Before Thackeray died, he had become as familiar a figure in the West End of London as Dr. Johnson was in Fleet street and its tributary courts and lanes. Any one who did not know him might have supposed him to be an indolent man about town; and those who could identify him generally knew where to find him, if they wished to show the great author to a friend from the country. He was usually present in the Park at the fashionable hour; and if the Pall Mall of his day is ever painted, his face and form will be as inseparable from a truthful picture as the mammoth bulk of the testy lexicographer is from the contemporaneous prints of old Temple Bar.

Pall Mall is the street of gentlemen, as Fleet Street was the street of the ragged literary mendicants, whose wretched lot has been drawn in vivid colours by Macauley. The people one meets in it are daintily booted, gloved and hatted; a lady is not often seen among them. It is, as Thackeray himself said, “the social exchange of London:” the main artery of Clubland, where civilized man has set up for himself all the adjuncts of luxurious celibacy, and congregates to discuss, undisturbed by the impertinencies of feminine lack-logic, the news, the politics and the scandal of the hour. It is old and historic, haunted by the shadows of many odd and famous persons, who reshape themselves unbidden in the memory of those who know its annals. The reminiscences bring out a motley tenancy from the houses—Culloden, Cumberland and Gainsborough side by side, pretty Eleanor Gwynn and Queen Caroline, Sarah Marlborough and genial Walter Scott, George Selwyn and Dick Steele, Sheridan and William Pitt, Walpole and Joseph Addison, and Fox and the Prince Regent! The greensward at the south end of the AthenÆum Club was a part of the site of Carlton House, the residence of the royal scapegrace, and we see Thackeray, as he has described himself, a frilled and petticoated urchin in his nurse’s care, peeping through the colonnade at the guards, as they pace before the palace, and salute the royal chariots coming in and out. Before he reached manhood the palace had disappeared, and many of the old buildings in Pall Mall had been pulled down to make room for the magnificent club houses, which now give the street its distinctive character. Not one of the new faces that appeared with the alterations was more familiar to the men of his time than his, and among all the princes, dandies, politicians, and scholars who filed through the street and nodded to one another from their club windows, there was not one to whom the reading part of this generation reverts with greater fondness than to Thackeray.

Those who appreciate his books—a constantly increasing number—find it difficult to understand how the author can be so misinterpreted as to be accused of any narrowness of view or harshness of judgment. To them every line is testimony of a fatherly tenderness which grieves at the necessity of its own rebuke, and though he is incapable of an apathetic acquiescence in human weakness, and does not view mankind with the lazy good nature of a neutral temper, the pervading spirit of his criticism springs from a deep-welled charitableness.

One of the few stories told of him which would dispute his invariable kindliness is of two friends who were walking in the West End when they saw Thackeray approaching them from the opposite direction. One of them had met him before, and the other had not. The former made a demonstrative salutation, which the author barely acknowledged as he loftily passed along. “You wouldn’t believe that he sat up with us drinking punch and singing Dr. Martin Luther until three o’clock this morning,” said the person, who felt aggrieved at his chilling reception, to his friend. Now supposing that the story is authentic—that two friends did meet him under those circumstances, and that one of them had been a sharer of his conviviality in the small hours, a further claim on his recognition was not necessarily justified, and he did not violate any rule of good breeding in discouraging it. But there are some who feel emboldened by the smallest politeness of a great man to consider themselves intimate with him, and who once having seen him come down from his pedestal to smoke a cutty pipe in a miscellaneous company ever afterwards look upon him as a comrade.

The loveableness of his character is well remembered at the AthenÆum Club, and the old servants, especially, speak of his kindness to them. The club house is at the corner of Waterloo Place and Pall Mall—a drab-coloured, sedate, classic building, with a wide frieze under the cornice—in a line with the Guards, the Oxford and Cambridge, the Reform, the Traveller’s, and many other clubs. Opposite to it is the United Service Club, midway is the memorial column to the Duke of York, and only a few yards away are Carlton Terrace and the steps leading into St. James’s Park. Marlborough House, the home of the Prince of Wales, and unpalatial St. James’s Palace, are close by.

Thackeray’s name appears on the roll of the AthenÆum as that of a barrister; but he was elected in 1851 as “author of Vanity Fair, Pendennis, and other well-known works of fiction.”

He was elected under Rule II., which is worth quoting, as it is designed to preserve the character of the Club. “It being essential to the maintenance of the AthenÆum, in conformity with the principles upon which it was originally founded, that the annual introduction of a certain number of persons of distinguished eminence in Science, Literature or the Arts, or for Public Services, should be secured, a limited number of persons of such qualifications shall be elected by the Committee. The number so elected shall not exceed Nine each year . . . The Club intrust this privilege to the Committee, in the entire confidence that they will only elect persons who have attained to distinguished eminence in Science, Literature, or the Arts, or for Public Services.”

He used the club both for work and pleasure, and there are two corners of the building to which his name has become attached, on account of his association with them. The dining-room is on the first floor, at the left-hand side of the spacious entrance; and he usually sat at a table in the nearest corner, where the sun shines plenteously through the high windows, and makes rainbows on the white cloth in striking the glasses. Theodore Hook had used the same table, and uncorked his wit with his wine at it; but it was in a kindlier strain than the author of Jack Brag was capable of that Thackeray enlivened the friends who gathered around him.

From the Club window he probably saw many of his own characters going along Pall Mall: little Barnes Newcome; Fred Bayham, with his big whiskers; cumbrous Rawdon Crawley; the sinister Marquis of Steyne; stylish little Foker; neat Major Pendennis; homely William Dobbin, and the dashing Dr. Brand Firmin, as he drove up or down the Haymarket to or from Old Parr street. Most of them belonged to the fashionable or semi-fashionable world, and the men were sure to be members of some of the clubs in this neighbourhood. No doubt he also saw Arthur Pendennis, Clive Newcome, and Philip Firmin; but it is likely that they appeared with the greatest distinctness when the blinds were drawn and the reflection of his own face was visible in the darkened windows.

He was a bon vivant: fond of a nice little dinner, a connoisseur of wines, the devotee of a good cigar, a willing receiver of many little pleasures which an ascetic judgment would pronounce wasteful and slothful. He was inclined to be indolent and luxurious. Had he not lost his fortune, and been urged by necessity to write, it is to be feared that his splendid gifts would never have been exercised, and that his genius would have borne no more fruit than an unworked store of unformulated and unanalysed mental impressions, known only to himself. But his liking for choice little dinners was not wholly accountable to his relish of the food or to the satisfaction of thus gratifying the senses. No reproach of excess or grossness of any kind attaches to his character. Though perhaps he was self-indulgent, he was not a voluptuary. His pleasure was as innocent as that of Colonel Newcome when he visited the smoky depths of Bohemia with young Clive, and the dinner was but the means of sociability and hospitality, the preparation for a more intellectual treat, a key to the fetters which keep some hearts and minds in this oddly-constituted and misgiving world from the openness and confidence of brotherhood.

It was not a cold or formal honour that was conferred upon those who sat with him. When they were taken into his confidence, no friend could be more jovial or unrestrained than he was. The simplicity of the man was one of his greatest charms. He could not endure affectations and mannerisms. He talked without effort, without hesitation, and without any of the elaborateness which comes of egotistic cogitation, and the desire to present oneself in the most favourable light. He was one of the most “natural” of men, if the word is taken as meaning the absence of self-disguise; and at these little dinners and in the smoke-room, figuratively speaking, he usually had his slippers on, and his feet stretched out on the hearth-rug. [72]The modern smoking-room of the Club is under the garden, upon which the dining room of Carlton House once stood; but in Thackeray’s time a very small apartment near the top of the building, served for those addicted to the dreamy weed, and he was among them. He was not a great smoker, though he usually had a cigar at hand; he coquetted with it, puffed at it awhile and watched the blue wreaths vanishing towards the ceiling, and then put it down, or let it go out. He did not apply himself to it with the constancy and caressing intentness of complete enjoyment, but was fitful, as if the pleasure he derived was dubious.

Much of the pleasure of his life was dubious. We have here seen but one side of his character, the geniality which was unextinguished by an inherent sadness of temperament: the comfortableness of his hours of relaxation. But he was not a happy man, even when he had achieved success, and his powers had been fully recognized. Self-confidence is an ingredient of genius which was lacking in him. He was always in doubt about his work, he trusted his judgment when he discovered defects in it, but never felt sure of its merits. More distressing than all else was his procrastination: the heart-breaking and peace-destroying spectre of postponed work was too often before him, and he was often crippled by his hesitation and despair.

The south-west corner of the South library, on the second floor of the Club, is filled with books of English history, and some of his work was done there. Therefrom, no doubt, some of the material of the lectures on the Georges was drawn; he could look out of the window on the very site of Carlton House, now a square of grass and flowers; and probably on these shelves he found some help in completing Esmond and developing The Virginians. He often left the library looking fatigued and troubled, and he was sometimes heard complaining of the perplexity he found in disposing of this character or that, and asserting that he knew that what he was writing would fail.

He divided his time between the AthenÆum Club, the Reform, and the Garrick. Contiguous to the first two is the neighborhood of St. James’s, which principally consists of clubs, bachelors’ chambers, and fashionable shops, and is associated with many of Thackeray’s characters. At No. 88 St. James’s street, in a building now demolished, he himself once occupied chambers, and there began and finished Barry Lyndon. Major Pendennis had chambers in Bury street, a narrow lane coming from Piccadilly parallel with St. James’s street; and it was in them that the famous scene took place between the shrewd old soldier and Mr. Morgan, in which that rebellious flunky was brought whining to his knees by the strategic courage of his master. We have searched the neighbourhood for the “Wheel of Fortune” public-house, which Mr. Morgan frequented to discuss with other gentlemen’s gentlemen, gentlemen’s affairs. It is not to be found; and Bury street has scarcely a house in it that looks old enough to have been the Major’s. But St. James’s Church is here—a gloomy old building of smoky brick with lighter trimmings of stone; and the reader may remember how, one day, Esmond and Dick Steele were walking along Jermyn street after dinner at the Guards’, when they espied a fair, tall man in a snuff-coloured suit, with a plain sword, very sober, and almost shabby in appearance, who was poring over a folio volume at a book-shop close by the church; and how Dick, shining in scarlet and gold lace, rushed up to the student and took him in his arms and hugged him; and how the object of these demonstrations proved to be Addison, who invited Steele and Esmond to his chambers in the Haymarket, where he read verses of the Campaign to them, and regaled them with pipes and Burgundy. I never walk through Jermyn street, or past the old church, without seeing these three figures, and they are no more like shadows than any in the nineteenth century throng which fills the street.

Willis’s Rooms, formerly Almack’s, are in King street, which is parallel to Jermyn street, and it was in them, that Thackeray gave his lectures.