Contemporary Opinions of Thackeray

FOR a man who has so signally ’retained after death the art of making friends,’ Thackeray was viewed in his own day through a queer variety of spectacles. His character, upbringing, associates, opinions, and way of life, were all severely called in question. He was, I think, the most scolded of literary men; and especially was he scolded for the want (or concealment) of that heart which to us he seems to wear so conspicuously pinned to his sleeve. Looking now at that indulgent, uncle-like, and open-hearted countenance, with the benign spectacles and broken nose (resembling a child’s), it. is hard for us to understand the shudderingadmiration,‘unmixed with love,’ of those who read Vanity Fair in numbers, and who agreed with the London Times about the misanthropic character of ‘ The Kickleburys on the Rhine.’

FitzGerald might regard him with affection, even familiarity; but Carlyle and Charlotte Brontë thought him rather fierce and wild, with a good deal of the lion in his composition, and perhaps a little of the wolf. E. P. Whipple declared that he looked at life ‘with a skeptical eye, sharpened by a wearied heart.’ No wonder, then, if he found himself ‘honestly forced to inculcate the dreadful doctrine that life does not pay.’ ‘His bearing was cold and uninviting, his style of conversation either openly cynical or affectedly good-natured ... his bonhomie was forced, his wit biting.’ This unflattering picture was drawn, to be sure, by the malicious pen of Edmund Yates; but it is supported in part by the reluctant descriptions of admirers of his genius. Most preposterous of all, he was said to ‘spend a good deal of his time on stilts,’ and to prove ‘a disagreeable companion to those who did not care to boast that they knew him.’

These curious comments on the behavior of a particularly unaffected gentleman can best be explained, perhaps, by the hypothesis that Thackeray was occasionally the prey of a perverse humor, and indulged at times that Comic Spirit which was not then the presiding genius of drawing-rooms. Perhaps he sometimes replied to some unimpeachable sentiment in the grotesque vein his drawings so richly illustrate. At any rate, he was thoroughly lectured by all hands. ‘His sentiment,’ says the Westminster Review reproachfully, ‘was seldom indulged.’ His pathos ‘leaves the eye unmoistened,’ His was ‘a cheerless creed, and false as cheerless.’ No woman, continues this censor, would care to read Titmarsh and Yellowplush. It is true, ‘the salutary influence of Dickens’ has relieved the savage sharpness of his pen in later works; but still, ‘from false taste, or a deeper infirmity, he gives prominence to blots, defects,’ etc., and (worst of all) sees ‘a comic aspect in wickedness.’

Ladies in particular averted their ringlets and drew aside their crinolines from contact with the cannibal. The Westminster reviewer was right: their ticklish sensibilities could ill endure

So great a ‘moral disgust’ did Harriet Martineau feel as she perused the early numbers of Vanity Fair, that she soon banished it from her shelves, and never (let us hope!) enjoyed the immortal description of Amelia folding the red sash before the battle of Waterloo. She sternly rebuked Thackeray for ‘his frittered life, and his obedience to the call of the great.’ He never could have known, she asserted, a good or sensible woman. Miss Mitford found him ‘all cynicism, with an affectation of fashionable experience.’ ‘I have no affinities,’ majestically declared Catherine Sedgwick, ‘with this sagacity — no great admiration for this detective . . . detecting poison.’ Mrs. Jameson undertook to speak for her whole sex. ‘Every woman resents,’ said she, ‘the selfish inanity of Amelia. And then Lady Castlewood! Oh, Mr. Thackeray, this will never do!’ Even the great Charlotte, with her freedom from drawing-room judgments, felt a grievance against Lady Castlewood, and indignantly resented the episode of the keyhole. ‘As usual,’ said she, ‘he is unjust to women, quite unjust.’ She, who had called him an eagle, a captain of reformers and regenerators of society; who had likened his sarcasm to Greek fire, and his denunciation to ‘the levin branch,’ found that in him, as well, which ‘stirred Iter both to sorrow and to anger — his mocking tongue.’

Mrs. Ritchie, in one of her biographical introductions to her father’s works, describes a little tour through Devonshire, on which she accompanied him in 1856. At Exeter they called upon one Madam Fribsby, ‘a delightful old creature,’ who entertained the warmest personal regard for Thackeray, but wasted no thought upon his pretensions as a novelist. ‘All her enthusiasm was already bespoken. She reproached him with not having formed his style upon a different model, upon that of the greatest writer in the English language’ — in short, upon Richardson’s. ‘ Where, where can you show me books,’ demanded Madam Fribsby, ‘that compare with Sir Charles Grandison ? ’

Graver critics than the Exeter lady drew invidious comparisons between the heroines of Thackeray and those of Richardson. In the summer of 1859 Fraser’s Magazine contained a serious estimate of English literature to date; in which, after beholding Scott bracketed with G. P. R. James, and both gently escorted along the road to probable oblivion, we are told that neither Dickens nor Thackeray really wrote novels! Their works were ‘pseudo-novels,’ or ‘serial stories,’ — ‘not constructed on the principles of that art, wholly unknown to the ancients, which may be called the narrative-dramatic. . . . Mr. Thackeray’s chief implement is the exposure of the littlenesses, meannesses, and vulgarities of his fellow-creatures.’ These ‘he renders with a fortyPre-Raphaelite power, and anatomizes with a merciless delight. . . . To do this thoroughly, as Mr. Thackeray does it, is given to few’; but the reviewer thinks it rather a revolting task; and ‘ there is a good deal less love than admiration in our feeling toward the man who does it well.’

The fact is that this reviewer’s enthusiasm, like that of Madam Fribsby, is ‘all bespoken.’ He too is infatuated with the Byrons and Grandisons. There is not, in his opinion, ‘a tale in any language worthy to be put on the same shelf with Clarissa Harlowe’ ‘The consummate art with which the characters are grouped, and the simple and masterly grandeur of their separate treatment’ mark the work of ‘an unrivalled genius.’ As for Clarissa herself, ‘perhaps even Shakespeare never drew a heroine more exquisite. A modesty so majestic . . . a girlish vivacity and playfulness so indomitable ... a smile so heavenly/ etc. — ‘Where/ he well asks, ‘where, on paper, shall we look upon her like again?’

What wonder that Amelia and Rebecca, making their bows to a public signed and sealed with the image of Clarissa, should fare ill at the hands of astonished reviewers? Nobody wanted a heroine to be lifelike; what was required was an ‘exquisite’ creature. Vanity Fair appeared in 1846-48. E. P. Whipple at once pronounced it, though touching on ‘ topics worn threadbare ’ and full of ‘commonplace characters,’ still, ‘on the whole’ a clever and interesting book. But few critics were content thus to damn it with faint praise. Explosions of angry dissent greeted the portraits of Captain Dobbin and Amelia. We had been to the photographer’s, and were not at all pleased with the proofs. Captain Dobbin was ‘so ungainly as to be almost objectionable’ to the Westminster Review, and Amelia was so weak that she quite ‘wore out its patience.’ The Edinburgh Review declined ‘to worship such a poor idol of female excellence.’ A deeper note of wrath was sounded in a great religious periodical. ‘Woe to him who parts from his faith in mankind, and leaves us to conclude that nothing is real but folly and perfidy!'

The hisses which greeted Amelia and the captain on their first appearance had scarcely died away when they were echoed again by Taine, a quarter of a century later; and so late as 1895 Mr. Saintsbury declaimed, in true earlyVictorian style, against the ‘nambypambyness’ of the one, and the ‘ chuckle-headed goodness ’ of the other. To be sure, the North British Review took up the cudgels for Thackeray, pertinently inquiring ‘why we call ourselves miserable sinners on Sunday, if we are to abuse Mr. Thackeray on weekdays for making us out something less than saints?’ American critics, too, were generally more discerning. Lowell compared each of Thackeray’s novels to ‘a Dionysius ear, through which we hear the world talking.’ Emerson with a sigh remarked, ‘We must renounce ideals and accept London.’ It was Mr. Stoddard who paid the finest compliment. ‘Thackeray could not have written Vanity Fair,' ‘unless Eden had been shining brightly before his eyes.’

The sentiment, ‘somewhat slack and low-pitched,’ and ‘shallower than that of Dickens,’which had seemed to impatient readers so parsimoniously doled out in Vanity Fair, was a little more forthcoming, all agreed, in The Newcomes and Pendennis. Tennyson told FitzGerald that he liked the latter much; it was ‘so mature.’ E. P. Whipple, on the contrary, was ‘depressed’ by it; besides, it ‘wanted unity and purpose.’ Laura Pendennis was ‘dull’; there was indeed ‘a feeble amiability about all his best characters.’ The Chronicle accused Pendennis of fostering a baneful prejudice against literary men. The author was said to be play ing to popularity in thus belittling and ridiculing his confrères. Again the North British Review ventured to defend him. But Thackeray conducted his own defense very ably by saying that he only meant to inculcate the maxim that literary men should love their families and pay their tradesmen. ‘I have seen,’ he added, ‘the bookseller whom Bludye robbed of his books.'

' Surely the pleasantest comment ever passed on Pendennis was the anecdote told Thackeray by Dr. Kane: that in the Arctic seas he found a seaman crouched in the hold reading for hours; ‘and behold, the book was Pendennis.’ There is indeed something beguiling and engaging about Pen far above his cousin Clive. I once knew two young Southern ladies who habitually referred to ‘Pen’ as to a relation or old family friend; and indeed I believe he was as much a member of their family as Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn are of ours.

Was it Pendennis, or The Newcomes, one wonders, which so ‘cruelly’ reminded Taine of ‘ Miss Edgeworth and Canon Schmidt’ ? The ever-entertaining Frenchman seems to have proved immune, at any rate, to the charms of Colonel Newcome, and could find nothing new in his heart after meeting that endeared gentleman. He found ‘similar things in books with gilt edges, given as Christmas presents to children.’ One might almost question, after reading this delicate sarcasm, whether M. Taine had ever been a child himself, and indeed whether he was accustomed to keep Christmas at any age.

Almost every one, however, had a good word and a soft heart for Esmond when it came out, ‘looking,’ as the author confessed, ‘very stately and handsome in print.’ Miss Martineau ceased scolding long enough to say that it was ‘the book of the century.’ Charlotte Brontë, having read the first volume, pronounced it (if Thackeray reported her correctly) ‘admirable and odious.’ Her own letters give substantially the same opinion. Mr. George Smith, the publisher, ‘looking a mere boy,’ came to Thackeray with a liberal check for Esmond before it was finished. Even M. Taine, who could resist Colonel Newcome, managed to take a fancy to Colonel Esmond, and excused the ‘puerile details’ of Thackeray’s descriptions because he was ‘listening to the old Colonel,’ and could forget the author. The Westminster Review, to be sure, went on record as saying that the attempt to revivify Queen Anne’s time was not altogether successful, and took Thackeray severely to task for making the Duke of Hamilton propose to Beatrix while (historically) he had a wife. Such strictures were very bearable, however well Thackeray must have known in his own heart that he had completely and gloriously succeeded in recalling Queen Anne’s time unto all generations. But when this reviewer goes on to seek, and to think he finds, Esmond’s prototype in William Dobbin, and that of Beatrix in Blanche Amory, will the judicious laugh or weep? The critic, however, mingles honey with his gall. Esmond may not be ‘very successful,’ but it is to Thackeray’s other works what the Bride of Lammermoor is to all the rest of Scott’s; the inference being, that, both are black swans.

Thackeray’s own opinion of Esmond was variable. ‘Bore as he is,’ he once said, ‘I believe he will do me credit’; thus half humorously subscribing to Mr. Howells’s subsequent opinion, that ‘H. Esmond is an intolerable prig.’ The Virginians he seemed to regard in much the same light. It was, he said, ‘devilish dull.’ But he had at the same time a fascinating plan in his mind, to lay a novel in the times of Henry the Fifth, peopled with the ancestors of the Warringtons, Pendennises, etc. ‘It would be a most magnificent performance,’ he declared, ‘and nobody would read it.’

I find in contemporary opinions of Thackeray little or no comment on his style. Was it too transparent, too perfect and easy a fit for his thoughts, to be noticed ? — or were readers too exasperated with Amelias and Lauras, — too occupied in resenting the idea that good and kind people are not always graceful and clever, — in a word, too vexed with the subject of the portrait, to notice the painting? The unparalleled ease with which Thackeray wrote certainly called no attention to itself. Like a piano in tune, or a body in health, its harmony might be taken for granted. When the plot mounted, the style mounted with it; without panting, without hurrying, the language kept abreast of the most heightened situation; and when it sank again, it sank without a flutter. But ease and strength, fitness and mastery, but half describe that colorful, resourceful, incredibly lively and animated style. Mr. Max Beerbohm has been able to describe it. ‘He blew upon his pipe, and words came tripping round him, like children, like pretty little children who are perfectly drilled for the dance; or else, did he so w ill it, treading in their precedence, like kings, gloomily.’

The sole exception to this general neglect of Thackeray’s style is in the case of his lectures. A good deal was said, first and last, about his manner, method, and style in these. What reader of Mrs. Gaskell’s Life of Charlotte Brontë can forget Charlotte’s own description of her attendance at one of these lectures while on a visit to her kind publisher in London? Talk of ‘ Persons one would Wish to have Seen’! Who would not choose (next to a Lincoln-Douglas debate) to have been present at that lecture, and heard Thackeray ask Miss Brontë’s opinion of it at the close? Who would not have liked to see the haut ton of London, in hoops and beavers, draw themselves up in that audacious double column at the door, through which the little Yorkshire woman was compelled to pass, amid whispers of ‘Currer Bell!’?

Miss Brontë’s opinion of the lectures, when she gave it (for she did not give it to Thackeray, but to her dear friend Ellen in a letter), was a very favorable one. They were to her, aside from the notice she unwillingly drew upon herself, memorable and even agitating experiences. They were among the four most impressive things she saw and heard in London. Compared with her deep and serious impressions, the comments of Motley sound almost frivolous. He wrote to his wrife of Thackeray’s ‘light-in-hand manner,’ ‘skimming over the surface of the time.’ His appearance, Motley said, was that of ‘a colossal infant.’ His portraits of the four Georges were received without dudgeon, though thought by our historian to reflect severely upon the institution of kings. ‘If he had shown up democracy or Southern chivalry thus before an audience of the free and enlightened, he would have been tarred and feathered on the spot.’ Heartily weary though he was of lecturing before his second American tour was finished, Thackeray seemed to lose nothing of his ease and animation on the platform. He spoke as if from personal recollection both of the monarchs and of the humorists, and might almost have called his lectures ‘Reminiscences.’ Above all, he had the crowning charm of being actually in love with the period he described.

As Americans, we were very fond of Thackeray. We drew, it is to be feared, very pointed comparisons between himself and his predecessor on our platforms — Dickens. It was well known, before Thackeray came, that he did not intend to write a book about us. His letters from America, even when they criticize the dress of New York ladies, are all written in a pleased and friendly tone. ‘He felt almost as much at home on Broadway,’ says Mrs. Ritchie, ‘as on the Brompton pavement.’ It was in New York that he made the warmest of his American friends, — the family of the ‘Brown House,’ the Baxters, his letters to whom were some years ago collected into a volume. Boston, he said, was ‘like a rich cathedral town in England — grave and decorous, and very pleasant and well-read.’ (This in spite of the fact that ‘some of the Boston papers call me a humbug.’) Mr. Prescott he found ‘delightful,’ Mr. Ticknor was ‘a great city magnate and littérateur.’ In another letter he speaks of ‘jolly, friendly little Savannah.’

Surely in that day of condescending foreigners, no traveler more willing to please and to be pleased ever came to our shores. When the Providence lecture failed, he wrote that ‘Nobody must lose money by me in America, where I have had such a welcome and hospitality.’ We had, I think, but one grievance against him; and this has dwindled in the distance of years to the proportions of a midge’s eyebrow. In an early chapter of The Newcomes he had preserved verisimilitude by alluding to the Father of his Country as ‘Mr. Washington.’ This liberty with our chief hero was for a moment resented by some of us rather warmly. We could not, of course, foresee the noble portrait of Washington which was later to be inserted in The Virginians. Let us be glad that it was so, and that, when Thackeray came over, no particular national obligation influenced us in our warm welcome. The success of his visit was, I think, rather a triumph for the little red schoolhouse. American books might not be read in Europe, but Americans had found time, while subduing the wilderness, to read both their own and European books. We knew great novels when we met with them. It was not at New Haven or Cambridge that Thackeray encountered the university magnate who had never heard of Vanity Fair. It was at Oxford!