CHAPTER IX.

Previous

Commencement of the Series of Early Essayists—Thackeray as a Lecturer—The 'English Humourists of the Eighteenth Century'—Charlotte BrontË at Thackeray's readings—The Lectures repeated in Edinburgh—An invitation to visit America—Transatlantic popularity—Special success attending the reception of the 'English Humourists' in the States—'Week-day Preachers'—Enthusiastic Farewell—Appleton's New York edition of Thackeray's works; the Author's introduction, and remarks on International Copyright—Thackeray's departure—Cordial impression bequeathed to America—The 'History of Henry Esmond, a story of Queen Anne's Reign'—The writers of the Augustan Era—The 'Newcomes'—An allusion to George Washington misunderstood—A second visit to America—Lectures on the 'Four Georges'—The series repeated at home—Scotch sympathy—Thackeray proposed as a candidate to represent Oxford in Parliament—His liberal views and impartiality.

In 1851 Thackeray appeared in an entirely new character, but one which subsequently proved so lucrative to him, that to this cause, even more than to the labours of his pen, must be attributed that easy fortune which he had accumulated before he died. In May he commenced the delivery of a series of lectures on the English Humourists. The subjects were—Swift, Congreve and Addison; Steele; Prior, Gay and Pope; Hogarth, Smollett and Fielding, and Sterne and Goldsmith. The lectures were delivered at Willis's Rooms. The price of admission was high, and the audience was numerous, and of the most select kind. It was not composed of that sort of people who crowd to pick up information in the shape of facts with which they have been previously unacquainted, but those who, knowing the eminence of the lecturer, wished to hear his opinion on a subject of national interest. One of the two great humourists of the present age was about to utter his sentiments on the humourists of the age now terminated, and the occasion was sufficient to create an interest which not even the attractive power of the Great Exhibition, then open, could check. The newspapers complained slightly of the low key in which the lecturer spoke, from which cause many of his best points were sometimes lost to the more distant of his auditors. 'In other respects,' says a newspaper report, 'we cannot too highly praise the style of his delivery.' Abstaining from rant and gesticulation he relied for his effect on the matter which he uttered, and it was singular to see how the isolated pictures by a few magic touches descended into the hearts of his hearers. Among the most conspicuous of the literary ladies at this gathering was Miss BrontË, the authoress of 'Jane Eyre.' She had never before seen the author of 'Vanity Fair,' though she had dedicated the second edition of her own celebrated novel to him, with the assurance that she regarded him 'as the social regenerator of his day—as the very master of that working corps who would restore to rectitude the warped state of things.' Mrs. Gaskell tells us that, when the lecture was over, the lecturer descended from the platform, and making his way towards her, frankly asked her for her opinion. 'This,' adds Miss BrontË's biographer, 'she mentioned to me not many days afterwards, adding remarks almost identical with those which I subsequently read in "Villette," where a similar action on the part of M. Paul Emanuel is related.' The remarks of this singular woman upon Thackeray and his writings, and her accounts of her interviews with him, are curious, and will be found scattered through Mrs. Gaskell's popular biography. Readers of the 'Cornhill Magazine' will not have forgotten Thackeray's affectionate and discriminating sketch of her, which appeared some years later in that periodical.

The course was perfectly successful, and the Lectures, subsequently reprinted, rank among the most masterly of his writings. They were delivered again soon afterwards in some of the provincial cities, including Edinburgh. A droll anecdote was related at this period in the newspapers, in connection with one of these provincial appearances. Previously to delivering them in Scotland, the lecturer bethought himself of addressing them to the rising youth of our two great nurseries of the national mind; and it was necessary, before appearing at Oxford, to obtain the licence of the authorities—a very laudable arrangement, of course. The Duke of Wellington was the Chancellor, who, if applied to, would doubtless have understood at once the man and his business. The Duke lived in the broad atmosphere of the every-day world, and a copy of 'Vanity Fair' was on a snug shelf at Walmer Castle. But his deputy at Oxford, on whom the modest applicant waited, knew less about such trifles as 'Vanity Fair' and 'Pendennis.' 'Pray what can I do to serve you, sir?' enquired the bland functionary. 'My name is Thackeray.' 'So I see by this card.' 'I seek permission to lecture within the precincts.' 'Ah! you are a lecturer; what subjects do you undertake—religious or political?' 'Neither; I am a literary man.' 'Have you written anything?' 'Yes; I am the author of "Vanity Fair."' 'I presume a dissenter—has that anything to do with John Bunyan's book?' 'Not exactly; I have also written "Pendennis."' 'Never heard of these works; but no doubt they are proper books.' 'I have also contributed to "Punch."' '"Punch!" I have heard of that; is it not a ribald publication?'

An invitation to deliver the lectures in America speedily followed. The public interest which heralded his coming in the United States was such as could hardly have been expected for a writer of fiction who had won his fame by so little appeal to the love of exciting scenes. His visit (as an American critic remarked at the time) at least demonstrated that if they were unwilling to pay English authors for their books, they were ready to reward them handsomely for the opportunity of seeing and hearing them.

At first the public feeling on the other side of the Atlantic had been very much divided as to his probable reception. 'He'll come and humbug us, eat our dinners, pocket our money, and go home and abuse us, like Dickens,' said Jonathan, chafing with the remembrance of that grand ball at the Park Theatre, and the Boz tableaux, and the universal speaking and dining, to which the author of 'Pickwick' was subject while he was their guest. 'Let him have his say,' said others, 'and we will have our look. We will pay a dollar to hear him, if we can see him at the same time; and as for the abuse, why it takes even more than two such cubs of the roaring British lion to frighten the American eagle. Let him come, and give him fair play.' He did come, and certainly had fair play; and as certainly there was no disappointment with his lectures. Those who knew his books found the author in the lecturer. Those who did not know the books, says one enthusiastic critic, 'were charmed in the lecturer by what is charming in the author—the unaffected humanity, the tenderness, the sweetness, the genial play of fancy, and the sad touch of truth, with that glancing stroke of satire which, lightning-like, illumines while it withers.' He did not visit the West, nor Canada. He went home without seeing Niagara Falls. But wherever he did go, he found a generous social welcome, and a respectful and sympathetic hearing. He came to fulfil no mission; but it was felt that his visit had knit more closely the sympathy of the Americans with Englishmen. Heralded by various romantic memoirs, he smiled at them, stoutly asserted that he had been always able to command a good dinner, and to pay for it, nor did he seek to disguise that he hoped his American tour would help him to command and pay for more. He promised not to write a book about the Americans, and he kept his word.

An old English gentleman

His first lecture was delivered to a crowded audience: on November 19 he commenced his lectures before the Mercantile Library Association, in the spacious New York church belonging to the congregation presided over by the Rev. Dr. Chapin.

Another 'Spectator'

Before many days the publishers told the world that the subject of Thackeray's talk had given rise to a Swift and Congreve and Addison furore. The booksellers were driving a thrifty trade in forgotten volumes of 'Old English Essayists;' the 'Spectator' found its way again to the parlour tables; old Sir Roger de Coverley was waked up from his long sleep. 'Tristram Shandy' even was almost forgiven his lewdness, and the Ass of Melun and Poor Le Fevre were studied wistfully, and placed on the library table between 'Gulliver' and the 'Rake's Progress.' Girls were working Maria's pet lamb upon their samplers, and hundreds of Lilliput literary ladies were twitching the mammoth Gulliver's whiskers.

The newspaper gossipers were no less busy in noting every personal characteristic of the author. One remarks: 'As for the man himself who has lectured us, he is a stout, healthful, broad-shouldered specimen of a man, with cropped greyish hair, and keenish grey eyes, peering very sharply through a pair of spectacles that have a very satiric focus. He seems to stand strongly on his own feet, as if he would not be easily blown about or upset, either by praise or pugilists; a man of good digestion, who takes the world easy, and scents all shams and humours (straightening them between his thumb and forefinger) as he would a pinch of snuff.' A London letter of the time says: 'The New York journalists preserve, on the whole, a delicate silence (very creditable to them) on the subject of Mr. Thackeray's nose; but they are eloquent about his legs; and when the last mail left a controversy was raging among them on this matter, one party maintaining that "he stands very firm on his legs," while the opposition asserted that his legs were decidedly "shaky."'

These, however, were light matters compared with the notices in other newspapers, which unscrupulously raked together, for the amusement of their readers, details which were mostly untrue, and where true, were of too private a character for public discussion. This led to a humorous remonstrance, forwarded by Thackeray to 'Fraser's Magazine,' where it appeared with the signature of 'John Small.' In this he gave a droll parody of his newspaper biographers' style, which caused some resentment on the part of the writers attacked. One Transatlantic defender of the New York press said that 'the two most personal accounts of Thackeray published appeared in one of the Liverpool papers, and in the London "Spectator;"' adding, 'the London correspondents of some of the provincial papers spare nothing of fact or comment touching the private life of public characters. Nay, are there not journals expressly devoted to the contemporary biography of titled, wealthy, and consequential personages, which will tell you how, and in what company, they eat, drink, and travel; their itinerary from the country to London, and from the metropolis to the Continent; the probable marriages, alliances, &c.? No journal can be better acquainted with these conditions of English society than the classical and vivacious "Fraser." Why, then, does John Small address that London editor from New York, converting some paltry and innocent-enough penny-a-liner notice of the author of "Vanity Fair" into an enormous national sin and delinquency?' Among the lectures delivered at New York, before he quitted the gay circles of the 'Empire City' for Boston, was one in behalf of a charity; and the charity lecture was stated to be a mÉlange of all the others, closing very appropriately with an animated tribute to the various literary, social, and humane qualities of Charles Dickens. 'Papa,' he described his daughter as exclaiming, with childish candour; 'papa, I like Mr. Dickens's book much better than yours.'

The remonstrance of John Small in 'Fraser,' however, did not conclude without a warm acknowledgment of the general kindness he had received in America, thus feelingly expressed in his last lecture of the series, delivered on April 7. 'In England,' he said, 'it was my custom, after the delivery of these lectures, to point such a moral as seemed to befit the country I lived in, and to protest against an outcry which some brother authors of mine most imprudently and unjustly raise, when they say that our profession is neglected and its professors held in light esteem. Speaking in this country, I would say that such a complaint could not only not be advanced, but could not even be understood here, where your men of letters take their manly share in public life; whence Everett goes as minister to Washington, and Irving and Bancroft to represent the Republic in the old country. And if to English authors the English public is, as I believe, kind and just in the main, can any of us say, will any who visit your country not proudly and gratefully own, with what a cordial and generous greeting you receive us? I look around on this great company. I think of my gallant young patrons of the Mercantile Library Association, as whose servant I appear before you, and of the kind hand stretched out to welcome me by men famous in letters, and honoured in our own country as in their own, and I thank you and them for a most kindly greeting and a most generous hospitality. At home and amongst his own people it scarce becomes an English writer to speak of himself; his public estimation must depend on his works; his private esteem on his character and his life. But here, among friends newly found, I ask leave to say that I am thankful; and I think with a grateful heart of those I leave behind me at home, who will be proud of the welcome you hold out to me, and will benefit, please God, when my days of work are over, by the kindness which you show to their father.'

A still more interesting paper was his Preface to Messrs. Appleton and Co.'s New York edition of his minor works. Readers will remember Thackeray's droll account, in one of his lectures, of his first interview with the agent of Appleton and Co., when holding on, sea-sick, to the bulwarks of the New York steam-vessel on his outward voyage. The preface referred to contains evidence that the appeal of the energetic representative of that well-known publishing house was not altogether fruitless. It is as follows:—

'On coming into this country I found that the projectors 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 had the good fortune to be able to draw a pen, or alter a 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 of the writings of some contemporaries who still live and flourish in the novelists' calling. I myself had scarcely entered on it when these burlesque tales were begun, and I stopped further parody from a sense that this merry 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 possibility of preventing the re-appearance of these performances. Other publishers, besides the Messrs. Appleton, were ready to bring my hidden works to the light. Very many of the other books printed I have not seen since their appearance twelve years ago, and it was with no small feelings of curiosity (remembering under what sad circumstances the tale had been left unfinished) that I bought the incomplete "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 welcome.

'There is an opportunity of being either satiric or sentimental. The careless papers written at an early period, and never seen since the printer's 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 juvenile creatures, which the publisher has disinterred and resuscitated. There are two performances 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 "Caxtons" for a lampoon, which I know he himself has 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 experiences 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 have any kind and friendly American reader judge of me by the 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 remembrance of the bygone 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 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 decorations," has been circumstantially described to the reader's amusement as well as to 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 authors has had at least this beneficial result for us, that our names and writings are known by multitudes using our common mother tongue, who never had heard of us or our books but for the speculators 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 portion 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 satisfactory than no bread at all, gratefully accepts and acknowledges several slices which the book-purveyors in this city have proffered to him of their own free-will.

'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 in 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 cheerfully say that the good-will towards us from publishers and public is undoubted, and wait for still better times with perfect confidence and good-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 public—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 on any sudden day; and in this collection which Messrs. Appleton are publishing I find two or three such early productions of my own that I gladly would take back, but that 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 slightest need of the author's own imprimatur; and I cannot sufficiently condole with a literary gentleman of this city, who (in his voyages of professional 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 announced the book in the press, and my confrÈre had to refund the prize-money which had been paid to 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 feelings of the harmless but kindly-treated aboriginal, 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.

'W. M. Thackeray.

'New York, December 1852.'

Such words could not fail to be gratifying to the American people, as an evidence of Thackeray's sense of the reception he had received; and in spite of a subsequent slight misunderstanding founded on a mistake and speedily cleared up, it may be said that no English writer of fiction was ever more popular in the United States.

A mere accident

The publication of the 'Adventures of Henry Esmond,' which appeared just as its author was starting for America in 1852, marked an important epoch in his career. It was a continuous story, and one worked out with closer attention to the thread of the narrative than he had hitherto produced—a fact due, no doubt, partly to its appearance in three volumes complete, instead of in detached monthly portions. But its most striking feature was its elaborate imitation of the style and even the manner of thought of the time of Queen Anne's reign, in which its scenes were laid. The preparation of his Lectures on the Humourists had no doubt suggested to him the idea of writing a story of this kind, as it afterwards suggested to him the design of writing a history of that period which he had long entertained, but in which he had, we believe, made no progress when he died. But his fondness for the Queen Anne writers was of older date. Affectionate allusions to Sir Richard Steele—like himself a Charterhouse boy—and to Addison, and Pope, and Swift, may be found in his earliest magazine articles. That the style with which the author of 'Vanity Fair' and 'Pendennis' had so often delighted his readers was to some degree formed upon those models so little studied in his boyhood, cannot be doubted by anyone who is familiar with the literature of the 'Augustan age of English authorship.' The writers of that period were fond of French models, as the writers of Elizabeth's time looked to Italy for their literary inspiration; but there was no time when English prose was generally written with more purity and ease; for the translation of the Scriptures, which is generally referred to as an evidence of the perfection of our English speech in Elizabeth's time, owed its strength and simplicity chiefly to the rejection by the pious translators of the scholarly style most in vogue, in favour of the homely English then current among the people. If we except the pamphlet writers of earlier reigns, the Queen Anne writers were the first who systematically wrote for the people in plain Saxon English, not easy to imitate in these days. 'Esmond' was from the first most liked among literary men who can appreciate a style having no resemblance to the fashion of the day; but there was a vein of tenderness and true pathos in the story which, in spite of some objectionable features in the plot, and of a somewhat wearisome genealogical introduction, has by degrees gained for it a high rank among the author's works. 'Esmond' was followed by the 'Newcomes,' in 1855, a work which revealed a deeper pathos than any of his previous novels, and showed that the author could, when he pleased, give us pictures of moral beauty and exquisite tenderness. In this work he returned to the yellow numbers in the old monthly form.

An incident in connection with the publication of the 'Newcomes' may here be mentioned. Thackeray's fondness for irony had frequently brought him into disgrace with people not so ready as himself in understanding that dangerous figure. A passage in one of his chapters of this story alluding to 'Mr. Washington,' in a parody of the style of the 'British Patriot' of the time of the War of Independence, was so far misunderstood in America that the fact was alluded to by the New York correspondent of the 'Times.' Upon which the author felt it worth his while to explain the real sense of the offending paragraph in a letter to that journal, and, in the concluding paragraph, he very explicitly sets forth his own sincere convictions in regard to the hero of American Independence, and his belief in the justice of the cause for which he conquered.[11]

An embarrassing situation

1780

Another journey to the United States, equally successful, and equally profitable in a pecuniary sense, was the chief event in his life in 1856. The lectures delivered were those admirable anecdotal and reflective discourses on the 'Four Georges,' made familiar to readers by their publication in the 'Cornhill Magazine,' and since then in a separate form. The subject was not favourable to the display of the author's more genial qualities. But where in English literature could we find anything more solemn and affecting than his picture of the old king, the third of that name? When 'all light, all reason, all sound of human voices, all the pleasures of this world of God were taken from him'—concluding with the affecting appeal to his American audience—'O brothers! speaking the same dear mother tongue—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!'

These lectures were successfully repeated in England. Thackeray, indeed, was now recognised as one of the most attractive lecturers of the day. His presence, whether in lecturing on the 'Georges' for his own profit, or on 'Week-day Preachers,' or some other topic for the benefit of the families of deceased brother writers, such as he delivered to assist in raising monuments to the memories of Angus B. Reach and Douglas Jerrold, always attracted the most cultivated classes of the various cities in which he appeared; but an attempt to draw together a large audience of the less-educated classes by giving a course of lectures at the great Music Hall was less happy. In Edinburgh his reception was always in the highest degree successful. He was more extensively known and admired among the intellectual portion of the people of Scotland than any living writer, not excepting Thomas Carlyle. There was something in his peculiar genius that commended him to the Northern temperament. Thackeray delivered his essays on the 'Four Georges' in Scotland to larger and more intellectual audiences than have probably flocked to any other lecturer, and he, later on, lectured there for the benefit of Angus B. Reach's widow. Nearly all the men of Edinburgh, with any tincture of literature, had met him personally, and a few knew him well. He was almost the only great author that the majority of the lovers of literature in it had seen and heard, and his form and figure and voice, with its tragic tones and pauses, well entitled him to take his place in any ideal rank of giants. He was much gratified (says James Hannay) by the success of the 'Four Georges' (a series which superseded an earlier scheme for as many discourses on 'Men of the World') in Scotland. 'I have had three per cent. of the whole population here,' he wrote from Edinburgh in November 1856. 'If I could but get three per cent. out of London!'

Most of Thackeray's readers will remember that in 1857 he was invited by some friends to offer himself as a candidate for the representation in Parliament of the city of Oxford.

Champions of order

A characteristic anecdote was told in the newspapers relating to the Oxford election by one who was staying with Thackeray at his hotel during his contest with Mr. Cardwell. Whilst looking out of window a crowd passed along the street, hooting and handling rather roughly some of his opponent's supporters. Thackeray started up in the greatest possible excitement, and, using some strong expletive, rushed down stairs, and notwithstanding the efforts of numerous old electioneerers to detain him, who happened to be of opinion that a trifling correction of the opposite party might be beneficial pour encourager les autres, he was not to be deterred, and was next seen towering above the crowd, dealing about him right and left in defence of the partisans of his antagonist and in defiance of his own friends.

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                           

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