Increasing reputation—Later writings in 'Fraser'—'Mrs. Perkins's Ball,' with Thackeray's illustrations—Early Vicissitudes of 'Pencil Sketches of English Society'—Thackeray's connection with the Temple—Appearance of 'Vanity Fair' with the Author's original illustrations—Appreciative notice in the 'Edinburgh Review'—The impression produced—'Our Street,' with Titmarsh's Pencillings of some of its Inhabitants—The 'History of Pendennis,' illustrated by the Author—'Dr. Birch and his Young Friends,' with illustrations by M. A. Titmarsh—'Rebecca and Rowena'—The Dignity of Literature and the 'Examiner' and 'Morning Chronicle' newspapers—Sensitiveness to Hostile Criticism—The 'Kickleburys on the Rhine,' with illustrations by M. A. Titmarsh—Adverse bias of the 'Times' newspaper—Thackeray's reply—An 'Essay on Thunder and Small Beer.'

The great work, however, which was to stamp the name of Thackeray for ever in the minds of English readers was yet to come. Hitherto all his writings had been brief and desultory, but in contributing to magazines his style had gradually matured itself. That ease of expression, and that repose which seems so full of power, were never more exemplified than in some of his latest essays in 'Fraser,' before book writing had absorbed all his time. His articles on Sir E. B. Lytton's 'Memoir of Laman Blanchard,' his paper on 'Illustrated Children's Books,' his satirical proposal to Mons. Alexandre Dumas for a continuation of 'Ivanhoe,' all contributed to 'Fraser' in 1846, and his article—we believe the last which he wrote for that periodical—entitled 'A Grumble about Christmas Books,' published in January 1847, are equal to anything in his later works. The first-mentioned of these papers, indeed—the remonstrance with Laman Blanchard's biographer—is unsurpassed for the eloquence of its defence of the calling of men of letters, and for the tenderness and manly simplicity with which it touches on the history of the unfortunate subject of the memoir.

'Mrs. Perkins's Ball,' a Christmas book, was published in December 1846. But its author had long been preparing for a more serious undertaking. Some time before, he had sketched some chapters entitled 'Pencil Sketches of English Society,' which he had offered to Colburn for insertion in the 'New Monthly Magazine.' It formed a portion of a continuous story, of a length not yet determined, and was rejected by Colburn after consideration. The papers which Thackeray had previously contributed to the 'New Monthly' were chiefly slight comic stories—perhaps the least favourable specimens of his powers. They were, indeed, not superior to the common run of magazine papers, and were certainly not equal to his contributions to 'Fraser.' In fact, as a contributor to the 'New Monthly' he had achieved no remarkable success, and his papers appear to have been little in demand there. Whether the manuscript had been offered to 'Fraser'—the magazine in which 'Titmarsh' had secured popularity, and where he was certainly more at home—we cannot say. Happily, the author of 'Pencil Sketches of English Society,' though suspending his projected work, did not abandon it. He saw in its opening chapters—certainly not the best portions of the story when completed—the foundations of a work which was to secure him at last a fame among contemporary writers in his own proper name. The success of Dickens's shilling monthly parts suggested to him to make it the commencement of a substantive work of fiction, to be published month by month, with illustrations by the author. The work grew up by degrees, and finally took shape under the better title of 'Vanity Fair.' It was during this time, the latter part of 1846, that he removed to his house at No. 13 Young Street, Kensington, a favourite locality with him, in which house he resided for some years. He also at this time occupied chambers at No. 10 Crown-office Row, Temple, the comfortable retirement which, 'up four pair of stairs,' with its grand view, when the sun was shining, of the chimney-pots over the way, he has himself described. His friend Tom Taylor, the well-known dramatist and biographer, had chambers in the same house; and we believe, on the demolition of No. 10 Crown-office Row, wrote a poem, published in the pages of 'Punch,' in which, if we remember rightly, mention is made of the fact of Thackeray's having resided there. Thackeray was called to the bar by the Honourable Society of the Middle Temple in 1848, though he never practised, and probably never intended to do so. The Benchers, however, were not insensible to the addition to the numerous literary associations with their venerable and quiet retreat which they thus gained. After his death there was some proposition to bury him in the Temple, of which he was a member, amid (as Spenser says)—

There Goldsmith is buried, and Thackeray's ashes would have been fitly laid near those of the author of the 'Vicar of Wakefield,' whose brilliant genius he so heartily eulogised, and whose many shortcomings he so tenderly touched upon, in the 'Lectures on the Humourists.' But, after consultation with his relations, it was deemed better that he should rest with his own family in Kensal Green. Pending this decision, the sanction of the Benchers to interment within the precincts of the Temple Church had been asked and cheerfully accorded; and when the Kensal Green Cemetery was finally decided upon, the Benchers were requested to permit the erection of a memorial slab in their church. Their reply to this was, that not only should they be honoured by such a memento, but that, if allowed, they would have it erected at their own cost.[10]

The first monthly portion of 'Vanity Fair' was published on February 1, 1847, in the yellow wrapper which served to distinguish it from Charles Dickens's stories, and which afterwards became the standard colour for the covers of Thackeray's serial stories. The work was continued monthly, and finished with the number for July of the following year. Thackeray's friends, and all those who had watched his career with special interest, saw in it at once a work of greater promise than any that had appeared since the dawn of his great contemporary's fame; but the critical journals received it somewhat coldly. There were indeed few tokens of its future success in the tone of its reception at this early period.

It is generally acknowledged that to the thoughtful and appreciative article in the 'Edinburgh Review' of January 1848, which dealt with the first eleven numbers of the work only, is due the merit of authoritatively calling attention to the great power it displayed. The writer was evidently one who knew Thackeray well; for he gives a sketch of his life, and mentions having met him some years before, painting in the Louvre in Paris. 'In forming,' says this judicious critic, 'our general estimate of this writer, we wish to be understood as referring principally, if not exclusively, to "Vanity Fair" (a novel in monthly parts), which, though still unfinished, is immeasurably superior, in our opinion, to every other known production of his pen. The great charm of this work is its entire freedom from mannerism and affectation both in style and sentiment—confiding frankness with which the reader is addressed—the thoroughbred carelessness with which the author permits the thoughts and feelings suggested by the situations to flow in their natural channel, as if conscious that nothing mean or unworthy, nothing requiring to be shaded, gilded, or dressed up in company attire, could fall from him. In a word, the book is the work of a gentleman, which is one great merit, and not the work of a fine (or would-be fine) gentleman, which is another. Then, again, he never exhausts, elaborates, or insists too much upon anything; he drops his finest remarks and happiest illustrations as Buckingham dropped his pearls, and leaves them to be picked up and appreciated as chance may bring a discriminating observer to the spot. His effects are uniformly the effects of sound, wholesome, legitimate art; and we need hardly add, that we are never harrowed up with physical horrors of the EugÈne Sue school in his writings, or that there are no melodramatic villains to be found in them. One touch of nature makes the whole world kin, and here are touches of nature by the dozen. His pathos (though not so deep as Dickens's) is exquisite; the more so, perhaps, because he seems to struggle against it, and to be half ashamed of being caught in the melting mood; but the attempt to be caustic, satirical, ironical, or philosophical, on such occasions, is uniformly vain; and again and again have we found reason to admire how an originally fine and kind nature remains essentially free from worldliness, and, in the highest pride of intellect, pays homage to the heart.'

It was at this time, his friend Hannay tells us, that he first had the pleasure of seeing him. '"Vanity Fair,"' he adds, 'was then unfinished, but its success was made; and he spoke frankly and genially of his work and his career. "Vanity Fair" always, we think, ranked in his own mind as best in story of his greater books; and he once pointed out to us the very house in Russell Square where his imaginary Sedleys lived—a curious proof of the reality his creations had for his mind.' The same writer tells us that when he congratulated Thackeray, many years ago, on the touch in 'Vanity Fair' in which Becky admires her husband when he is giving Lord Steyne the chastisement which ruins her for life, the author answered with that fervour as well as heartiness of frankness which distinguished him: 'Well, when I wrote the sentence, I slapped my fist on the table, and said, "That is a touch of genius!"' 'Vanity Fair' soon rose rapidly in public favour, and a new work from the pen of its author was eagerly looked for.

During the time of publication of 'Vanity Fair' he had found time to write and publish the little Christmas book entitled 'Our Street,' which appeared in December 1847, and reached a second edition soon after Christmas. 'Vanity Fair' was followed in 1849 by another long work of fiction, entitled the 'History of Pendennis; his Fortunes and Misfortunes, his Friends and his Greatest Enemy; with Illustrations by the Author;' which was completed in two volumes. In this year, too, he published 'Dr. Birch' and 'Rebecca and Rowena.' It was during the publication of 'Pendennis' that a criticism in the 'Morning Chronicle' and in the 'Examiner' newspapers drew from him a remarkable letter on the 'Dignity of Literature,' addressed to the editor of the former journal.

It was a peculiarity of Thackeray to feel annoyed at adverse criticism, and to show his annoyance in a way which more cautious men generally abstain from. He did not conceal his feeling when an unjust attack was levelled at him in an influential journal. He was not one of those remonstrators who never see anything in the papers, but have their attention called to them by friends. If he had seen, he frankly avowed that he had seen the attack, and did not scruple to reply if he had an opportunity, and the influence of the journal or reviewer made it worth while. With the 'Times' he had had very early a bout of this kind. When the little account of the funeral of Napoleon in 1840 was published, the 'Times,' as he said, rated him, and talked in 'its own great roaring way about the flippancy and conceit of Titmarsh,' to which he had replied by a sharp paragraph or two. In 1850 a very elaborate attack in the chief journal roused his satirical humour more completely. The article which contained the offence was on the subject of his Christmas book, entitled the 'Kickleburys on the Rhine,' published in December 1850, upon which a criticism appeared in that journal, beginning with the following passage:—

'It has been customary, of late years, for the purveyors of amusing literature—the popular authors of the day—to put forth certain opuscles, denominated "Christmas Books," with the ostensible intention of swelling the tide of exhilaration, or other expansive emotions, incident upon the exodus of the old and the inauguration of the new year. We have said that their ostensible intention was such, because there is another motive for these productions, locked up (as the popular author deems) in his own breast, but which betrays itself, in the quality of the work, as his principal incentive. Oh! that any muse should be set upon a high stool to cast up accounts and balance a ledger! Yet so it is; and the popular author finds it convenient to fill up the declared deficit and place himself in a position the more effectually to encounter those liabilities which sternly assert themselves contemporaneously and in contrast with the careless and free-handed tendencies of the season by the emission of Christmas books—a kind of literary assignats, representing to the emitter expunged debts, to the receiver an investment of enigmatical value. For the most part bearing the stamp of their origin in the vacuity of the writer's exchequer rather than in the fulness of his genius, they suggest by their feeble flavour the rinsings of a void brain after the more important concoctions of the expired year. Indeed, we should as little think of taking these compositions as examples of the merits of their authors as we should think of measuring the valuable services of Mr. Walker the postman, or Mr. Bell the dust-collector, by the copy of verses they leave at our doors as a provocative of the expected annual gratuity—effusions with which they may fairly be classed for their intrinsic worth no less than their ultimate purport.'

Upon this, and upon some little peculiarities of style in the review, such as a passage in which the learned critic compared the author's satirical attempts to 'the sardonic divings after the pearl of truth whose lustre is eclipsed in the display of the diseased oyster,' Thackeray replied in the preface to a second edition of the little book, published a few days later, and entitled an 'Essay on Thunder and Small Beer.' The style of the 'Times' critique, which was generally attributed to Samuel Phillips, afforded too tempting a subject for the satirical pen of the author of 'Vanity Fair,' to be passed over. The easy humour with which he exposes the pompous affectation of superiority in his critic, the tawdry sentences and droll logic of his censor, whom he likened not to the awful thunderer of Printing House Square, but to the thunderer's man, 'Jupiter Jeames, trying to dazzle and roar like his awful employer,' afforded the town, through the newspapers which copied the essay, an amount of amusement not often derived from an author's defence of himself from adverse criticism.

The essay was remembered long after, when work after work of the offending author was severely handled in the same paper; and the recollection of it gave a shadow of support to the theory by which some persons, on the occasion of Thackeray's death, endeavoured to explain the fact that the obituary notice in the 'Times,' and the account of his funeral, were more curt than those of any other journal; while the 'Times' alone, of all the daily papers, omitted to insert a leading article on the subject of the great loss which had been sustained by the world of letters.