Temple. This proved to be his last attempt to force his genius away from its natural inclinations; for although he now really gave the study of law a fair trial, the result was that it became more and more irksome to him. He ran over to Paris several times during this residence in the Temple. In 1833 we find Thackeray mingling more and more in literary circles, and living the life of a literary Bohemian. He put some of his capital into a paper, and became editor as well as proprietor. The venture was not a happy one from the financial point of view, and early in 1834 the paper ceased to exist. Certain failures in investments, combined with occasional losses at gambling, produced a serious effect on Thackeray's fortune at about this time, and he found himself no longer able to live without working for the privilege. Accordingly, he made up his mind to become an artist, and to prepare for this career by studying in Paris. He worked faithfully, and enjoyed it. In 1836 Thackeray became the Paris correspondent of a radical paper called the Constitutional. Thinking that he had at last obtained regular employment, although his salary was not large, he was married on the twentieth of August, in Paris, to Miss Isabella Gethin Creagh Shawe, to whom he had been engaged for some months. The Constitutional failed and the next year (1837) Thackeray returned to London, to earn a living by his pen. He did all kinds of work, reviewing Carlyle's French Revolution among other books. For Fraser's Magazine he wrote articles that attracted considerable attention, and are now well known, the Fellow-Plush Correspondence,* for example. He also freely indulged his genius for satire in a way that he afterwards regretted. After In 1840 came the great tragedy of his life. the birth of her third daughter, his wife became ill, and steadily grew worse, suffering from a singular disease of the mind, that baffled all the great assays of art. By 1842 she was in a hopeless condition, and had at last to be placed in charge, her mental powers having entirely vanished. This unspeakable calamity Thackeray endured with the greatest courage and nobility, though of course it forever destroyed the possibility of homelife and domestic happiness. The children went to live with the grandparents in Paris: and with the unfortunate vitality of those whose lives are worse than worthless, his wife survived for fifty years. Her death in 1892 was a real shock to the world, as it brought up so vividly memories of her great husband. In 1842 Thackeray began his contributions to Punch, which had been started the year before. In process of time he became one of its most important and valuable contributors, and a volume in itself might be written on his connection with this famous paper. Here he had a chance to employ both pen and pencil, and, better than either, his genius for pure fun. He * In Melville's Life, I, 113, note, we read: "The Correspondence was published in book form late in 1838 by Messrs. Carey & Hart, of Philadelphia. This is the first volume ever issued of any of Thackeray's writings." Yet, curiously enough, in the Bibliography at the end of Melville's Life, this volume is nowhere mentioned. It is however, given in the Biog. Ed. Bibliography. contributed nearly four hundred sketches. The Snob Papers in Punch were perhaps the first things that really gave him a wide circle of readers, and made his name generally known. His success with these and other literary ventures began to show itself in a financial way; his circumstances improved materially, so that in 1846 he took a house, and brought his daughters to live with him. He could now afford to write real literature, the thing which had become more and more the ambition of his life. In January, 1847, the first installment of Vanity Fair appeared; and before the publication of the last number in July, 1848, Thackeray's place as a great English novelist was secure. Then followed the other books, which all the world knows, Pendennis in 1848-9, Henry Esmond (1852), and the Newcomes (1853-55). In 1851 he gave his lectures on the English Humourists, and on October 30, 1852, he sailed for Boston, where he repeated the course in a number of cities in the United States. In 1855 he visited America again, this time lecturing on the Four Georges. Thackeray's object in lecturing was simply to earn and lay up money for his children, and it is pleasant to note the financial success of his tours on both sides of the water. As a lecturer, although his audiences went to see the author of Vanity Fair rather than to hear his views on literary themes, he usually charmed them. His manner was entirely unpretentious and refined-in a word, he was wholly agreeable and put his hearers immediately at their ease. In 1857 Thackeray stood for Parliament as a Liberal, representing the city of Oxford. He was fortunately beaten by his opponent, and he complimented his successful antagonist in the most gracious manner. It is more than probable that he would not have especially distinguished himself in the House, and it is certain that he employed his time and talents more profitably in writing novels. In January, 1860, the Cornhill Magazine was started, and Thackeray accepted the post of editor. This gave the periodical great vogue, and made it possible to have the most distinguished list of contributors, Tennyson among others. Perhaps the most extraordinary thing that Thackeray did in his capacity as editor was to refuse a poem contributed by Mrs. Browning, on the ground of its immorality. This, as Mr. Birrell says of Swinburne's taking Carlyle to task for indelicacy, "has an oddity all its own." Thackeray felt that his subscribers would object, and perhaps he was right in rejecting the poem, though, under the circumstances, we have to choose between two alternatives: either the British constituency of the Cornhill was pathologically prudish, or the Editor was very timid. The correspondence that passed between Thackeray and Mrs. Browning over this incident is deeply interesting,* and although Mrs. Browning must have first wept and then laughed, she accepted the Editor's judgment in the beautiful spirit so characteristic of her whole life, and actually sent him another contribution! Surely she was not far from the kingdom of God. * See the Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning, edited by Kenyon, Volume II, page 444 et seq. On the night of December 23, 1863, Thackeray felt ill, and the next morning was found dead in his bed. He was buried at Kensal Green, and a bust was placed in Westminster Abbey. He was His personal appearance was striking. considerably over six feet in height, and his head was very large. His hair was perfectly white in his last years, and his clear-cut features gave him a distinguished look. His enemies said he was snobbish, but those who really knew the man have given the most convincing testimony to the contrary. The truth about Thackeray seems to be that he was not simply one of the greatest men of his age, but one of the best. The old charge of cynicism is now seldom heard, and to intelligent readers of his books it has no foundation. In his lectures on the Humourists, we see the real man, and so far from his being a cynic, his heart was so tender, and so susceptible to the personal characteristics of others, that his judgment of the genius of literary men was biased by his feelings. A cynic, to be a cynic at all, must certainly lack two things: Sympathy and Enthusiasm. These two qualities form perhaps the largest element in Thackeray's character, and, with his unlimited generosity, make him one of the most lovable men in the history of English literature. He had faults, but they were not the faults that show the cynic or the snob. He has been charged with a lack of moral earnestness: but in reality he looked at everything from the moral point of view: indeed too much so, for his art as a novelist is seriously marred by his constant sermonising. All his novels and lec |