano, the Sculptor, 20 Tremont House, 16, 92, 97, 184, 186, 194 Trilby, by Du Maurier, 131 Trollope, Anthony, 92, 98, 197, 234 j ii. 16, 63, 133, 200 Trumbull, John, 254 Tuckerman, Henry T., 237. Tupper, Martin F., 243 Turenne Inn, Marshal de, ii. 136 Twiss, Horace, ii. 199 Two Children in Mask, 217 Uncle Toby, 80 Uncle Tom's Cabin, 124, 146, 183; ii- 144 Union Club, New York, 78 University of Virginia, 136 Van Buren, Martin, 294 Vanity_Fair, 13, 33, 200, 221, 290, 335. 337, 34° > »■ 8 , 8 S Vassall Family, 93, 244 Vauxhall Garden, 314 Venablea, George S., 133, 184; ii. 106, 124 Vermont Giant, 304 Verplanck, Gulian C, 18, 46, 57, 69, 210, 212 Vestiges of Creation, Chambers, 34 Victoria and Albert, 78 Virginians, The, 233, 256, 264, 272, 3 l8 , 347. 34»> 35°. 359 i «• 7°, 92, 93, 108, 125 Wainwright, Commodore, 104 Wales's City of London, 347 Walker, Frederick, 131, 343 ; ii. 199 Wallack, James W., 209, 213, 214, 318, 325; ii. 103 Wallack, Lester, 197, 209, 313, 314 ; ii. 17, 103 Walmer Castle, 334 Walpole, Horace, ii. 93 Ward, John, actor, 210 Ward, Samuel, 89, 195, 246 ; ii. 83, 183 Warren, E. Walpole, 72 Warren, Samuel, 72, 74, 88 Washington, George, 42, 77, 91, 125, 161, 166, 253, 240, 272, 337 j ii. 137 Washington, Plan of City, 215 Watts, Isaac, 241 Waverley Novels, 1 Webb, James Watson, 18 Webster, Daniel, 67, 279 Wellington, Duke of, 72, 74, 93, 201, 334. 337 Westminster Abbey, ii. 19, 23, 30, no, in, 126 Westminster Hall, 245 Westmoreland Club, 255 Wharton, Thomas J., 127, 164 Whipple, Edwin P., 50, 243 Whittier, John G., 91 222 INDEX Wigan or Webster, 199 Wilberforce, Edward, 166 Wild Man, 185 Wilkes, Capt. Charles, ii. 174 Williams College, 143 Wills, Mrs. W. H., 212 Wills, William H., 212 Willis, Nathaniel P., 18, 43, 203, 204, 220, 221, 222, 364 Willis's Rooms, London, 3, 4, 5 Wilson Family, 216 Wilson, Jas. Grant, 18, 49 ; ii. 76, Wilson, Prof. John, 238 Wilson, Mrs. Augusta £., 290 Wilstack, Paul, ii. 198 Windust's, New York, 316 Wister, Mrs. Casper, 127, 210, 247 Wister Parties, 125 Wolfe, Gen. James, 145 Wolves and the Lamb, ii. 197, 199 Wordsworth, William, 243 ; ii. 125 Wormeley, Admiral, ii. 87 Wright, Aldis, 291 Yacht America, 78 Yacht race, English, 78 Yates, Edmund, 351-354; ii. 90 Yellowplush Correspondence, ii. 94, 112-113, 134 Yesterdays with Authors, ii. 86 Yonkers, N. Y., 41, 43 Yorktown, Surrender at, 265 Young, Charles Mayne, ii. 60—61 Young, John Russell, 353 Young, William, 26, 215, 321, 338