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diff --git a/.gitattributes b/.gitattributes new file mode 100644 index 0000000..d7b82bc --- /dev/null +++ b/.gitattributes @@ -0,0 +1,4 @@ +*.txt text eol=lf +*.htm text eol=lf +*.html text eol=lf +*.md text eol=lf diff --git a/LICENSE.txt b/LICENSE.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..6312041 --- /dev/null +++ b/LICENSE.txt @@ -0,0 +1,11 @@ +This eBook, including all associated images, markup, improvements, +metadata, and any other content or labor, has been confirmed to be +in the PUBLIC DOMAIN IN THE UNITED STATES. + +Procedures for determining public domain status are described in +the "Copyright How-To" at https://www.gutenberg.org. + +No investigation has been made concerning possible copyrights in +jurisdictions other than the United States. Anyone seeking to utilize +this eBook outside of the United States should confirm copyright +status under the laws that apply to them. diff --git a/README.md b/README.md new file mode 100644 index 0000000..b7d9241 --- /dev/null +++ b/README.md @@ -0,0 +1,2 @@ +Project Gutenberg (https://www.gutenberg.org) public repository for +eBook #62280 (https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/62280) diff --git a/old/62280-0.txt b/old/62280-0.txt deleted file mode 100644 index 885c2cd..0000000 --- a/old/62280-0.txt +++ /dev/null @@ -1,1784 +0,0 @@ -The Project Gutenberg eBook, Thackeray's London, by William H. Rideing - - -This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most -other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions -whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of -the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at -www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you'll have -to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this ebook. - - - - -Title: Thackeray's London - a description of his haunts and the scenes of his novels - - -Author: William H. Rideing - - - -Release Date: May 30, 2020 [eBook #62280] - -Language: English - -Character set encoding: UTF-8 - - -***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THACKERAY'S LONDON*** - - -Transcribed from the 1885 Cupples, Upham and Co. edition by David Price, -email ccx074@pglaf.org - - [Picture: Book cover] - - [Picture: Portrait of Thackeray] - - - - - - THACKERAY’S LONDON. - - - _A DESCRIPTION OF HIS HAUNTS AND_ - _THE SCENES OF HIS NOVELS_. - - BY - WILLIAM H. RIDEING. - - * * * * * - - _LONDON_ - J. W. JARVIS & SON, - 28, KING WILLIAM STREET, STRAND, W.C. - - * * * * * - - BOSTON, U.S. - CUPPLES, UPHAM AND CO. - - 1885. - - _Copyright_, 1885. _Washington_, _D. C._ - - BY WILLIAM HENRY RIDEING. - - * * * * * - - LONDON: - - S. AND J. BRAWN, PRINTERS, 13, GATE STREET, LINCOLN’S INN FIELDS - -The portrait is engraved from the large etching by G. B. SMITH in -“ENGLISH ETCHINGS,” by kind permission of the proprietor. - - * * * * * - -We also have to acknowledge, with thanks, permission from MESSRS. SMITH, -ELDER & CO., to introduce the various excerpts from Thackeray’s Works -found in the following pages. - - _THE PUBLISHERS_. - - - - -I. - - -Thackeray does not give the same opportunities for the identification of -his scenes as Dickens. The elaboration with which the latter localizes -his characters, and the descriptive minutiæ with which he makes their -haunts no less memorable than themselves, are not to be found in the -works of the author of _Vanity Fair_. No faculty was stronger in -Dickens, or of more service to him, than his power of word-painting. He -reproduces the objects by which the persons he describes are surrounded -with a fidelity which would be tedious, if it were not relieved by the -humor which humanizes bricks, and imparts a grotesque sort of sensibility -to articles of furniture; and it is not easy to think of any of his -leading characters without being reminded of the neighborhoods in which -they played their parts. - -Thackeray, on the contrary, is not topographical. The briefest mention -of a street suffices with him, and it is the character, not the locality, -which has permanence in the reader’s mind. Every feature of Becky Sharp -is remembered with a vividness which disassociates her with fiction; but -the situation of the little house in which the unfortunate Rawdon finally -discovers her duplicity, in the famous scene with the Marquis of Steyne, -escapes the memory. When the book is no longer fresh to him, the reader -may recollect that after her marriage she went to live in Mayfair, and -may picture to himself a small, fashionable dwelling in that aristocratic -neighbourhood; but he cannot remember that the author places it in Curzon -street, nor that the Sedleys lived in Russell Square, Philip in Old Parr -street, and Colonel Newcome in Fitzroy Square. - -We have one example in Thackeray of the grotesquely humorous descriptive -power of which Dickens was a master. It hits at the absurd nomenclature -of modern London suburbs, where every box of a house has some -high-sounding name of the sort which ornaments the fiction of the -“Chambermaid’s Companion,” and it describes the neighbourhood into which -the Sedleys moved after their failure—“St. Adelaide Villa, Anna Maria -Road, West, where the houses look like baby houses; where the people -looking out of the first floor windows must infallibly, as you think, sit -with their feet in the parlors below; where the shrubs in the little -gardens in front bloom with a perennial display of little children’s -pinafores, little red socks, caps, etc. (_polyandria polygenia_); whence -you hear the sound of jingling spinets and women singing; and whither, of -an evening, you see city clerks plodding wearily.” - -The fanciful supposition that persons in the upper stories must have -their legs on the lower floor is richly characteristic of the manner in -which Dickens would have indicated the smallness of the houses. It is a -touch of that kind of humour which distinguishes all the work of that -author, and which was one of his most serviceable resources; it gives -facial expression to inanimate objects, and, as we have said, it -individualizes the haunts of his characters no less than the characters -themselves. But it is so rare in Thackeray that the exhibition of it in -this fragment strikes us, as the lurid style of the earlier writings of -Lord Lytton would do if we were to find a passage from them interpolated -among the confiding garrulities of _Vanity Fair_. - -It was not that Thackeray lacked the power of observation in the -direction of externals,—though he certainly did not possess it in the -same degree as Dickens—nor that his characters were airy visions to him, -requiring no other habitation than the chambers of his brain; they were -indeed flesh and blood to him, and Miss Thackeray has told a friend of -the writer’s, {5} how, in her walks with her father, he would point out -the very houses in which they lived. The difference was principally one -of method. Thackeray’s was the classic stage—a dais with a drapery of -green baize, before the time of scenery. Dickens’s was the modern stage, -with lime-lights, trap-doors, and elaborate “sets.” - - - - -II. - - -Though his other scenes are misty, no reader of Thackeray who engages in -a search for the places which he describes is likely, however, to -overlook the Charterhouse, the ancient foundation to which he refers -again and again, dwelling on it with many fond reminiscences. It is the -school in which he himself was educated, and he has associated three -generations of his characters with it. Thomas Newcome received -instruction here, also his son Clive, with Pendennis, Osborne, and Philip -of the second generation, after whom came Rawdon Crawley’s little son and -young George Osborne; and, finally, the dear old Colonel, when broken -down and weary, joined the poor brethren who are pensioners of the -institution, and within its monastic walls cried _Adsum_ as he heard a -voice summoning him to the everlasting peace. Occasionally it is called -Slaughter-house, once or twice “Smiffle” (after the boys’ way of -pronouncing Smithfield, where it is situated); but in Thackeray’s later -works he generally speaks of it as Grayfriars or Whitefriars. - -“It had been,” he says in _Vanity Fair_, “a Cistercian convent in old -days when the Smith field, which is contiguous to it, was a tournament -ground. Obstinate heretics used to be brought thither, convenient for -burning hard by. Henry the Eighth seized upon the monastery and its -possessions, and hanged and tortured some of the monks who would not -accommodate themselves to the pace of his reform. Finally, a great -merchant bought the house and land adjoining, in which, with the help of -other wealthy endowments of land and money, he established a famous -foundation hospital for old men and children. An extra school grew round -the old, almost monastic foundation, which subsists still with its -middle-age costume and usages; and all Christians pray that it may -flourish. - -“Of this famous house some of the greatest noblemen, prelates and -dignitaries in England, are governors; and as the boys are very -comfortably lodged, fed and educated, and subsequently inducted to good -scholarships at the University, and livings in the Church, many little -gentlemen are devoted to the ecclesiastical profession from their -tenderest years, and there is considerable emulation to procure -nominations for the foundation. It was originally intended for the sons -of poor and deserving clerics and laics; but many of the noble governors -of the institution, with an enlarged and rather capricious benevolence, -selected all sorts of objects for their bounty. To get an education for -nothing, and a livelihood and profession assured, was so excellent a -scheme, that some of the richest people did not disdain it; and not only -the great men’s relations, but great men themselves, sent their sons to -profit by the chance. Right reverend prelates sent their own kinsmen as -the sons of their clergy, while on the other hand some great noblemen did -not disdain to patronize the children of their confidential servants, so -that a lad entering this establishment had every variety of youthful -society wherewith to mingle.” - -As a rule, however, the boys, belong to the upper classes, and an -education obtained at Charterhouse is scarcely less of a social -distinction than the much coveted and costly preparation of Eton, Harrow, -or Winchester. The history of the school is full of brilliant names, and -among its scholars have been Joseph Addison, Richard Steele, Isaac -Barrow, General Havelock, Sir William Blackstone, Lord Chief Justice -Ellenborough, Lord Liverpool, John Wesley and George Grote. - -It is possible that one may know London intimately, and yet be ignorant -of the situation of the Charterhouse. Smithfield is out of the way of -the main lines of traffic: it is a squalid neighbourhood, north of -Ludgate Hill, and it retains its ancient characteristics more than almost -all other parts of the great city,—which has been so modernized that -Cheapside looks like a slice of Broadway, and once shabby Fleet Street is -showing all sorts of ornamental fronts. It has in it many solemn brick -houses of a blackish purple, with glowing roofs of red tiles; smaller -buildings of an earlier period, with high peaked gables and overlapping -second stories; sequestred alleys, and courts bearing queer names, and -many curious little shops. - -One of the most direct approaches to it is through the Old Bailey from -Ludgate Hill. On this route we pass the austere granite of Newgate -Prison and also Pye Corner, where as the sign-board of a public house -tells us, the great fire of 1666 ended, after burning from the 2nd to the -10th of September; we also pass Cock Lane, famous for its ghost, and the -quaintest of old London churches, St. Bartholomew the Great, which is -hemmed in and partly extinguished by the surrounding houses, that hide -all but its smoked and patched tower, and a few square feet of grass, -which is justifiably discouraged in its want of sunshine and space; -thence our path is by the extensive buildings of St. Bartholomew’s -Hospital, about which there is a morbid activity in the flow of officials -and visitors, most of the latter being slatternly and anxious-looking -women, with babies and baskets on their arms, and from the Hospital we -cross the street, and so through the new cattle market, which fills the -space once occupied by the pens, and covers the spot whence the souls of -many martyrs have passed in flame from the stake to heaven. - - - - -III. - - -The buildings form an irregular cluster spread over a prodigal area, and -isolated by a wall of brick and stone which many London fogs and long -days of yellow weather have reduced to the dismalest of colors. None of -them are lofty; some of them are of granite, and others of brick, upon -which age has cast a smoky mantle. They are separated by wide courts and -winding passages; and when I was there in the Easter vacation these open -spaces were vacant, and the brisk twittering of the sparrows was the only -sound that came from them. The quiet seemed all the greater, inasmuch as -all around the walls is a busy neighbourhood, full of traffic and voices. -The courts are for the most part paved with small cobblestones, and are -cleanly swept; but some of them are grassy—grassy in the dingy and feeble -way of London vegetation. These buildings look as sad as they are old; -to the juvenile imagination the high walls and the severe architecture -must be sharply distressing, and many a boy has felt his heart sink with -misgiving as, for the first time, he has been driven through the old -gate-way, to be placed as a scholar on Thomas Sutton’s {15} famous -foundation. - -At this old gate-way, one day, I saw a very feeble old gentleman, -strangely dressed in a scarlet waistcoat and bright blue trowsers, a -brass-buttoned coat, and a high silk hat. He was very small and very -weak, moving slowly with the help of a stick, and coughing painfully -behind his pocket handkerchief. To my question as to the admission of -strangers, he said, quaveringly: “If you are a patron, you may see the -buildings, but you had better ask the janitor; there he is. I,” he -added, with some hesitation, “I am one of the poor brethren.” - -The old head bowed down with years and sorrow, the white hair, the -troublesome cough, the courteous amiability of manner, reminded me of -Colonel Newcome—Codd Newcome, as the boys began to call him; and, indeed, -this old gentleman had been a captain in the Queen’s service, as the -janitor afterward told us, though he was not as stately nor as handsome -as the dear old Colonel was. None of the celebrities of Charterhouse -possesses the same vivid interest, the same hold upon our sympathies, the -same command of the affections, as the brave, high-minded, large-hearted -old soldier, who sacrificed all he had in the world to keep his honour -spotless, and to shield others from misery. - -As the janitor took us from hall to hall in the dark, monastic buildings, -Colonel Newcome was constantly before us, and his figure, even more than -that of Thackeray himself, filled our minds, and made us feel kindly to -the old pensioners who were sunning themselves at the doors of their -rooms, or were gathered in a quiet corner of one of the courts, chatting -or reading. - -The pensioners, of whom there are eighty, remain in the old buildings, in -which each of them has a sitting-room and a bed-room, with a servant to -wait upon him. Their table is a common one, in a grand old dining-hall, -and twice a day they don their gowns to go to service in the little -chapel, to thank God for his manifold blessings and mercies. But the -boys have been removed since 1870 to a magnificent new-school at -Godalming, Surrey, thirty-four miles away from London fogs and the crowds -of Smithfield, and they have taken nearly all the relics of Thackeray -with them, including the little bed in which he slept while a scholar. -Their part of the buildings is now occupied by the Merchant Taylors’ -School, which has added a large new schoolroom to the square. The ground -is immensely valuable, and from an economic point of view it seems a -waste to devote it to the obsolete buildings which fill the greater part -of it. Soon, no doubt, another home will be found for the poor brethren, -and when commerce takes possession of Charterhouse Square, one of the -most interesting piles in London town will disappear. {19} - -The cleanliness and orderliness which leave no scrap of waste or wisp of -straw or ridge of dust visible in the approach have also swept up every -part of the interior; and though the smoke and dust have taken a -tenacious hold, the charwoman’s besom and scrubbing-brush have been -vigorously applied. The buildings look quite as old as they are. The -oaken wainscoting is the deepest brown; the balusters and groining are -massive and carved; the tapestries are indistinct and phantasmal, like -faded pictures, and the walls are like those of a fortress. It is easy -in these surroundings to conjure up visions of the middle ages. - -The site of the dormitories of the Charterhouse boys is now occupied by -the new school-room of the Merchant Taylors; but looking upon it is a -dusky cloister, once given to the prayerful meditations of the friars, -which in Thackeray’s time and later was used for games of ball; the gloom -is everywhere. The ghosts of the silent brothers seem fitter tenants -than the boys with shining faces and ringing voices. There are narrow, -suspicious-looking passages, and heavily-barred, irresistible oaken -doors. But these corridors and barriers against the unwelcome lead into -several apartments of truly magnificent size and faded splendour. The -dining-hall of the poor brethren has wainscoting from twelve to twenty -feet high, a massively groined roof, a musicians’ gallery with a carved -balustrade, and a large fire-place framed in ornamental oak, over which -the Sutton arms are emblazoned; while at the end of the room is a -portrait of the founder, dressed in a flowing gown and the suffocatingly -frilled collar of his time. Parallel to this, and accessible by a low -door, is the dining-hall of the gown boys, a long, narrow room, with a -very low ceiling, high wainscoting, a knotty floor, insufficient windows, -and another large fire-place inclosed by an elaborate mantel-piece of -oak. Here almost side by side, these boys with life untried before them -and the old men well-nigh at their journey’s end, ate the bread provided -for them by their common benefactor, and joined voices in thanksgiving; -here still the old pensioners assemble, and in trembling voices murmur -grace over the provision made for them. Upstairs there is a -banqueting-hall, which is not inferior in sombre grandeur to that of the -poor brothers, and was once honoured by the presence of Queen Elizabeth. -It also is wainscoted and groined, and hung with tapestries, out of which -the pictures have nearly vanished. The fire-place is the finest of all, -and above it some hazy paintings are lost in the shadow. - -Thackeray was one of the foundation scholars, and lived in the school, -and wore a gown. He was, from all accounts, an average boy, -undistinguished by industry or precocious ability. He was very much like -many of Dr. Birch’s little friends: a simple honest, and sometimes -mischievous lad. Though he was never elected orator or poet, he wrote -parodies, and was clever with a pencil, which he used with no little -fancy and humour. The margins of books and scraps of paper of all kinds -were covered with sketches, most of them caricatures; and it is said to -have been a familiar thing to see the artist surrounded by an admiring -crowd of his school-fellows, while he developed, with grotesque -extravagance and never-failing effect, the outlines of some juvenile hero -or some notability of history. The head master of the school was severe, -and as Thackeray was very sensitive, it is supposed that his school days -were not of the happiest. But he bore the old foundation no ill-will; -who, indeed, shall ever do it more honor than he has done? - -Only a few weeks before his death, Thackeray was present on Founder’s -Day. He sat in his usual back seat in the old chapel. He went thence to -hear the oration in the governor’s room, and, as he walked up to the -orator with his contribution, was received with hearty applause. At the -banquet afterward, he sat at the side of his old friend and school-mate -John Leech; and Thackeray it was who, on that occasion proposed the toast -of “The Charterhouse.” - -Taking us through the grounds by the way of Wash-house Court, a -quadrangle of very old and smoky buildings, which were attached to the -original monastery, the janitor conducted us into the cool and quiet -cloister which leads into the chapel. Here is the handsome memorial of -the Carthusians slain in the wars, and on the walls is a commemorative -tablet to Thackeray. Next to Thackeray’s is a similar tablet to the -memory of Leech. - -The little chapel is much as it was in their time and long before. The -founders’ tomb, with its grotesque carvings, monsters, heraldries, still -darkles and shines with the most wonderful shadows and lights, as -Thackeray described it. There, in marble effigy, lies Fundator Noster in -his ruff and gown, awaiting the great examination day. Just in front of -this elaborate monument, Thackeray himself used to sit when a boy. The -children are present no more; but yonder, twice a day, sit the pensioners -of the hospital, listening to the prayers and the psalms,—four-score of -the old reverend black gowns. The custom of the school was that, on the -twelfth of December, the head gown boy should recite a Latin oration; -and, though the scholars are removed to Godalming, the ceremony is -perpetuated. Many old Carthusians attend this oration; after which they -go to chapel and hear a sermon, which is followed by a dinner, at which -old condisciples meet, old toasts are given, and speeches are made. The -reader has surely not forgotten how Pendennis, himself a Grayfriars boy, -came to the festival one day quite unaware of his friend’s presence. - -“The pensioners were in their benches, the boys in their places, with -young fresh faces and shining white collars. We oldsters, be we ever so -old,” Pendennis has written, “become boys again as we look at that old -familiar tomb, and think how the seats are altered since we were here, -and how our doctor—not the present doctor, the doctor of _our_ time—used -to sit yonder, and his awful eye used to frighten us shuddering boys on -whom it lighted; and how the boy next us _would_ kick our shins during -service time, and how the monitor would cane us afterwards, because our -shins were kicked. Yonder sit forty cherry-cheeked boys, thinking about -home and holidays to-morrow. Yonder sit the pensioners coughing feebly -in the twilight. Is Codd Ajax alive you wonder?—the Cistercian lads -called these old gentlemen Codds, I know not wherefore—but is old Codd -Ajax alive I wonder? or Codd soldier? or kind old Codd gentleman? or has -the grave closed over them? - -“A plenty of candles light up this chapel, and this scene of age and -youth, and early memories, and pompous death. How solemn the -well-remembered prayers are, here uttered again in the place where in -childhood we used to listen to them. How beautiful and decorous the -rite, how noble the ancient words of the supplications which the priest -utters, and to which generations of fresh children, and troops of by-gone -seniors have cried Amen! under those arches! The service for Founder’s -Day is a special one; one of the Psalms selected being the -thirty-seventh, and we hear:—23. ‘The steps of a good man are ordered by -the LORD; and He delighteth in His way. 24. Though he fall, he shall not -be utterly cast down: for the LORD upholdeth him with his hand. 25. I -have been young, and now am old; yet have I not seen the righteous -forsaken, nor his seed begging bread.’ As we came to this verse, I -chanced to look up from my book toward the swarm of black-coated -pensioners, and amongst them—amongst them—sat Thomas Newcome.” The noble -old man had come to end his days here, and we know of no chapter in -English literature more affecting than that in which his light is put -out, and he softly murmurs _Adsum_. - -Tears often refuse to flow when manhood has blunted the sympathies, and -we are unmoved when we read again the books which summoned copious floods -in youth, but the pathos of Colonel Newcome’s death, never loses its -effect; it is so deep and genuine, that the description starts our grief -anew whenever we read it, and it leaves us with an acute sense of -profound bereavement. We feel a tender interest in the poor brothers, -and a high respect for them, because the Colonel was one of them, and -because Thackeray, in his imperishable prose, has made them -representative of honorable but unfortunate old age. {29} - -Charterhouse is the centre of a neighbourhood which Dickens chose for -many of his scenes, as the reader of this knows. “Only a wall,” says -Thackeray, in _Mr. and Mrs. Frank Berry_, “separates the playground, or -‘green,’ as it was called in his time, from Wilderness Row and Goswell -street. Many a time have I seen Mr. Pickwick look out of his window in -that street, though we did not know him then.” Not only of Mr. Pickwick, -but of many other characters, do we find reminiscences in Smithfield. -The Sarah Son’s Head, as John Browdy called it, Snow Hill, Saffron Hill, -Fleet Lane, and Kingsgate street are not far away. The buildings with -the ancient fronts, the idlers at the corners, and the confusing little -alleys, which lead where no one would expect them to lead, all belong to -Dickens’s London. The miserable associations of his early life, his -interest in the poor, and his relish for the grotesque, drew him into the -shady and disreputable quarters of the city; and the student of his works -can track him with greater ease and ampler results in neighbourhoods like -Smithfield than in the West End. With Thackeray, the reverse is the -case; and, excepting Charter-house, the reader who desires to identify -his localities finds little to reward him in a search east of Pall Mall, -or south of Oxford street. - - - - -IV. - - -On the site of the Imperial Club in Cursitor street, Chancery Lane, stood -a notorious “sponging house,” to which Rawdon Crawley was taken when -arrested for debt, immediately after leaving the brilliant entertainment -given by the Marquis of Steyne, and from which he wrote an ill-spelled -letter to his wife (who had appeared triumphantly in some charades at -that entertainment), begging her to send some money for his release. The -reader remembers how the faithless little woman answered,—assuring him of -her grief and anxiety, and telling him that she had not the money, but -would get it; though, as poor, blundering, soft-hearted Rawdon discovered -afterward, she had a very large sum at the moment she wrote to him, and -did not send him any of it because she wished to keep him in jail that -she might intrigue with the licentious old marquis; and the reader will -remember that Rawdon was released at the instance of his cousin’s wife, -and went to the little house in Curzon street, where he surprised his -deceitful spouse, and nearly murdered her companion, the same old Marquis -of Steyne, knight of the garter, lord of the powder-box, trustee of the -British Museum, etc. - -When we come to the end of that passage, we put the book on our lap and -lean back in the chair, and, while we are still glowing with the -excitement of the scene, we are filled with admiration of the genius -which produced it. How did Thackeray achieve his effects? Becky Sharp -is a unique and permanent figure in literature, a subtle embodiment of -duplicity, ambition, and selfishness. She is avaricious, hypocritical, -specious, and crafty. Though not malignant nor to a certainty criminal, -she is a conscienceless little malefactor, whose ill deeds are only -limited by the ignoble dimensions of her passions. She lies with amazing -glibness, is utterly faithless to her hulking husband, and utterly -indifferent to her child. Her mendacity is superlative, and -double-dealing enters into all her transactions. But she is so shrewd, -so vivacious, so artful, so immensely clever and good-humoured, she has -so much prettiness of manner and person, that, while we despise her, and -have not the least pity for her when retribution falls heavily upon her, -our indignation against her is not so great as we feel that it ought to -be, principally because her sins have a certain feminine archness and -irresponsibility in them, which keeps them well down to the level of -comedy. When we close the book we know her through and through, and -thoroughly understand all the complex workings of her strategic mind. -How do we know her so well? Thackeray is not exegetical, and does not -depend on elaborate analysis for his effects. The actions of the -characters are themselves fully expository, and do not call for any -outside comments or enlargement on the part of the author. This is the -case to such an extent that, when we examine the completeness with which -the characters are revealed to us, we are inclined to believe that -Thackeray’s art is of the very highest kind, and that, though in form it -is undramatic, intrinsically it is powerfully dramatic. - -But we are straying from our purpose, which is simply to look for -ourselves at the places which he has described. Across the way from the -bottom of Chancery Lane is the Temple, to the interest of which he has -added many associations. He was fond of its dark alleys, archways, -courts, and back stairs. - -In 1834 he was called to the bar, and for some time he occupied chambers -in the venerable buildings with the late Tom Taylor. His rooms, which -were at number 10 Crown Office Row, have disappeared before -“improvements” that present a modern front to the gardens and the river. -Philip had chambers in the Temple, and there, also, in classic Lamb’s -Court, Pendennis and Warrington were located. - -Warrington smoking his cutty pipe, and writing his articles—the -fine-hearted fellow, the unfortunate gentleman, the unpedantic scholar, -who took Pendennis by the hand and introduced him to Grub street when -that young unfortunate came to the end of his means. George Warrington -teaches us a new lesson in manhood, in patience, in self-abnegation. His -lot is full of sorrow, his cherished ambitions are impossible, through no -fault of his own, but it is not in him to surrender to “the dull gray -life and apathetic end,”—his contentment is the repose of a generous -nature, his cheeriness with his pipe and his work springs out of a calmly -philosophic mind, a satisfied conscience, a profound faith, and when we -pass through Lamb’s court, not least in our affections is the shadow of -him. - -“The man of letters cannot but love the place which has been inhabited by -so many of his brethren, and peopled by their creations as real to us at -this day, as the authors whose children they were,” and says Thackeray. -“Sir Roger de Coverley walking in the Temple garden, and discoursing with -Mr. Spectator about the beauties in hoops and patches who are sauntering -over the grass, is just as lively a figure to me, as old Samuel Johnson -rolling through the fog with the Scotch gentleman at his heels, on their -way to Mr. Goldsmith’s chambers in Brick court, or Harry Fielding, with -inked ruffles and a wet towel round his head, dashing off articles at -midnight for the _Covent Garden Journal_, while the printer’s boy is -asleep in the passage.” - -Leaving the Temple, we once more enter Smithfield, to look for the site -of the old Fleet prison, the scene of many episodes in the stories of -Dickens. It was in this strange place, that the brilliant, but -thriftless Captain Shandon lived, “one of the wisest, wittiest, and most -incorrigible of Irishmen;” here Pendennis found him sitting on a bed, in -a torn dressing gown, with a desk on his knees: here a prisoner for debt, -he indited the prospectus of the _Pall Mall Gazette_, which was so -called, he said, because its editor was born in Dublin, and the -sub-editor (excellent Jack Finucane) at Cork; because the proprietor -lived in Paternoster Row, and the paper was published in Catherine -Street, Strand. This imaginary title of Thackeray’s was not the only one -afterwards adopted by a real newspaper. He writes of the _Whitehall -Review_ as an opposing print, and that is now the name of a successful -London journal. - -The Fleet is a thing of the past, and the attributes of Captain Shandon -have no inheritors in the press of to-day. A knight armed cap-à-pie in -Cheapside, would not be a more antiquated figure, than the boozy scholar -editing a reputable journal in the cell of a prison. Journalism has -taken off its soft hat and shabby clothes; it has mended its erring and -improvident ways, and put on the manners of polite society. Not in a -tap-room, with jorums of hot whiskey, Welsh rabbits, and devilled chops -does the modern scribe regale himself. He has a club somewhere in -Adelphi, or St. James’, where he presents himself in sedate evening -dress, he turns pale at the very mention of supper, and, instead of -singing old English songs, sadly compares notes with his -fellow-dyspeptics. A vulgar public-house, or low music hall stands on -the site of the Haunt and the Back Kitchen. When Warrington, Pendennis, -Tom Sarjeant, Clive Newcome, and Fred. Bayham frequented the Haunt, and -joined in the diversions of the literary democracy, there was a -superstition among them, that the place vanished at the approach of -daybreak, that when Betsy turned the gas off at the door lamp, as the -company went away, the whole thing faded into mist—the door, the house, -the bar, Betsy, the beer-boy, Mrs. Nokes, and all. Whether this was so -or not, it has now vanished, not for a day, but for ever, like Captain -Shandon, and the wild Bohemianism of his time. {42} - - - - -V. - - -It is only a minutes’ walk from the corner of Fleet Lane, to the street -of booksellers, Paternoster Row, in which the rival publishers, Bungay -and Bacon lived—Bacon in an ancient low-browed building, with a few of -his books displayed in the windows under a bust of my Lord Verulam; and -Bungay in the house opposite, which was newly painted, and elaborately -decorated in the style of the seventeenth century, “so that you might -have fancied stately Mr. Evelyn passing over the threshold, or curious -Mr. Pepys examining the books in the windows.” _The_ Row, so called—as -financiers arrogantly call Wall Street, _the_ Street—is not wider than an -alley way, and in this respect it is exactly as it was when Warrington -introduced Pendennis to the editor of the _Parlor Table Annual_, wherein -his verses were published. But though its breadth has not been -increased, the old buildings on both sides of it have given place in many -instances to towering new ones, five and six stories high, which shut out -the light, and keep the editors, compilers, printers, engravers, and -book-binders, who are the principal laborers of the Row, in an all-day -gloom. Both Bungay and Bacon had their domestic establishments over -their shops, and their wives, who were sisters, thus had an opportunity -to insult one another by looks and mute signs from their opposite -windows. Bungay and Bacon, and their belligerent spouses are now out of -the trade, and the annual _Souvenirs_ and _Keepsakes_ which made a part -of their business, belong to an extinct form of literature. The Row is -full of Grub Street curiosities; but Lady Fanny Fantail, Miss Bunion, and -the Honorable Percy Popinjay are seen within its precincts no more, and -if they still exist, they probably find a new field for their -distinguished services in the society papers. - -Let anyone strike out which way he will from Fleet Street, he is sure to -find himself in the presence of something which reminds him of Dickens, -near some object which his humor has made famous, or which answers to one -of his luminous descriptions. - -The slums between the Strand and Soho, and between Smithfield and -Clerkenwell, were fertile to him, and not a _gamin_ there knew the -winding alleys, and crisscross streets better than the gentleman with the -high complexion, the sparkling eye, the iron-gray beard, the well-cut -dress, and the brisk step, who might have been seen speeding through them -at all sorts of unusual hours. One day, he was heard of in Ratcliff -Highway, or among the riverside shanties of Poplar, and the next, among -the bird shops of Seven Dials, or in the courts of Lambeth. When we -contrast the little we have found of Thackeray in the neighbourhood -through which we have just been, with the variety and suggestiveness of -the reminiscences of Dickens in the same region, our search seems -disappointing. - -As we have said Thackeray was not a novelist of low life. “Perhaps,” he -says in the preface to _Pendennis_: “the lovers of excitement may care to -know that this book began with a very precise plan, which was entirely -put aside. Ladies and Gentlemen, you were to have been treated, and the -writer’s and publisher’s pocket benefited by the recital of the most -active horrors. What more exciting than a ruffian (with many admirable -virtues) in St. Giles, visited constantly by a young lady from Belgravia? -What more stirring than the contrasts of society? The mixture of slang -and fashionable language? The escapes, the battles, the murders? . . . . -The exciting plan was laid aside (with a very honorable forbearance on -part of the publishers) because on attempting it, I found that I failed -from want of experience of my subject; and never having been intimate -with any convict in my life, and the manners of ruffians and gaol-birds -being quite unfamiliar to me, the idea of entering into competition with -M. Eugene Sue was abandoned.” - - - - -VI. - - -Though in the east end of the town and in the south, Thackeray has left -few footsteps, for us to follow, in ancient and comfortable Bloomsbury, -and the region to the west of it and north of Oxford street (called De -Quincey’s step-mother), we find much to remind us of him. It was in -Russell Square that the Sedleys lived in the time of their prosperity, -and thence, on the evening after the arrival of gentle Amelia from the -boarding school at Chiswick, a messenger was sent for George Osborne, -whose house was No. 96. Russell Square is the largest and handsomest of -the chain of squares which extend, almost without a break, from Oxford -street to the New Road—Bloomsbury Square, Woburn Square, Gordon Square, -Tavistock Square, and Euston Square. The neighbourhood has seen many -strange shifts of fortune, and some of the finest of its mansions are -debased to the uses of common boarding-houses and private hotels. There -are streets and streets of houses with white cards in the windows -announcing “Lodgings to let.” Sombre old houses they are, built of -brick, with flat, uninteresting fronts, the sooty darkness of which is -sometimes relieved by a yellowish portico, freshly painted, or a plaster -shell of a drab colour reaching from the basement to the second story. -The cheeriness of the spreading trees in the little parks, the flowering -shrubs, the shining fountains, and the grass, are only a partial -alleviation. Russell Square has deteriorated less than some of the other -places in the neighbourhood, however, and the houses around it would not -be beneath the inclinations of a prosperous merchant such as old Sedley -was. We look in vain for 96; the numbers do not go as high as that; but -we have no difficulty in singling out the respectable dwelling on the -western side in which poor Amelia sighed for her selfish lover, and Becky -Sharp set her cap at the corpulent Mr. Jos. - -How sad the story of the Sedleys is!—the unrequited love of Amelia—the -untimely death of George at Waterloo—the failure of old Sedley, and the -cold-heartedness of the elder Osborne! The decayed merchant musing over -all sorts of fatuous schemes by which he hopes to recover his position, -and sitting in the dark corner of a coffee-house with his letters spread -out before him—letters relating to a make-believe and visionary -business—which he is anxious to read to every friend, is the most -touching picture, after the death of Colonel Newcome, which Thackeray has -drawn. - -“What guest at Dives’s table can pass the familiar house without a -sigh?—the house of which the lights used to shine so cheerfully at seven -o’clock—of which the hall doors opened so readily—of which the obsequious -servants, as you passed up the comfortable stairs, sounded your name from -landing to landing, until it reached the apartment where jolly old Dives -welcomed his friends! What a number of them he had! What a noble way of -entertaining them! . . . How changed is the house, though! The front is -patched over with bills, setting forth the particulars of the furniture -in staring capitals. They have hung a shred of carpet out of the -upstairs window—a half dozen of porters are lounging on the dirty -steps—the hall swarms with dingy guests of oriental countenance, who -thrust printed cards into your hands, and offer to bid. Old women and -amateurs have invaded the upper apartments, pinching the bed curtains, -poking the feathers, shampooing the mattresses, and clapping the wardrobe -drawers to and fro. . . . O Dives, who would have thought, as we sat -round the broad table sparkling with plate and spotless linen, to have -such a dish at the head of it as that roaring auctioneer?” - -Among the bidders was a six-foot, shy-looking military gentleman, who -bought a piano, and sent it without any message to the little house—St. -Adelaide Villa, Anna Maria Road, West—to which the Sedleys had retired -after their downfall, and there, as the reader no doubt remembers, Amelia -received it with great gladness, believing that it came from her -well-beloved George. - -It was years before she discovered that it was not her faithless lover, -but simple, brave, tender-hearted Captain Dobbin, to whom she should have -been grateful. It was in Hart street, two blocks nearer Oxford street -than Russell Square, that little George Osborne went to school at the -house of the Rev. Laurence Veal, domestic chaplain to the Earl of -Bareacres, who prepared young noblemen and gentlemen for the -universities, the senate, and the learned professions, whose system did -not embrace the degrading corporal severities still practiced at the -ancient places of education, and in whose family the pupils found the -elegancies of refined society, and the confidence and affection of a -home. Thither came poor Amelia, walking all the way from Brompton to -catch a glimpse of her darling boy, who had been taken away from her by -his obdurate grandfather. - -Great Russell street is next to Hart street, and on it fronts the classic -portico of the British Museum, in the splendid reading-room of which -Thackeray was often seen. It was in Great Coram street, adjoining the -celebrated foundling hospital, that he lived, when, one evening, he -called on a young man who had chambers in Furnival’s Inn, and offered to -illustrate the works which were beginning to make “Boz” famous; and we -can see him coming back to his lodgings in low spirits over the rejection -of his proposal, for at that time Thackeray was poor, and neither -literature nor art, which he loved the better, would support him. - -About half a mile farther north, across Tottenham Court Road, is Fitzroy -Square; and when we look for 120, we find that 40 is the highest number -which the Square includes. Though the little circular garden which it -incloses is prettily laid out, and is one of the leafiest of the oases -between Euston and Bloomsbury, Fitzroy has degenerated more than some of -the other squares in the neighborhood. It was not very fashionable when -Colonel Newcome took No. 120 with James Binnie, and it is not fashionable -at all now. One side is badly out of repair. There are two or three -doctors’ houses in it, several houses with announcements of apartments to -let, and a private hotel. The particular house occupied by the Colonel -and his old Indian friend cannot be easily identified by Thackeray’s -description. “The house is vast, but, it must be owned, melancholy. Not -long since, it was a ladies’ school in an unprosperous condition. The -scar left by Madame Latour’s brass plate may still be seen on the tall -black door, cheerfully ornamented in the style of the end of the last -century, with a funereal urn in the centre of the entry and garlands, and -the skulls of rams at each corner.” We fancy that it was on the south -side of the square, near the middle of a row of heavy sepulchral houses -built of stone, which, first blackened by the London smoke, have since -been unevenly calcined by the atmosphere, so that, as in many other -buildings, they look as if a quantity of dirty whitewash had been allowed -to trickle down them. Some of the ornaments have been removed, but the -urn is still over the door. - -The days spent here were the happiest in the lives of the good old -Colonel and his son. The Colonel had just returned from India full of -honors and riches, and with his old chum, James Binnie, he kept house -with lavish hospitality, and much originality. “The Colonel was great at -making hot-pot, curry, and pillau,” Pendennis tells us. “What cozy pipes -did we not smoke in the dining-room, in the drawing-room, or where we -would! What pleasant evenings did we not have with Mr. Binnie’s books -and Schiedam! Then there were solemn state dinners, at most of which the -writer of this biography had a corner.” The guests at these -entertainments were not selected for their social position or their -worldly prosperity, and it mattered not whether they were rich or poor, -well dressed or shabby, if they were friends. Old Indian Officers were -among them, and young artists with unkempt ways from Newman street and -Berners street; the genial F. B. waltzed with elderly houris and paid -them compliments; Professor Gandish talked about art with many misplaced -h’s, and the Rev. Charles Honeyman sighed and posed and meekly received -the adulation of the women. - -Despite the failure of the Bundlecomb Bank, the later part of the history -of the Newcomes would have been less sad but for that accident to Mr. -Binnie, in which he fell from his horse and was so much injured that Mrs. -Mackenzie—the “awful” campaigner—was called in to nurse him with the aid -of poor little Rosey. Fitzroy Square is so old that its gloomy houses -must have known much sorrow; but we doubt if any of them has seen -anything more pitiable than the humiliation of Colonel Newcome, or -anything crueller than the remorseless tyranny of the “campaigner” and -her fierce temper—the “campaigner,” who was all smiles, coquetry, and -amiability, until prosperity fled from those who had been her -benefactors, when she suddenly revealed all the pettiness and harshness -of her termagant soul. - -Three streets away from the Square is Howland street, to which Clive -removed with his weak little wife and his spiteful mother-in-law when -disaster fell upon him; and every reader of Thackeray will remember how -Pendennis, Clive, and Boy went out to meet the broken-hearted old man as -he came along Guilford street and Russell Square, from the Charterhouse -to eat his last Christmas dinner. - -When we close the history of Colonel Newcome we ask ourselves if any man -who moves our hearts as Thackeray does, could be a cynic? Cynicism is a -withering of the heart, the exhaustion of a shallow moral nature, the -self-consciousness of an ignoble mind. But what pathos is so -spontaneous, so genuine, so lasting as Thackeray’s—so free from the -literary trickery which may produce tears in youth, but only provokes a -smile when age has dulled the feelings and opened the eyes to artifice. -Among all English authors the writer of this little book, at least, does -not recognize one who is more unaffectedly tender than this great Social -preacher, who speaks with unflinching candour of evil, but glorifies all -good, and reads with unfeigned pity the lessons of life. - - - - -VII. - - -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. - - - - -VIII. - - -Thackeray constantly mixes up real with fictitious names in his -descriptions. Some disguise was often necessary, and sometimes even -compulsory. He could not be as explicit or as literal as Dickens, -because most of his characters represented a very different class. The -latter could draw in detail the house he selected as most appropriate for -the occupation of Sairey Gamp, because the actual tenants were not likely -to find him out, or, if they ever read his description, to quarrel with -it. But many of the clients whom Thackeray had to provide with dwellings -were great people, and could only be placed in great neighbourhoods, -where the houses are large, conspicuous, and easily distinguished. He -either had to omit any descriptive detail, or to mask the actual place he -had in mind by locating it in some street or square with a fanciful name. -Any student of his works will have no difficulty, however, in finding -Gaunt House, Gaunt Square, and Great Gaunt street, if he makes a personal -search for them in Mayfair, though they are not indicated in any map or -directory. - -Mayfair (let me say for the benefit of my readers who are so unfortunate -as not to knew London) is one of the three most fashionable -neighbourhoods of the great metropolis, and of the three it is the most -aristocratic and most ancient. It is, as nearly as possible, a square, -about half a mile wide and three-quarters of a mile long, bounded at one -end by Oxford street, with its shops and plebeian traffic, at the other -end by the most delightful of London streets, Piccadilly; at one side by -Bond street, and at the other by Park Lane, the houses in which overlook -the beautiful expanse of Hyde Park. The names of some of its streets -have become synonymous with patrician pomp and the affluence of -inheritance. It is the highest heaven of social aspiration, the most -exalted object of worldly veneration. This is the house of the Duke of -Hawksbury; this of the Earl of Tue-brook; that of Viscount Wallasey, and -that of Lord Arthur Bebbington. It is preëminently the region of the -“quality.” But let not the reader suppose that it is a region of -exterior splendor, of spacious architecture, of brilliant appearance. - -Belgravia is far grander to look at, and seems to possess greater riches, -and to use them more lavishly. Even Tyburnia, the neighborhood to the -north of Hyde Park, is more suggestive of social eminence. Mayfair -displays none of the signs of the rude enjoyment and proud assertiveness -which spring from recent prosperity. It is old-fashioned, un-changing, -and dull. It is little different from what it was at the beginning of -the century, except that it is nearer decay, and that febrile irruptions -of modern Queen Anne architecture occasionally vary the sombreness of its -original style. The physiognomy of its houses expresses a sort of -torpor, as if familiarity with honours were as wearisome as continuous -association with misfortune. They have an air of funereal resignation. -Many of the streets are short and narrow: many of the houses are dingy. -The ornaments are of a sepulchral kind, such as urns over the door-ways, -and funeral wreaths about the porticoes. The blazoned heraldry of the -hatchments has been nearly extinguished by the smoke. At some doors -there are two incongruous obelisks, joined to the iron railing which -screens the basement, and the portico is extended to the curb. But -ornaments even as unsatisfactory as these are not common, and most of the -houses, with high fronts of blackened brick and oblong windows, are -unadorned, except by a few boxes of flowers on the sills. The lackeys, -with crimson knee-breeches, white stockings, laced coats, buckled shoes, -and powdered hair, blaze in this gloom with a pyrotechnic splendour. -Occasionally, the uniform rows of smoky brick and pointed stucco houses -are overshadowed by a larger mansion, shut within its own walls, and some -of the streets enter spacious squares, where there are sooty trees and -grass and chirping sparrows. - -It is possible that Thackeray had no exact place in mind when he wrote of -Gaunt House and Gaunt Square, but it is not likely. The creatures of his -imagination were flesh and blood to him, too vital to be left without -habitations. “All the world knows,” he says in _Vanity Fair_, “that -Gaunt House stands in Gaunt Square, out of which Great Gaunt street leads -. . . Gaunt House occupies nearly a side of the square. The remaining -three sides consist of mansions which have passed away into dowagerism. -. . . It has a dreary look, nor is Lord Steyne’s palace less dreary. All -to be seen of it is a vast wall in front, with rustic columns at the -great gate.” Berkeley Square almost exactly corresponds with this -description. Here are the gloomy mansions, looking out on grass and -trees which seem to belong to a cemetery, and here, immediately -recognizable, is the palace, filling nearly a side of the square, and -shut within high walls to hide what they inclose from the prying eyes of -the passers, though the upper stories can be seen from the opposite side -of the way. Here is the very gate, with heavy knockers, though the -rustic columns of Thackeray’s text have been replaced by new ones of a -different shape. We do not find in the middle of the square the statue -of Lord Gaunt, “in a three-tailed wig, and otherwise habited like a Roman -emperor,” but we can identify almost every other detail of the picture. -Now, as this palace has long been occupied by a noble family, it would -not be just for us to mention the name of the house, lest some undeserved -reproach should thereby fall on the tenants; for, while Thackeray -described the locality with such faithful elaboration it is not to be -inferred that he drew the character of Lord Steyne from an actual person -living in the neighbourhood; nothing indeed, could be less probable. - -He also speaks of the square as Shiverley Square, and briefly mentions it -in describing Becky’s drive to the house of Sir Pitt Crawley: “Having -passed through Shiverley Square into Great Gaunt street, the carriage at -length stopped at a tall, gloomy house, between two other tall, gloomy -houses, each with a hatchment over the middle drawing-room window, as is -the custom in Great Gaunt street, in which gloomy locality death seems to -reign perpetual.” - -Great Gaunt street is undoubtedly Hill street, which he mentions -specifically in another place as the home of Lady Gaunt’s mother. -Sometimes it was necessary for him to invent a name, and when he did so -he was peculiarly apt. Gaunt Square seems a more fitting and descriptive -name than Berkeley Square, but he frequently varied the real with the -fictitious name with playful caprice. - -It was in another of these queer old streets in Mayfair that that wicked -old fairy godmother, the Countess of Kew, lived, and there (in Queen -street) Ethel Newcome visited her, and was instructed in the rigourous -social code which unites fortune with fortune, or fortune with rank, and -which is by no means limited to Mayfair or Belgravia, but finds -expositors and adherents under the bluer skies of America. Ethel herself -lived with her mother in Park Lane, the western boundary of Mayfair, and -assuredly the most attractive part of the region. Park Lane has all of -Hyde Park before its windows,—all the variegated and plentifully stocked -flower-beds of the Ring Road, the wide sweep of grassy playground, and -the knots of patriarchal trees which give the Park one of its greatest -charms. Unlike most of the region behind it is cheerful; or, if not -exactly cheerful, it has not the mopish signs of withdrawal from all -natural human interests which are seen in many of the houses in Gaunt -Square and the tributary streets. Some of the houses are small, with -oriel windows, and little balconies filled with flower-pots; some of them -are palatial in size and decoration; but all of them are fashionable, and -elderly bachelors are known to give incredibly large prices for the -smallest possible quarters under the roof of the meanest of them. The -exteriors are not of the sooty brick which characterizes Hill street, but -of plaster, which is annually repainted in drab or cream colour at the -beginning of each season. What with the flowers of the Park and the -gardens which lie before some of the houses, Park Lane seems a fitting -abode for those who are fortunate both in birth and in wealth; it is as -patrician as any other part of Mayfair, and it relieves itself of the -gloom which seems to be considered an inevitable accessory of -respectability elsewhere. - -In one of these houses—which one it is not easy to say, as Thackeray has -given us no clue—Lady Ann Newcome lived, and at it Mrs. Hobson Newcome -looked from afar with an envy which betrayed itself in her constant -reiterations of her contentment with her own circumstances. Mrs. Hobson -lived in Bryanston Square, a dingily verdant quadrangle north of Oxford -street, near which Clive had a studio; and J. J. Ridley, Fred Bayham, -Miss Cann, and the Rev. Charles Honeyman, lodged together in Walpole -street, Mayfair. The Rev. Charles Honeyman’s chapel was close by, and -before the story of _Vanity Fair_ reached its end there was a charitable -lady in the congregation who wrote hymns and called herself Lady Crawley, -and from whom William Dobbin and Amelia Sedley, now united, shrunk as -they passed her at the fancy fair, recognizing in that altered person the -dreadful Becky. - -In the eyes of the lover of Thackeray, no character of history or fiction -has lent more interest to Mayfair than Becky, to which neighbourhood she -came with her husband some two or three years after their return from -Paris, establishing herself in “a very small, comfortable house in Curzon -street,” and demonstrating to the world the useful and interesting art of -living on nothing a year. There is more than one small house in Curzon -street, but among them all Becky’s is unmistakable. It is on the south -side of the street, near the western end, and only a few doors farther -east than the house in which Lord Beaconsfield died. It is four stories -and a half high, and is built of blackish brick like its neighbours, with -painted sills and portico. Its extreme narrowness, compared with its -height, especially distinguishes it: the front door, with drab pilasters -and a moulded architrave, is just half its width, and only leaves room -for one parlour window on the first floor. One can see over the railings -into the basement and through the kitchen windows. Phantoms appear to us -in all the windows—the ghost of Becky herself, dressed in a pink dress, -her shapely arms and shoulders wrapped in gauze; her ringlets hanging -about her neck; her feet peeping out of the crisp folds of silk—“the -prettiest little feet in the prettiest little sandals in the finest silk -stockings in the world.” It was in this cozy little domicile that the -arch little hypocrite entertained Lord Steyne, whose house in Gaunt -Square is only a few hundred yards distant, and Rawdon fleeced young -Southdown at cards. No one can help smiling at the remembrances that -come upon him in looking at those basement windows. No one who has read -_Vanity Fair_ is likely to forget the picture of the sensual marquis -gazing into the kitchen and seeing no one there just before he knocks at -the door, where he is met by Becky, who is as fresh as a rose from her -dressing-table, and who excuses her pretended dishabille by saying that -she has just come out of the kitchen, where she has been making pie, to -which palpable lie the marquis gives an audacious affirmation by adding -that he saw her there as he came in! - -This little house was chosen for that scene in which Thackeray’s genius -rises to its highest point of dramatic intensity; and so many literary -pilgrims come to peep at it that the tenants must be annoyed, though the -policeman on the beat has become so accustomed to them that he no longer -eyes them cornerwise or suspects them of burglarious intentions. - - - - -IX. - - -The places with which Thackeray was personally associated are more -interesting, perhaps, than the scenes of his novels. In 1834, he lived -in Albion street, near Hyde Park Gardens, and it was there that he, a -young man of twenty-three, began to contribute to _Fraser’s Magazine_. -In 1837, then newly married, he lived in Great Coram street, close by the -Foundling Hospital. As I have stated, he had chambers at No. 10, Crown -Office Row, in the Temple, and at No. 88, St. James’s street, both of -which buildings are now demolished. When he had become a successful -author, he lived in Brompton and Kensington, and at the latter place, to -which he was greatly attached, he died. He was at No. 36, Onslow Square, -Brompton, when he unsuccessfully offered himself as member of Parliament -for Oxford, and two years later, when he began to discover the thorns in -the editorial cushion of the _Cornhill Magazine_. Mr. James Hodder, his -private secretary, has given us an interesting glimpse of him as he was -while in Onslow Square:— - - “Duty called me to his bed-chamber every morning, and as a general - rule I found him up and ready to begin work, though he was sometimes - in doubt and difficulty as to whether he should commence sitting, or - standing, or walking, or lying down. Often he would light a cigar, - and, after pacing the room for a few minutes, would put the unsmoked - remnant on the mantel-piece and resume his work with increased - cheerfulness, as if he gathered fresh inspiration from the gentle - odours of the sublime tobacco.” - -Little wonder that he liked Kensington. It is the pleasantest of the -many pleasant London suburbs. Though it is not four miles from Charing -Cross, to which it is knitted by continuous streets and houses, it is -like a thriving country town, old-fashioned, but prosperous, with shops -as brilliant and as well stocked as those of Regent street, and with many -evidences of antiquity, but none of decay. There are lofty new buildings -and old ones, behind the modernized fronts of which you can see leaded -dormer windows, angular chimney-pots, and bowed-down roofs of red tiles. -There are many weather-worn but splendid mansions shut within their own -high walls, and some in less sequestered gardens. The place is famous -for its fine old trees and open spaces of verdure. Holland House is -here, and the palace in which Queen Victoria was born, with the beautiful -and deeply wooded gardens adjoining Hyde Park. The inhabitants of the -old suburb have had many illustrious persons among them; and Thackeray is -one of those best and most affectionately remembered. - -His tall, commanding figure was often seen in the old High street, moving -along erect, with a firm, stately tread, though his dress was somewhat -careless and loose-fitting; his large, candid face was serious and almost -severe as he walked on engaged in meditation, but, being awakened from -his reverie by the voice of a friend, a glad smile quickly overspread it -and illuminated it. He had many friends among his neighbors, and often -sat down to dinner with them. He attended regularly the nine o’clock -services in the old parish church on Sunday mornings. - -From 1847 to 1853, Thackeray lived in the bay-windowed house known as the -“Cottage,” at No. 13 (now No. 16) Young street, and in it _Vanity Fair_, -_Esmond_, and _Pendennis_ were written. There are few houses in the -great city which possess a more brilliant record than this. Most of his -work was done in a second-story room, overlooking an open space of -gardens and orchards; and the gentleman who at present occupies the house -has placed an entablature under the window commemorating the genius that -has consecrated it. Between the dates, 1847 and 1853, the initials W. M. -T. are grouped in a monogram in the centre of the entablature, and in the -border the names of _Vanity Fair_, _Esmond_, and _Pendennis_, are -inscribed. Just across the street Miss Thackeray (Mrs. Ritchie) now -lives, in full view of her old home, and in her charming novel _Old -__Kensington_, she affectionately calls Young street “dear old street!” -There is no doubt that the happiest years of Thackeray’s life were spent -in the old, bow-windowed cottage. {99} - -I have talked with many persons who knew him intimately, and under -various circumstances. All speak of him in one way,—of his gentleness, -his kindliness, his sincerity, and his generosity. “That man had the -heart of a woman!” fervidly said one who was his next-door neighbour for -several years. This gentleman, Dr. J. J. Merriman, whose family have -lived in Kensington Square since 1794, possesses a number of valuable -souvenirs of the great author, including some unpublished letters, in one -of which Thackeray regrets that he has not seen the doctor for some time, -and characteristically adds: “I wish _Vanity Fair_ were not so big or we -performers in it so busy; then we might see each other and shake hands -once in a year or so.” On one occasion the doctor begged him to write -his name in a copy of _Vanity Fair_ which Thackeray had given him, and -the latter not only did this, but made an exquisite little drawing on the -title-page, than which the book could not have a more suggestive or -appropriate frontispiece. A little boy and girl are seated on the -ground, one blowing bubbles and the other hugging a doll, while behind -them looms up the portentous mile-stone of life. - -The “dear old street,” as Miss Thackeray calls it, ends in Kensington -Square, which is full of old houses, to each of which some historic -interest belongs. The square was built in the latter part of the -seventeenth century, and in one of the old houses Lady Castlewood, -Beatrice, and Colonel Esmond lived, and there sheltered the reckless and -unscrupulous Pretender. {101} - -In 1853, Thackeray left Kensington and went to live in Onslow Square, -Brompton; but he came back to the old court suburb in 1861, and occupied -the fine new house which he had built for himself in the Palace Gardens. -It is the second house on the west side of the street, a substantial -mansion of red brick, adjoining a much more picturesque and older house -covered with ivy; and it was here that he died suddenly on December 24, -1863, in the room at the south-east corner of the second story. The last -time that I saw it, an auctioneer’s flag was hung out, and the broker’s -men were playing billiards in the lofty northern extension which -Thackeray built for a library, and in which he wrote _Denis Duval_. - -Thackeray was buried in Kensal Green cemetery in the north-west of -London, and was followed to the grave by Dickens, Browning, Millais, -Trollope, and many who knew the goodness of the soul that had been called -away. Kensal Green is as unattractive as a burial ground could be. It -is like a prison-yard, with few trees, and inclosed by high brick walls. -But its numerous tenantry include many who have worked faithfully and -well in literature and art; and surrounded by the memorials of these is -one of the simplest tombstones in the place, inscribed with two dates and -the name of William Makepeace Thackeray. - - - - -FOOTNOTES. - - -{5} Mr. R. R. Bowker. - -{15} The school was founded by Thomas Sutton, a rich merchant, in 1611. -The buildings which are mostly of the 16th Century, had been used until -the Reformation, as a monastery of Carthusian monks. “Charterhouse” is a -corruption of Chartreuse, and the scholars still call themselves -Carthusians. - -{19} Several relics of Thackeray are preserved in the new school at -Godalming, including some pen and ink sketches made by him, and five -volumes containing all the existing MS. of _The Newcomes_. The MS. is -written partly in his own hand, partly in the hand of Miss Anne Thackeray -(now Mrs. Ritchie), and partly in another hand. Several stones on which -some of the old scholars, including Thackeray, carved their names, have -also been removed from the old school in London to the new one. - -{29} One day, while the great novel of _The Newcomes_ was in course of -publication, Lowell, who was then in London, met Thackeray in the street. -The novelist was serious in manner, and his looks and voice told of -weariness and affliction. He saw the kindly inquiry in the poet’s eyes, -and said, “Come into Evans’s, and I’ll tell you all about it. _I have -killed the Colonel_!” So they walked in, and took a table in a remote -corner, and then Thackeray, drawing the fresh sheets of MS. from his -breast pocket, read through that exquisitely touching chapter, which -records the death of Colonel Newcome. When he came to the final _Adsum_, -the tears which had been swelling his lids for some time, trickled down -his face, and the last word was almost an inarticulate sob.—F. H. -UNDERWOOD, in _Harper’s Magazine_. - -{42} Mr. Edmund Yates states in his interesting _Memoirs of a Man of the -World_, that the Cider Cellars, next to the stage door of the Adelphi, -was the prototype of the Back Kitchen, immortalized in _Pendennis_. The -Cave of Harmony, frequently mentioned by Thackeray, was sketched from -Evans’s, in Covent Garden. - -{72} “One day, many years ago, I saw him chaffing on the sidewalk in -London, in front of the Athenæum Club, with a monstrous-sized, ‘copiously -ebriose’ cabman, and I judged from the driver’s ludicrously careful way -of landing the coin deep down in his breeches-pocket, that Thackeray had -given him a very unusual fare. ‘Who is your fat friend?’ I asked, -crossing over to shake hands with him. ‘O! that indomitable youth is an -old crony of mine,’ he replied; and then, quoting Falstaff, ‘a goodly -portly man, i’ faith, and a corpulent, of a cheerful look, a pleasing -eye, and a most noble carriage.’ It was the _manner_ of saying this, -then and there, in the London street, the cabman moving slowly off on his -sorry vehicle, with one eye (an eye dewy with gin and water, and a tear -of gratitude, perhaps) on Thackeray, and the great man himself so jovial -and so full of kindness!”—_Yesterdays with Authors_. J. T. FIELDS. - -{99} “I once made a pilgrimage with Thackeray (at my request, of course, -the visits were planned) to the various houses where his books had been -written; and I remember, when we came to Young street, Kensington, he -said, with mock gravity, ‘Down on your knees, you rogue, for here _Vanity -Fair_ was penned! And I will go down with you, for I have a high opinion -of that little production myself.’”—_Yesterdays with Authors_. J. T. -FIELDS. - -{101} Kensington Square has had many celebrated inhabitants, including -Talleyrand, Joseph Addison, the Duchess of Mazarin, and Archbishop -Herring. - - - - -***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THACKERAY'S LONDON*** - - -******* This file should be named 62280-0.txt or 62280-0.zip ******* - - -This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: -http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/6/2/2/8/62280 - - -Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions will -be renamed. - -Creating the works from print editions not protected by U.S. copyright -law means that no one owns a United States copyright in these works, -so the Foundation (and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United -States without permission and without paying copyright -royalties. 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Rideing</title> - <style type="text/css"> -/*<![CDATA[ XML blockout */ -<!-- - P { margin-top: .75em; - margin-bottom: .75em; - } - P.gutsumm { margin-left: 5%;} - P.poetry {margin-left: 3%; } - .GutSmall { font-size: 0.7em; } - H1, H2 { - text-align: center; - margin-top: 2em; - margin-bottom: 2em; - } - H3, H4, H5 { - text-align: center; - margin-top: 1em; - margin-bottom: 1em; - } - BODY{margin-left: 10%; - margin-right: 10%; - } - table { border-collapse: collapse; } -table {margin-left:auto; margin-right:auto;} - td { vertical-align: top; border: 1px solid black;} - td p { margin: 0.2em; } - .blkquot {margin-left: 4em; margin-right: 4em;} /* block indent */ - - .smcap {font-variant: small-caps;} - - .pagenum {position: absolute; - left: 92%; - font-size: small; - text-align: right; - font-weight: normal; - color: gray; - } - img { border: none; } - img.dc { float: left; width: 50px; height: 50px; } - p.gutindent { margin-left: 2em; } - div.gapspace { height: 0.8em; } - div.gapline { height: 0.8em; width: 100%; border-top: 1px solid;} - div.gapmediumline { height: 0.3em; width: 40%; margin-left:30%; - border-top: 1px solid; } - div.gapmediumdoubleline { height: 0.3em; width: 40%; margin-left:30%; - border-top: 1px solid; border-bottom: 1px solid;} - div.gapshortdoubleline { height: 0.3em; width: 20%; - margin-left: 40%; border-top: 1px solid; - border-bottom: 1px solid; } - div.gapdoubleline { height: 0.3em; width: 50%; - margin-left: 25%; border-top: 1px solid; - border-bottom: 1px solid;} - div.gapshortline { height: 0.3em; width: 20%; margin-left:40%; - border-top: 1px solid; } - .citation {vertical-align: super; - font-size: .5em; - text-decoration: none;} - span.red { color: red; } - body {background-color: #ffffc0; } - img.floatleft { float: left; - margin-right: 1em; - margin-top: 0.5em; margin-bottom: 0.5em; } - img.floatright { float: right; - margin-left: 1em; margin-top: 0.5em; - margin-bottom: 0.5em; } - img.clearcenter {display: block; - margin-left: auto; - margin-right: auto; margin-top: 0.5em; - margin-bottom: 0.5em} - --> - /* XML end ]]>*/ - </style> -</head> -<body> -<pre> - -The Project Gutenberg eBook, Thackeray's London, by William H. Rideing - - -This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most -other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions -whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of -the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at -www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you'll have -to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this ebook. - - - - -Title: Thackeray's London - a description of his haunts and the scenes of his novels - - -Author: William H. Rideing - - - -Release Date: May 30, 2020 [eBook #62280] - -Language: English - -Character set encoding: ISO-646-US (US-ASCII) - - -***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THACKERAY'S LONDON*** -</pre> -<p>Transcribed from the 1885 Cupples, Upham and Co. edition by -David Price, email ccx074@pglaf.org</p> -<p style="text-align: center"> -<a href="images/cover.jpg"> -<img alt= -"Book cover" -title= -"Book cover" - src="images/cover.jpg" /> -</a></p> -<p style="text-align: center"> -<a href="images/p0b.jpg"> -<img alt= -"Portrait of Thackeray" -title= -"Portrait of Thackeray" - src="images/p0s.jpg" /> -</a></p> -<h1>THACKERAY’S LONDON.</h1> -<p style="text-align: center"><i>A DESCRIPTION OF HIS HAUNTS -AND</i><br /> -<i>THE SCENES OF HIS NOVELS</i>.</p> -<p style="text-align: center"><span class="GutSmall">BY</span><br -/> -WILLIAM H. RIDEING.</p> - -<div class="gapspace"> </div> -<p style="text-align: center"><i>LONDON</i><br /> -J. W. JARVIS & SON,<br /> -<span class="GutSmall">28, KING WILLIAM STREET, STRAND, -W.C.</span></p> - -<div class="gapshortline"> </div> -<p style="text-align: center"><span class="GutSmall">BOSTON, -U.S.</span><br /> -<span class="GutSmall">CUPPLES, UPHAM AND CO.</span></p> -<p style="text-align: center">1885.</p> -<p style="text-align: center"><a name="pageii"></a><span -class="pagenum">p. ii</span><i>Copyright</i>, 1885. -<i>Washington</i>, <i>D. C.</i></p> -<p style="text-align: center"><span class="smcap">By William -Henry Rideing</span>.</p> - -<div class="gapspace"> </div> -<p style="text-align: center"><span -class="GutSmall">LONDON</span>:</p> -<p style="text-align: center"><span class="GutSmall">S. AND J. -BRAWN, PRINTERS, 13, GATE STREET, LINCOLN’S INN -FIELDS</span></p> -<p><a name="pageiii"></a><span class="pagenum">p. iii</span>The -portrait is engraved from the large etching by <span -class="smcap">G. B. Smith</span> in “ENGLISH -ETCHINGS,” by kind permission of the proprietor.</p> - -<div class="gapshortline"> </div> -<p>We also have to acknowledge, with thanks, permission from -<span class="smcap">Messrs. Smith</span>, <span -class="smcap">Elder & Co.</span>, to introduce the various -excerpts from Thackeray’s Works found in the following -pages.</p> -<p style="text-align: right"><i>THE PUBLISHERS</i>.</p> -<h2><a name="page1"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 1</span>I.</h2> -<p>Thackeray does not give the same opportunities for the -identification of his scenes as Dickens. The elaboration -with which the latter localizes his characters, and the -descriptive minutiæ with which he makes their haunts no -less memorable than themselves, are not to be found in the works -of the author of <i>Vanity Fair</i>. No faculty was -stronger in Dickens, or of more service to him, than his power of -word-painting. He reproduces the objects <a -name="page2"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 2</span>by which the -persons he describes are surrounded with a fidelity which would -be tedious, if it were not relieved by the humor which humanizes -bricks, and imparts a grotesque sort of sensibility to articles -of furniture; and it is not easy to think of any of his leading -characters without being reminded of the neighborhoods in which -they played their parts.</p> -<p>Thackeray, on the contrary, is not topographical. The -briefest mention of a street suffices with him, and it is the -character, not the locality, which has permanence in the -reader’s mind. Every feature of Becky Sharp is -remembered with a vividness which disassociates her with fiction; -but the situation of the little house in which the unfortunate -Rawdon finally discovers her duplicity, in the famous scene with -the Marquis of Steyne, escapes the memory. When the book is -no longer fresh to him, <a name="page3"></a><span -class="pagenum">p. 3</span>the reader may recollect that after -her marriage she went to live in Mayfair, and may picture to -himself a small, fashionable dwelling in that aristocratic -neighbourhood; but he cannot remember that the author places it -in Curzon street, nor that the Sedleys lived in Russell Square, -Philip in Old Parr street, and Colonel Newcome in Fitzroy -Square.</p> -<p>We have one example in Thackeray of the grotesquely humorous -descriptive power of which Dickens was a master. It hits at -the absurd nomenclature of modern London suburbs, where every box -of a house has some high-sounding name of the sort which -ornaments the fiction of the “Chambermaid’s -Companion,” and it describes the neighbourhood into which -the Sedleys moved after their failure—“St. Adelaide -Villa, Anna Maria Road, West, where the houses look like baby -houses; where the <a name="page4"></a><span class="pagenum">p. -4</span>people looking out of the first floor windows must -infallibly, as you think, sit with their feet in the parlors -below; where the shrubs in the little gardens in front bloom with -a perennial display of little children’s pinafores, little -red socks, caps, etc. (<i>polyandria polygenia</i>); whence you -hear the sound of jingling spinets and women singing; and -whither, of an evening, you see city clerks plodding -wearily.”</p> -<p>The fanciful supposition that persons in the upper stories -must have their legs on the lower floor is richly characteristic -of the manner in which Dickens would have indicated the smallness -of the houses. It is a touch of that kind of humour which -distinguishes all the work of that author, and which was one of -his most serviceable resources; it gives facial expression to -inanimate objects, and, as we have said, it individualizes the -haunts of his characters <a name="page5"></a><span -class="pagenum">p. 5</span>no less than the characters -themselves. But it is so rare in Thackeray that the -exhibition of it in this fragment strikes us, as the lurid style -of the earlier writings of Lord Lytton would do if we were to -find a passage from them interpolated among the confiding -garrulities of <i>Vanity Fair</i>.</p> -<p>It was not that Thackeray lacked the power of observation in -the direction of externals,—though he certainly did not -possess it in the same degree as Dickens—nor that his -characters were airy visions to him, requiring no other -habitation than the chambers of his brain; they were indeed flesh -and blood to him, and Miss Thackeray has told a friend of the -writer’s, <a name="citation5"></a><a href="#footnote5" -class="citation">[5]</a> how, in her walks with her father, he -would point out the very houses in which they lived. The -difference was principally one <a name="page6"></a><span -class="pagenum">p. 6</span>of method. Thackeray’s was -the classic stage—a dais with a drapery of green baize, -before the time of scenery. Dickens’s was the modern -stage, with lime-lights, trap-doors, and elaborate -“sets.”</p> -<h2><a name="page7"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 7</span>II.</h2> -<p>Though his other scenes are misty, no reader of Thackeray who -engages in a search for the places which he describes is likely, -however, to overlook the Charterhouse, the ancient foundation to -which he refers again and again, dwelling on it with many fond -reminiscences. It is the school in which he himself was -educated, and he has associated three generations of his -characters with it. Thomas Newcome received instruction -here, also his son Clive, with Pendennis, Osborne, and Philip of -the second generation, after whom came Rawdon Crawley’s -little son and young George <a name="page8"></a><span -class="pagenum">p. 8</span>Osborne; and, finally, the dear old -Colonel, when broken down and weary, joined the poor brethren who -are pensioners of the institution, and within its monastic walls -cried <i>Adsum</i> as he heard a voice summoning him to the -everlasting peace. Occasionally it is called -Slaughter-house, once or twice “Smiffle” (after the -boys’ way of pronouncing Smithfield, where it is situated); -but in Thackeray’s later works he generally speaks of it as -Grayfriars or Whitefriars.</p> -<p>“It had been,” he says in <i>Vanity Fair</i>, -“a Cistercian convent in old days when the Smith field, -which is contiguous to it, was a tournament ground. -Obstinate heretics used to be brought thither, convenient for -burning hard by. Henry the Eighth seized upon the monastery -and its possessions, and hanged and tortured some of the monks -who would not <a name="page9"></a><span class="pagenum">p. -9</span>accommodate themselves to the pace of his reform. -Finally, a great merchant bought the house and land adjoining, in -which, with the help of other wealthy endowments of land and -money, he established a famous foundation hospital for old men -and children. An extra school grew round the old, almost -monastic foundation, which subsists still with its middle-age -costume and usages; and all Christians pray that it may -flourish.</p> -<p>“Of this famous house some of the greatest noblemen, -prelates and dignitaries in England, are governors; and as the -boys are very comfortably lodged, fed and educated, and -subsequently inducted to good scholarships at the University, and -livings in the Church, many little gentlemen are devoted to the -ecclesiastical profession from their tenderest years, and there -is considerable emulation to procure nominations <a -name="page10"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 10</span>for the -foundation. It was originally intended for the sons of poor -and deserving clerics and laics; but many of the noble governors -of the institution, with an enlarged and rather capricious -benevolence, selected all sorts of objects for their -bounty. To get an education for nothing, and a livelihood -and profession assured, was so excellent a scheme, that some of -the richest people did not disdain it; and not only the great -men’s relations, but great men themselves, sent their sons -to profit by the chance. Right reverend prelates sent their -own kinsmen as the sons of their clergy, while on the other hand -some great noblemen did not disdain to patronize the children of -their confidential servants, so that a lad entering this -establishment had every variety of youthful society wherewith to -mingle.”</p> -<p>As a rule, however, the boys, belong <a -name="page11"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 11</span>to the upper -classes, and an education obtained at Charterhouse is scarcely -less of a social distinction than the much coveted and costly -preparation of Eton, Harrow, or Winchester. The history of -the school is full of brilliant names, and among its scholars -have been Joseph Addison, Richard Steele, Isaac Barrow, General -Havelock, Sir William Blackstone, Lord Chief Justice -Ellenborough, Lord Liverpool, John Wesley and George Grote.</p> -<p>It is possible that one may know London intimately, and yet be -ignorant of the situation of the Charterhouse. Smithfield -is out of the way of the main lines of traffic: it is a squalid -neighbourhood, north of Ludgate Hill, and it retains its ancient -characteristics more than almost all other parts of the great -city,—which has been so modernized that Cheapside looks -like a slice of Broadway, and once shabby Fleet <a -name="page12"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 12</span>Street is -showing all sorts of ornamental fronts. It has in it many -solemn brick houses of a blackish purple, with glowing roofs of -red tiles; smaller buildings of an earlier period, with high -peaked gables and overlapping second stories; sequestred alleys, -and courts bearing queer names, and many curious little -shops.</p> -<p>One of the most direct approaches to it is through the Old -Bailey from Ludgate Hill. On this route we pass the austere -granite of Newgate Prison and also Pye Corner, where as the -sign-board of a public house tells us, the great fire of 1666 -ended, after burning from the 2nd to the 10th of September; we -also pass Cock Lane, famous for its ghost, and the quaintest of -old London churches, St. Bartholomew the Great, which is hemmed -in and partly extinguished by the surrounding houses, that hide -all but its smoked and <a name="page13"></a><span -class="pagenum">p. 13</span>patched tower, and a few square feet -of grass, which is justifiably discouraged in its want of -sunshine and space; thence our path is by the extensive buildings -of St. Bartholomew’s Hospital, about which there is a -morbid activity in the flow of officials and visitors, most of -the latter being slatternly and anxious-looking women, with -babies and baskets on their arms, and from the Hospital we cross -the street, and so through the new cattle market, which fills the -space once occupied by the pens, and covers the spot whence the -souls of many martyrs have passed in flame from the stake to -heaven.</p> -<h2><a name="page14"></a><span class="pagenum">p. -14</span>III.</h2> -<p>The buildings form an irregular cluster spread over a prodigal -area, and isolated by a wall of brick and stone which many London -fogs and long days of yellow weather have reduced to the -dismalest of colors. None of them are lofty; some of them -are of granite, and others of brick, upon which age has cast a -smoky mantle. They are separated by wide courts and winding -passages; and when I was there in the Easter vacation these open -spaces were vacant, and the brisk twittering of the sparrows was -the only sound that came from them. The quiet seemed all -the greater, inasmuch as all <a name="page15"></a><span -class="pagenum">p. 15</span>around the walls is a busy -neighbourhood, full of traffic and voices. The courts are -for the most part paved with small cobblestones, and are cleanly -swept; but some of them are grassy—grassy in the dingy and -feeble way of London vegetation. These buildings look as -sad as they are old; to the juvenile imagination the high walls -and the severe architecture must be sharply distressing, and many -a boy has felt his heart sink with misgiving as, for the first -time, he has been driven through the old gate-way, to be placed -as a scholar on Thomas Sutton’s <a name="citation15"></a><a -href="#footnote15" class="citation">[15]</a> famous -foundation.</p> -<p><a name="page16"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 16</span>At this -old gate-way, one day, I saw a very feeble old gentleman, -strangely dressed in a scarlet waistcoat and bright blue -trowsers, a brass-buttoned coat, and a high silk hat. He -was very small and very weak, moving slowly with the help of a -stick, and coughing painfully behind his pocket -handkerchief. To my question as to the admission of -strangers, he said, quaveringly: “If you are a patron, you -may see the buildings, but you had better ask the janitor; there -he is. I,” he added, with some hesitation, “I -am one of the poor brethren.”</p> -<p>The old head bowed down with years and sorrow, the white hair, -the troublesome cough, the courteous amiability of manner, -reminded me of Colonel Newcome—Codd Newcome, as the boys -began to call him; and, indeed, this old gentleman had been a -captain in the Queen’s service, as the <a -name="page17"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 17</span>janitor -afterward told us, though he was not as stately nor as handsome -as the dear old Colonel was. None of the celebrities of -Charterhouse possesses the same vivid interest, the same hold -upon our sympathies, the same command of the affections, as the -brave, high-minded, large-hearted old soldier, who sacrificed all -he had in the world to keep his honour spotless, and to shield -others from misery.</p> -<p>As the janitor took us from hall to hall in the dark, monastic -buildings, Colonel Newcome was constantly before us, and his -figure, even more than that of Thackeray himself, filled our -minds, and made us feel kindly to the old pensioners who were -sunning themselves at the doors of their rooms, or were gathered -in a quiet corner of one of the courts, chatting or reading.</p> -<p>The pensioners, of whom there are eighty, <a -name="page18"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 18</span>remain in the -old buildings, in which each of them has a sitting-room and a -bed-room, with a servant to wait upon him. Their table is a -common one, in a grand old dining-hall, and twice a day they don -their gowns to go to service in the little chapel, to thank God -for his manifold blessings and mercies. But the boys have -been removed since 1870 to a magnificent new-school at Godalming, -Surrey, thirty-four miles away from London fogs and the crowds of -Smithfield, and they have taken nearly all the relics of -Thackeray with them, including the little bed in which he slept -while a scholar. Their part of the buildings is now -occupied by the Merchant Taylors’ School, which has added a -large new schoolroom to the square. The ground is immensely -valuable, and from an economic point of view it seems a waste to -devote it to the obsolete buildings which <a -name="page19"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 19</span>fill the -greater part of it. Soon, no doubt, another home will be -found for the poor brethren, and when commerce takes possession -of Charterhouse Square, one of the most interesting piles in -London town will disappear. <a name="citation19"></a><a -href="#footnote19" class="citation">[19]</a></p> -<p>The cleanliness and orderliness which leave no scrap of waste -or wisp of straw or ridge of dust visible in the approach have -also swept up every part of the interior; and though the smoke -and dust have taken a tenacious hold, the charwoman’s <a -name="page20"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 20</span>besom and -scrubbing-brush have been vigorously applied. The buildings -look quite as old as they are. The oaken wainscoting is the -deepest brown; the balusters and groining are massive and carved; -the tapestries are indistinct and phantasmal, like faded -pictures, and the walls are like those of a fortress. It is -easy in these surroundings to conjure up visions of the middle -ages.</p> -<p>The site of the dormitories of the Charterhouse boys is now -occupied by the new school-room of the Merchant Taylors; but -looking upon it is a dusky cloister, once given to the prayerful -meditations of the friars, which in Thackeray’s time and -later was used for games of ball; the gloom is everywhere. -The ghosts of the silent brothers seem fitter tenants than the -boys with shining faces and ringing voices. There are -narrow, suspicious-looking <a name="page21"></a><span -class="pagenum">p. 21</span>passages, and heavily-barred, -irresistible oaken doors. But these corridors and barriers -against the unwelcome lead into several apartments of truly -magnificent size and faded splendour. The dining-hall of -the poor brethren has wainscoting from twelve to twenty feet -high, a massively groined roof, a musicians’ gallery with a -carved balustrade, and a large fire-place framed in ornamental -oak, over which the Sutton arms are emblazoned; while at the end -of the room is a portrait of the founder, dressed in a flowing -gown and the suffocatingly frilled collar of his time. -Parallel to this, and accessible by a low door, is the -dining-hall of the gown boys, a long, narrow room, with a very -low ceiling, high wainscoting, a knotty floor, insufficient -windows, and another large fire-place inclosed by an elaborate -mantel-piece of oak. Here almost side by side, these boys -with life <a name="page22"></a><span class="pagenum">p. -22</span>untried before them and the old men well-nigh at their -journey’s end, ate the bread provided for them by their -common benefactor, and joined voices in thanksgiving; here still -the old pensioners assemble, and in trembling voices murmur grace -over the provision made for them. Upstairs there is a -banqueting-hall, which is not inferior in sombre grandeur to that -of the poor brothers, and was once honoured by the presence of -Queen Elizabeth. It also is wainscoted and groined, and -hung with tapestries, out of which the pictures have nearly -vanished. The fire-place is the finest of all, and above it -some hazy paintings are lost in the shadow.</p> -<p>Thackeray was one of the foundation scholars, and lived in the -school, and wore a gown. He was, from all accounts, an -average boy, undistinguished by industry or precocious -ability. He was very much <a name="page23"></a><span -class="pagenum">p. 23</span>like many of Dr. Birch’s little -friends: a simple honest, and sometimes mischievous lad. -Though he was never elected orator or poet, he wrote parodies, -and was clever with a pencil, which he used with no little fancy -and humour. The margins of books and scraps of paper of all -kinds were covered with sketches, most of them caricatures; and -it is said to have been a familiar thing to see the artist -surrounded by an admiring crowd of his school-fellows, while he -developed, with grotesque extravagance and never-failing effect, -the outlines of some juvenile hero or some notability of -history. The head master of the school was severe, and as -Thackeray was very sensitive, it is supposed that his school days -were not of the happiest. But he bore the old foundation no -ill-will; who, indeed, shall ever do it more honor than he has -done?</p> -<p><a name="page24"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 24</span>Only a -few weeks before his death, Thackeray was present on -Founder’s Day. He sat in his usual back seat in the -old chapel. He went thence to hear the oration in the -governor’s room, and, as he walked up to the orator with -his contribution, was received with hearty applause. At the -banquet afterward, he sat at the side of his old friend and -school-mate John Leech; and Thackeray it was who, on that -occasion proposed the toast of “The -Charterhouse.”</p> -<p>Taking us through the grounds by the way of Wash-house Court, -a quadrangle of very old and smoky buildings, which were attached -to the original monastery, the janitor conducted us into the cool -and quiet cloister which leads into the chapel. Here is the -handsome memorial of the Carthusians slain in the wars, and on -the walls is a commemorative tablet to Thackeray. <a -name="page25"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 25</span>Next to -Thackeray’s is a similar tablet to the memory of Leech.</p> -<p>The little chapel is much as it was in their time and long -before. The founders’ tomb, with its grotesque -carvings, monsters, heraldries, still darkles and shines with the -most wonderful shadows and lights, as Thackeray described -it. There, in marble effigy, lies Fundator Noster in his -ruff and gown, awaiting the great examination day. Just in -front of this elaborate monument, Thackeray himself used to sit -when a boy. The children are present no more; but yonder, -twice a day, sit the pensioners of the hospital, listening to the -prayers and the psalms,—four-score of the old reverend -black gowns. The custom of the school was that, on the -twelfth of December, the head gown boy should recite a Latin -oration; and, though the scholars are removed to Godalming, the -ceremony is <a name="page26"></a><span class="pagenum">p. -26</span>perpetuated. Many old Carthusians attend this -oration; after which they go to chapel and hear a sermon, which -is followed by a dinner, at which old condisciples meet, old -toasts are given, and speeches are made. The reader has -surely not forgotten how Pendennis, himself a Grayfriars boy, -came to the festival one day quite unaware of his friend’s -presence.</p> -<p>“The pensioners were in their benches, the boys in their -places, with young fresh faces and shining white collars. -We oldsters, be we ever so old,” Pendennis has written, -“become boys again as we look at that old familiar tomb, -and think how the seats are altered since we were here, and how -our doctor—not the present doctor, the doctor of <i>our</i> -time—used to sit yonder, and his awful eye used to frighten -us shuddering boys on whom it lighted; and how the boy next us -<i>would</i> kick our <a name="page27"></a><span -class="pagenum">p. 27</span>shins during service time, and how -the monitor would cane us afterwards, because our shins were -kicked. Yonder sit forty cherry-cheeked boys, thinking -about home and holidays to-morrow. Yonder sit the -pensioners coughing feebly in the twilight. Is Codd Ajax -alive you wonder?—the Cistercian lads called these old -gentlemen Codds, I know not wherefore—but is old Codd Ajax -alive I wonder? or Codd soldier? or kind old Codd gentleman? or -has the grave closed over them?</p> -<p>“A plenty of candles light up this chapel, and this -scene of age and youth, and early memories, and pompous -death. How solemn the well-remembered prayers are, here -uttered again in the place where in childhood we used to listen -to them. How beautiful and decorous the rite, how noble the -ancient words of the supplications which the priest utters, and -to which generations <a name="page28"></a><span -class="pagenum">p. 28</span>of fresh children, and troops of -by-gone seniors have cried Amen! under those arches! The -service for Founder’s Day is a special one; one of the -Psalms selected being the thirty-seventh, and we hear:—23. -‘The steps of a good man are ordered by the <span -class="smcap">Lord</span>; and He delighteth in His way. -24. Though he fall, he shall not be utterly cast down: for the -<span class="smcap">Lord</span> upholdeth him with his -hand. 25. I have been young, and now am old; yet have I not -seen the righteous forsaken, nor his seed begging -bread.’ As we came to this verse, I chanced to look -up from my book toward the swarm of black-coated pensioners, and -amongst them—amongst them—sat Thomas -Newcome.” The noble old man had come to end his days -here, and we know of no chapter in English literature more -affecting than that in which his light is put out, and he softly -murmurs <i>Adsum</i>.</p> -<p><a name="page29"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 29</span>Tears -often refuse to flow when manhood has blunted the sympathies, and -we are unmoved when we read again the books which summoned -copious floods in youth, but the pathos of Colonel -Newcome’s death, never loses its effect; it is so deep and -genuine, that the description starts our grief anew whenever we -read it, and it leaves us with an acute sense of profound -bereavement. We feel a tender interest in the poor -brothers, and a high respect for them, because the Colonel was -one of them, and because Thackeray, in his imperishable prose, -has made them representative of honorable but unfortunate old -age. <a name="citation29"></a><a href="#footnote29" -class="citation">[29]</a></p> -<p><a name="page30"></a><span class="pagenum">p. -30</span>Charterhouse is the centre of a neighbourhood which -Dickens chose for many of his scenes, as the reader of this -knows. “Only a wall,” says Thackeray, in <i>Mr. -and Mrs. Frank Berry</i>, “separates the playground, or -‘green,’ as it was called in his time, from -Wilderness Row and Goswell street. Many a time have I seen -Mr. Pickwick look out of his window in that street, though we did -not <a name="page31"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 31</span>know -him then.” Not only of Mr. Pickwick, but of many -other characters, do we find reminiscences in Smithfield. -The Sarah Son’s Head, as John Browdy called it, Snow Hill, -Saffron Hill, Fleet Lane, and Kingsgate street are not far -away. The buildings with the ancient fronts, the idlers at -the corners, and the confusing little alleys, which lead where no -one would expect them to lead, all belong to Dickens’s -London. The miserable associations of his early life, his -interest in the poor, and his relish for the grotesque, drew him -into the shady and disreputable quarters of the city; and the -student of his works can track him with greater ease and ampler -results in neighbourhoods like Smithfield than in the West -End. With Thackeray, the reverse is the case; and, -excepting Charter-house, the reader who desires to <a -name="page32"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 32</span>identify his -localities finds little to reward him in a search east of Pall -Mall, or south of Oxford street.</p> -<h2><a name="page33"></a><span class="pagenum">p. -33</span>IV.</h2> -<p>On the site of the Imperial Club in Cursitor street, Chancery -Lane, stood a notorious “sponging house,” to which -Rawdon Crawley was taken when arrested for debt, immediately -after leaving the brilliant entertainment given by the Marquis of -Steyne, and from which he wrote an ill-spelled letter to his wife -(who had appeared triumphantly in some charades at that -entertainment), begging her to send some money for his -release. The reader remembers how the faithless little -woman answered,—assuring him of her grief and anxiety, and -telling him that she had not <a name="page34"></a><span -class="pagenum">p. 34</span>the money, but would get it; though, -as poor, blundering, soft-hearted Rawdon discovered afterward, -she had a very large sum at the moment she wrote to him, and did -not send him any of it because she wished to keep him in jail -that she might intrigue with the licentious old marquis; and the -reader will remember that Rawdon was released at the instance of -his cousin’s wife, and went to the little house in Curzon -street, where he surprised his deceitful spouse, and nearly -murdered her companion, the same old Marquis of Steyne, knight of -the garter, lord of the powder-box, trustee of the British -Museum, etc.</p> -<p>When we come to the end of that passage, we put the book on -our lap and lean back in the chair, and, while we are still -glowing with the excitement of the scene, we are filled with -admiration of the genius which produced it. How did -Thackeray <a name="page35"></a><span class="pagenum">p. -35</span>achieve his effects? Becky Sharp is a unique and -permanent figure in literature, a subtle embodiment of duplicity, -ambition, and selfishness. She is avaricious, hypocritical, -specious, and crafty. Though not malignant nor to a -certainty criminal, she is a conscienceless little malefactor, -whose ill deeds are only limited by the ignoble dimensions of her -passions. She lies with amazing glibness, is utterly -faithless to her hulking husband, and utterly indifferent to her -child. Her mendacity is superlative, and double-dealing -enters into all her transactions. But she is so shrewd, so -vivacious, so artful, so immensely clever and good-humoured, she -has so much prettiness of manner and person, that, while we -despise her, and have not the least pity for her when retribution -falls heavily upon her, our indignation against her is not so -great as we feel that it ought to be, principally <a -name="page36"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 36</span>because her -sins have a certain feminine archness and irresponsibility in -them, which keeps them well down to the level of comedy. -When we close the book we know her through and through, and -thoroughly understand all the complex workings of her strategic -mind. How do we know her so well? Thackeray is not -exegetical, and does not depend on elaborate analysis for his -effects. The actions of the characters are themselves fully -expository, and do not call for any outside comments or -enlargement on the part of the author. This is the case to -such an extent that, when we examine the completeness with which -the characters are revealed to us, we are inclined to believe -that Thackeray’s art is of the very highest kind, and that, -though in form it is undramatic, intrinsically it is powerfully -dramatic.</p> -<p><a name="page37"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 37</span>But we -are straying from our purpose, which is simply to look for -ourselves at the places which he has described. Across the -way from the bottom of Chancery Lane is the Temple, to the -interest of which he has added many associations. He was -fond of its dark alleys, archways, courts, and back stairs.</p> -<p>In 1834 he was called to the bar, and for some time he -occupied chambers in the venerable buildings with the late Tom -Taylor. His rooms, which were at number 10 Crown Office -Row, have disappeared before “improvements” that -present a modern front to the gardens and the river. Philip -had chambers in the Temple, and there, also, in classic -Lamb’s Court, Pendennis and Warrington were located.</p> -<p>Warrington smoking his cutty pipe, and writing his -articles—the fine-hearted fellow, the unfortunate -gentleman, the unpedantic <a name="page38"></a><span -class="pagenum">p. 38</span>scholar, who took Pendennis by the -hand and introduced him to Grub street when that young -unfortunate came to the end of his means. George Warrington -teaches us a new lesson in manhood, in patience, in -self-abnegation. His lot is full of sorrow, his cherished -ambitions are impossible, through no fault of his own, but it is -not in him to surrender to “the dull gray life and -apathetic end,”—his contentment is the repose of a -generous nature, his cheeriness with his pipe and his work -springs out of a calmly philosophic mind, a satisfied conscience, -a profound faith, and when we pass through Lamb’s court, -not least in our affections is the shadow of him.</p> -<p>“The man of letters cannot but love the place which has -been inhabited by so many of his brethren, and peopled by their -creations as real to us at this day, as the authors whose -children they <a name="page39"></a><span class="pagenum">p. -39</span>were,” and says Thackeray. “Sir Roger -de Coverley walking in the Temple garden, and discoursing with -Mr. Spectator about the beauties in hoops and patches who are -sauntering over the grass, is just as lively a figure to me, as -old Samuel Johnson rolling through the fog with the Scotch -gentleman at his heels, on their way to Mr. Goldsmith’s -chambers in Brick court, or Harry Fielding, with inked ruffles -and a wet towel round his head, dashing off articles at midnight -for the <i>Covent Garden Journal</i>, while the printer’s -boy is asleep in the passage.”</p> -<p>Leaving the Temple, we once more enter Smithfield, to look for -the site of the old Fleet prison, the scene of many episodes in -the stories of Dickens. It was in this strange place, that -the brilliant, but thriftless Captain Shandon lived, “one -of the wisest, wittiest, and most incorrigible of <a -name="page40"></a><span class="pagenum">p. -40</span>Irishmen;” here Pendennis found him sitting on a -bed, in a torn dressing gown, with a desk on his knees: here a -prisoner for debt, he indited the prospectus of the <i>Pall Mall -Gazette</i>, which was so called, he said, because its editor was -born in Dublin, and the sub-editor (excellent Jack Finucane) at -Cork; because the proprietor lived in Paternoster Row, and the -paper was published in Catherine Street, Strand. This -imaginary title of Thackeray’s was not the only one -afterwards adopted by a real newspaper. He writes of the -<i>Whitehall Review</i> as an opposing print, and that is now the -name of a successful London journal.</p> -<p>The Fleet is a thing of the past, and the attributes of -Captain Shandon have no inheritors in the press of to-day. -A knight armed cap-à-pie in Cheapside, would not be a more -antiquated figure, than the <a name="page41"></a><span -class="pagenum">p. 41</span>boozy scholar editing a reputable -journal in the cell of a prison. Journalism has taken off -its soft hat and shabby clothes; it has mended its erring and -improvident ways, and put on the manners of polite society. -Not in a tap-room, with jorums of hot whiskey, Welsh rabbits, and -devilled chops does the modern scribe regale himself. He -has a club somewhere in Adelphi, or St. James’, where he -presents himself in sedate evening dress, he turns pale at the -very mention of supper, and, instead of singing old English -songs, sadly compares notes with his fellow-dyspeptics. A -vulgar public-house, or low music hall stands on the site of the -Haunt and the Back Kitchen. When Warrington, Pendennis, Tom -Sarjeant, Clive Newcome, and Fred. Bayham frequented the Haunt, -and joined in the diversions of the literary democracy, there was -a superstition among them, that <a name="page42"></a><span -class="pagenum">p. 42</span>the place vanished at the approach of -daybreak, that when Betsy turned the gas off at the door lamp, as -the company went away, the whole thing faded into mist—the -door, the house, the bar, Betsy, the beer-boy, Mrs. Nokes, and -all. Whether this was so or not, it has now vanished, not -for a day, but for ever, like Captain Shandon, and the wild -Bohemianism of his time. <a name="citation42"></a><a -href="#footnote42" class="citation">[42]</a></p> -<h2><a name="page43"></a><span class="pagenum">p. -43</span>V.</h2> -<p>It is only a minutes’ walk from the corner of Fleet -Lane, to the street of booksellers, Paternoster Row, in which the -rival publishers, Bungay and Bacon lived—Bacon in an -ancient low-browed building, with a few of his books displayed in -the windows under a bust of my Lord Verulam; and Bungay in the -house opposite, which was newly painted, and elaborately -decorated in the style of the seventeenth century, “so that -you might have fancied stately Mr. Evelyn passing over the -threshold, or curious Mr. Pepys examining the books in the -windows.” <i>The</i> Row, so called—as <a -name="page44"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 44</span>financiers -arrogantly call Wall Street, <i>the</i> Street—is not wider -than an alley way, and in this respect it is exactly as it was -when Warrington introduced Pendennis to the editor of the -<i>Parlor Table Annual</i>, wherein his verses were -published. But though its breadth has not been increased, -the old buildings on both sides of it have given place in many -instances to towering new ones, five and six stories high, which -shut out the light, and keep the editors, compilers, printers, -engravers, and book-binders, who are the principal laborers of -the Row, in an all-day gloom. Both Bungay and Bacon had -their domestic establishments over their shops, and their wives, -who were sisters, thus had an opportunity to insult one another -by looks and mute signs from their opposite windows. Bungay -and Bacon, and their belligerent spouses are now out of the -trade, and the annual <a name="page45"></a><span -class="pagenum">p. 45</span><i>Souvenirs</i> and <i>Keepsakes</i> -which made a part of their business, belong to an extinct form of -literature. The Row is full of Grub Street curiosities; but -Lady Fanny Fantail, Miss Bunion, and the Honorable Percy Popinjay -are seen within its precincts no more, and if they still exist, -they probably find a new field for their distinguished services -in the society papers.</p> -<p>Let anyone strike out which way he will from Fleet Street, he -is sure to find himself in the presence of something which -reminds him of Dickens, near some object which his humor has made -famous, or which answers to one of his luminous descriptions.</p> -<p>The slums between the Strand and Soho, and between Smithfield -and Clerkenwell, were fertile to him, and not a <i>gamin</i> -there knew the winding alleys, and crisscross streets better than -the gentleman <a name="page46"></a><span class="pagenum">p. -46</span>with the high complexion, the sparkling eye, the -iron-gray beard, the well-cut dress, and the brisk step, who -might have been seen speeding through them at all sorts of -unusual hours. One day, he was heard of in Ratcliff -Highway, or among the riverside shanties of Poplar, and the next, -among the bird shops of Seven Dials, or in the courts of -Lambeth. When we contrast the little we have found of -Thackeray in the neighbourhood through which we have just been, -with the variety and suggestiveness of the reminiscences of -Dickens in the same region, our search seems disappointing.</p> -<p>As we have said Thackeray was not a novelist of low -life. “Perhaps,” he says in the preface to -<i>Pendennis</i>: “the lovers of excitement may care to -know that this book began with a very precise plan, which was -entirely put aside. Ladies and Gentlemen, <a -name="page47"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 47</span>you were to -have been treated, and the writer’s and publisher’s -pocket benefited by the recital of the most active horrors. -What more exciting than a ruffian (with many admirable virtues) -in St. Giles, visited constantly by a young lady from -Belgravia? What more stirring than the contrasts of -society? The mixture of slang and fashionable -language? The escapes, the battles, the murders? . . . . -The exciting plan was laid aside (with a very honorable -forbearance on part of the publishers) because on attempting it, -I found that I failed from want of experience of my subject; and -never having been intimate with any convict in my life, and the -manners of ruffians and gaol-birds being quite unfamiliar to me, -the idea of entering into competition with M. Eugene Sue was -abandoned.”</p> -<h2><a name="page48"></a><span class="pagenum">p. -48</span>VI.</h2> -<p>Though in the east end of the town and in the south, Thackeray -has left few footsteps, for us to follow, in ancient and -comfortable Bloomsbury, and the region to the west of it and -north of Oxford street (called De Quincey’s step-mother), -we find much to remind us of him. It was in Russell Square -that the Sedleys lived in the time of their prosperity, and -thence, on the evening after the arrival of gentle Amelia from -the boarding school at Chiswick, a messenger was sent for George -Osborne, whose house was No. 96. Russell Square is the -largest and handsomest of the chain <a name="page49"></a><span -class="pagenum">p. 49</span>of squares which extend, almost -without a break, from Oxford street to the New -Road—Bloomsbury Square, Woburn Square, Gordon Square, -Tavistock Square, and Euston Square. The neighbourhood has -seen many strange shifts of fortune, and some of the finest of -its mansions are debased to the uses of common boarding-houses -and private hotels. There are streets and streets of houses -with white cards in the windows announcing “Lodgings to -let.” Sombre old houses they are, built of brick, -with flat, uninteresting fronts, the sooty darkness of which is -sometimes relieved by a yellowish portico, freshly painted, or a -plaster shell of a drab colour reaching from the basement to the -second story. The cheeriness of the spreading trees in the -little parks, the flowering shrubs, the shining fountains, and -the grass, are only a partial alleviation. Russell Square -has <a name="page50"></a><span class="pagenum">p. -50</span>deteriorated less than some of the other places in the -neighbourhood, however, and the houses around it would not be -beneath the inclinations of a prosperous merchant such as old -Sedley was. We look in vain for 96; the numbers do not go -as high as that; but we have no difficulty in singling out the -respectable dwelling on the western side in which poor Amelia -sighed for her selfish lover, and Becky Sharp set her cap at the -corpulent Mr. Jos.</p> -<p>How sad the story of the Sedleys is!—the unrequited love -of Amelia—the untimely death of George at -Waterloo—the failure of old Sedley, and the -cold-heartedness of the elder Osborne! The decayed merchant -musing over all sorts of fatuous schemes by which he hopes to -recover his position, and sitting in the dark corner of a -coffee-house with his letters spread out before him—letters -relating to a make-believe and <a name="page51"></a><span -class="pagenum">p. 51</span>visionary business—which he is -anxious to read to every friend, is the most touching picture, -after the death of Colonel Newcome, which Thackeray has -drawn.</p> -<p>“What guest at Dives’s table can pass the familiar -house without a sigh?—the house of which the lights used to -shine so cheerfully at seven o’clock—of which the -hall doors opened so readily—of which the obsequious -servants, as you passed up the comfortable stairs, sounded your -name from landing to landing, until it reached the apartment -where jolly old Dives welcomed his friends! What a number -of them he had! What a noble way of entertaining them! . . -. How changed is the house, though! The front is patched -over with bills, setting forth the particulars of the furniture -in staring capitals. They have hung a shred of carpet out -of the upstairs window—a half <a name="page52"></a><span -class="pagenum">p. 52</span>dozen of porters are lounging on the -dirty steps—the hall swarms with dingy guests of oriental -countenance, who thrust printed cards into your hands, and offer -to bid. Old women and amateurs have invaded the upper -apartments, pinching the bed curtains, poking the feathers, -shampooing the mattresses, and clapping the wardrobe drawers to -and fro. . . . O Dives, who would have thought, as we sat round -the broad table sparkling with plate and spotless linen, to have -such a dish at the head of it as that roaring -auctioneer?”</p> -<p>Among the bidders was a six-foot, shy-looking military -gentleman, who bought a piano, and sent it without any message to -the little house—St. Adelaide Villa, Anna Maria Road, -West—to which the Sedleys had retired after their downfall, -and there, as the reader no doubt remembers, Amelia received it -with great gladness, believing <a name="page53"></a><span -class="pagenum">p. 53</span>that it came from her well-beloved -George.</p> -<p>It was years before she discovered that it was not her -faithless lover, but simple, brave, tender-hearted Captain -Dobbin, to whom she should have been grateful. It was in -Hart street, two blocks nearer Oxford street than Russell Square, -that little George Osborne went to school at the house of the -Rev. Laurence Veal, domestic chaplain to the Earl of Bareacres, -who prepared young noblemen and gentlemen for the universities, -the senate, and the learned professions, whose system did not -embrace the degrading corporal severities still practiced at the -ancient places of education, and in whose family the pupils found -the elegancies of refined society, and the confidence and -affection of a home. Thither came poor Amelia, walking all -the way from Brompton to catch a glimpse of her darling boy, who -had been taken away from her by his obdurate grandfather.</p> -<p><a name="page54"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 54</span>Great -Russell street is next to Hart street, and on it fronts the -classic portico of the British Museum, in the splendid -reading-room of which Thackeray was often seen. It was in -Great Coram street, adjoining the celebrated foundling hospital, -that he lived, when, one evening, he called on a young man who -had chambers in Furnival’s Inn, and offered to illustrate -the works which were beginning to make “Boz” famous; -and we can see him coming back to his lodgings in low spirits -over the rejection of his proposal, for at that time Thackeray -was poor, and neither literature nor art, which he loved the -better, would support him.</p> -<p>About half a mile farther north, across Tottenham Court Road, -is Fitzroy Square; and when we look for 120, we find that 40 is -the highest number which the Square includes. Though the -little circular garden <a name="page55"></a><span -class="pagenum">p. 55</span>which it incloses is prettily laid -out, and is one of the leafiest of the oases between Euston and -Bloomsbury, Fitzroy has degenerated more than some of the other -squares in the neighborhood. It was not very fashionable -when Colonel Newcome took No. 120 with James Binnie, and it is -not fashionable at all now. One side is badly out of -repair. There are two or three doctors’ houses in it, -several houses with announcements of apartments to let, and a -private hotel. The particular house occupied by the Colonel -and his old Indian friend cannot be easily identified by -Thackeray’s description. “The house is vast, -but, it must be owned, melancholy. Not long since, it was a -ladies’ school in an unprosperous condition. The scar -left by Madame Latour’s brass plate may still be seen on -the tall black door, cheerfully ornamented in the style of the -end of the <a name="page56"></a><span class="pagenum">p. -56</span>last century, with a funereal urn in the centre of the -entry and garlands, and the skulls of rams at each -corner.” We fancy that it was on the south side of -the square, near the middle of a row of heavy sepulchral houses -built of stone, which, first blackened by the London smoke, have -since been unevenly calcined by the atmosphere, so that, as in -many other buildings, they look as if a quantity of dirty -whitewash had been allowed to trickle down them. Some of -the ornaments have been removed, but the urn is still over the -door.</p> -<p>The days spent here were the happiest in the lives of the good -old Colonel and his son. The Colonel had just returned from -India full of honors and riches, and with his old chum, James -Binnie, he kept house with lavish hospitality, and much -originality. “The Colonel was great at <a -name="page57"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 57</span>making -hot-pot, curry, and pillau,” Pendennis tells us. -“What cozy pipes did we not smoke in the dining-room, in -the drawing-room, or where we would! What pleasant evenings -did we not have with Mr. Binnie’s books and Schiedam! -Then there were solemn state dinners, at most of which the writer -of this biography had a corner.” The guests at these -entertainments were not selected for their social position or -their worldly prosperity, and it mattered not whether they were -rich or poor, well dressed or shabby, if they were friends. -Old Indian Officers were among them, and young artists with -unkempt ways from Newman street and Berners street; the genial F. -B. waltzed with elderly houris and paid them compliments; -Professor Gandish talked about art with many misplaced h’s, -and the Rev. Charles Honeyman sighed and posed <a -name="page58"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 58</span>and meekly -received the adulation of the women.</p> -<p>Despite the failure of the Bundlecomb Bank, the later part of -the history of the Newcomes would have been less sad but for that -accident to Mr. Binnie, in which he fell from his horse and was -so much injured that Mrs. Mackenzie—the “awful” -campaigner—was called in to nurse him with the aid of poor -little Rosey. Fitzroy Square is so old that its gloomy -houses must have known much sorrow; but we doubt if any of them -has seen anything more pitiable than the humiliation of Colonel -Newcome, or anything crueller than the remorseless tyranny of the -“campaigner” and her fierce temper—the -“campaigner,” who was all smiles, coquetry, and -amiability, until prosperity fled from those who had been her -benefactors, when she suddenly revealed all the <a -name="page59"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 59</span>pettiness and -harshness of her termagant soul.</p> -<p>Three streets away from the Square is Howland street, to which -Clive removed with his weak little wife and his spiteful -mother-in-law when disaster fell upon him; and every reader of -Thackeray will remember how Pendennis, Clive, and Boy went out to -meet the broken-hearted old man as he came along Guilford street -and Russell Square, from the Charterhouse to eat his last -Christmas dinner.</p> -<p>When we close the history of Colonel Newcome we ask ourselves -if any man who moves our hearts as Thackeray does, could be a -cynic? Cynicism is a withering of the heart, the exhaustion -of a shallow moral nature, the self-consciousness of an ignoble -mind. But what pathos is so spontaneous, so genuine, so -lasting as Thackeray’s—so free from the literary -trickery which may <a name="page60"></a><span class="pagenum">p. -60</span>produce tears in youth, but only provokes a smile when -age has dulled the feelings and opened the eyes to -artifice. Among all English authors the writer of this -little book, at least, does not recognize one who is more -unaffectedly tender than this great Social preacher, who speaks -with unflinching candour of evil, but glorifies all good, and -reads with unfeigned pity the lessons of life.</p> -<h2><a name="page61"></a><span class="pagenum">p. -61</span>VII.</h2> -<p>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 <a name="page62"></a><span -class="pagenum">p. 62</span>the testy lexicographer is from the -contemporaneous prints of old Temple Bar.</p> -<p>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 -<a name="page63"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 63</span>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 <a name="page64"></a><span -class="pagenum">p. 64</span>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.</p> -<p>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 <a name="page65"></a><span -class="pagenum">p. 65</span>neutral temper, the pervading spirit -of his criticism springs from a deep-welled charitableness.</p> -<p>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 <i>Dr. Martin Luther</i> 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 <a -name="page66"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 66</span>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.</p> -<p>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 <a name="page67"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 67</span>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.</p> -<p>Thackeray’s name appears on the roll of the -Athenæum as that of a barrister; but he was elected in 1851 -as “author of <i>Vanity Fair</i>, <i>Pendennis</i>, and -other well-known works of fiction.”</p> -<p>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 <a name="page68"></a><span -class="pagenum">p. 68</span>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.”</p> -<p>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 <a name="page69"></a><span class="pagenum">p. -69</span>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 <i>Jack Brag</i> was capable of that Thackeray enlivened the -friends who gathered around him.</p> -<p>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 -<a name="page70"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 70</span>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.</p> -<p>He was a <i>bon vivant</i>: 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 -<a name="page71"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 71</span>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.</p> -<p>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 <a -name="page72"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 72</span>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. <a -name="citation72"></a><a href="#footnote72" -class="citation">[72]</a></p> -<p><a name="page73"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 73</span>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 <a name="page74"></a><span -class="pagenum">p. 74</span>fitful, as if the pleasure he derived -was dubious.</p> -<p>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.</p> -<p>The south-west corner of the South <a name="page75"></a><span -class="pagenum">p. 75</span>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 <i>Esmond</i> and developing <i>The -Virginians</i>. 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.</p> -<p>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 <a name="page76"></a><span -class="pagenum">p. 76</span>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 <i>Barry -Lyndon</i>. 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 -<a name="page77"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 77</span>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 <i>Campaign</i> 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 <a name="page78"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 78</span>like -shadows than any in the nineteenth century throng which fills the -street.</p> -<p>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.</p> -<h2><a name="page79"></a><span class="pagenum">p. -79</span>VIII.</h2> -<p>Thackeray constantly mixes up real with fictitious names in -his descriptions. Some disguise was often necessary, and -sometimes even compulsory. He could not be as explicit or -as literal as Dickens, because most of his characters represented -a very different class. The latter could draw in detail the -house he selected as most appropriate for the occupation of -Sairey Gamp, because the actual tenants were not likely to find -him out, or, if they ever read his description, to quarrel with -it. But many of the clients whom Thackeray had to provide -with dwellings were great people, and <a name="page80"></a><span -class="pagenum">p. 80</span>could only be placed in great -neighbourhoods, where the houses are large, conspicuous, and -easily distinguished. He either had to omit any descriptive -detail, or to mask the actual place he had in mind by locating it -in some street or square with a fanciful name. Any student -of his works will have no difficulty, however, in finding Gaunt -House, Gaunt Square, and Great Gaunt street, if he makes a -personal search for them in Mayfair, though they are not -indicated in any map or directory.</p> -<p>Mayfair (let me say for the benefit of my readers who are so -unfortunate as not to knew London) is one of the three most -fashionable neighbourhoods of the great metropolis, and of the -three it is the most aristocratic and most ancient. It is, -as nearly as possible, a square, about half a mile wide and -three-quarters of a mile long, bounded at one end by Oxford <a -name="page81"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 81</span>street, with -its shops and plebeian traffic, at the other end by the most -delightful of London streets, Piccadilly; at one side by Bond -street, and at the other by Park Lane, the houses in which -overlook the beautiful expanse of Hyde Park. The names of -some of its streets have become synonymous with patrician pomp -and the affluence of inheritance. It is the highest heaven -of social aspiration, the most exalted object of worldly -veneration. This is the house of the Duke of Hawksbury; -this of the Earl of Tue-brook; that of Viscount Wallasey, and -that of Lord Arthur Bebbington. It is preëminently the -region of the “quality.” But let not the reader -suppose that it is a region of exterior splendor, of spacious -architecture, of brilliant appearance.</p> -<p>Belgravia is far grander to look at, and seems to possess -greater riches, and to use <a name="page82"></a><span -class="pagenum">p. 82</span>them more lavishly. Even -Tyburnia, the neighborhood to the north of Hyde Park, is more -suggestive of social eminence. Mayfair displays none of the -signs of the rude enjoyment and proud assertiveness which spring -from recent prosperity. It is old-fashioned, un-changing, -and dull. It is little different from what it was at the -beginning of the century, except that it is nearer decay, and -that febrile irruptions of modern Queen Anne architecture -occasionally vary the sombreness of its original style. The -physiognomy of its houses expresses a sort of torpor, as if -familiarity with honours were as wearisome as continuous -association with misfortune. They have an air of funereal -resignation. Many of the streets are short and narrow: many -of the houses are dingy. The ornaments are of a sepulchral -kind, such as urns over the door-ways, and funeral wreaths about -<a name="page83"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 83</span>the -porticoes. The blazoned heraldry of the hatchments has been -nearly extinguished by the smoke. At some doors there are -two incongruous obelisks, joined to the iron railing which -screens the basement, and the portico is extended to the -curb. But ornaments even as unsatisfactory as these are not -common, and most of the houses, with high fronts of blackened -brick and oblong windows, are unadorned, except by a few boxes of -flowers on the sills. The lackeys, with crimson -knee-breeches, white stockings, laced coats, buckled shoes, and -powdered hair, blaze in this gloom with a pyrotechnic -splendour. Occasionally, the uniform rows of smoky brick -and pointed stucco houses are overshadowed by a larger mansion, -shut within its own walls, and some of the streets enter spacious -squares, where there are sooty trees and grass and chirping -sparrows.</p> -<p><a name="page84"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 84</span>It is -possible that Thackeray had no exact place in mind when he wrote -of Gaunt House and Gaunt Square, but it is not likely. The -creatures of his imagination were flesh and blood to him, too -vital to be left without habitations. “All the world -knows,” he says in <i>Vanity Fair</i>, “that Gaunt -House stands in Gaunt Square, out of which Great Gaunt street -leads . . . Gaunt House occupies nearly a side of the -square. The remaining three sides consist of mansions which -have passed away into dowagerism. . . . It has a dreary -look, nor is Lord Steyne’s palace less dreary. All to -be seen of it is a vast wall in front, with rustic columns at the -great gate.” Berkeley Square almost exactly -corresponds with this description. Here are the gloomy -mansions, looking out on grass and trees which seem to belong to -a cemetery, and <a name="page85"></a><span class="pagenum">p. -85</span>here, immediately recognizable, is the palace, filling -nearly a side of the square, and shut within high walls to hide -what they inclose from the prying eyes of the passers, though the -upper stories can be seen from the opposite side of the -way. Here is the very gate, with heavy knockers, though the -rustic columns of Thackeray’s text have been replaced by -new ones of a different shape. We do not find in the middle -of the square the statue of Lord Gaunt, “in a three-tailed -wig, and otherwise habited like a Roman emperor,” but we -can identify almost every other detail of the picture. Now, -as this palace has long been occupied by a noble family, it would -not be just for us to mention the name of the house, lest some -undeserved reproach should thereby fall on the tenants; for, -while Thackeray described the locality with such faithful -elaboration <a name="page86"></a><span class="pagenum">p. -86</span>it is not to be inferred that he drew the character of -Lord Steyne from an actual person living in the neighbourhood; -nothing indeed, could be less probable.</p> -<p>He also speaks of the square as Shiverley Square, and briefly -mentions it in describing Becky’s drive to the house of Sir -Pitt Crawley: “Having passed through Shiverley Square into -Great Gaunt street, the carriage at length stopped at a tall, -gloomy house, between two other tall, gloomy houses, each with a -hatchment over the middle drawing-room window, as is the custom -in Great Gaunt street, in which gloomy locality death seems to -reign perpetual.”</p> -<p>Great Gaunt street is undoubtedly Hill street, which he -mentions specifically in another place as the home of Lady -Gaunt’s mother. Sometimes it was necessary for him to -invent a name, and when he did so <a name="page87"></a><span -class="pagenum">p. 87</span>he was peculiarly apt. Gaunt -Square seems a more fitting and descriptive name than Berkeley -Square, but he frequently varied the real with the fictitious -name with playful caprice.</p> -<p>It was in another of these queer old streets in Mayfair that -that wicked old fairy godmother, the Countess of Kew, lived, and -there (in Queen street) Ethel Newcome visited her, and was -instructed in the rigourous social code which unites fortune with -fortune, or fortune with rank, and which is by no means limited -to Mayfair or Belgravia, but finds expositors and adherents under -the bluer skies of America. Ethel herself lived with her -mother in Park Lane, the western boundary of Mayfair, and -assuredly the most attractive part of the region. Park Lane -has all of Hyde Park before its windows,—all the variegated -and plentifully stocked flower-beds of the <a -name="page88"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 88</span>Ring Road, -the wide sweep of grassy playground, and the knots of patriarchal -trees which give the Park one of its greatest charms. -Unlike most of the region behind it is cheerful; or, if not -exactly cheerful, it has not the mopish signs of withdrawal from -all natural human interests which are seen in many of the houses -in Gaunt Square and the tributary streets. Some of the -houses are small, with oriel windows, and little balconies filled -with flower-pots; some of them are palatial in size and -decoration; but all of them are fashionable, and elderly -bachelors are known to give incredibly large prices for the -smallest possible quarters under the roof of the meanest of -them. The exteriors are not of the sooty brick which -characterizes Hill street, but of plaster, which is annually -repainted in drab or cream colour at the beginning of each -season. What with the flowers of <a name="page89"></a><span -class="pagenum">p. 89</span>the Park and the gardens which lie -before some of the houses, Park Lane seems a fitting abode for -those who are fortunate both in birth and in wealth; it is as -patrician as any other part of Mayfair, and it relieves itself of -the gloom which seems to be considered an inevitable accessory of -respectability elsewhere.</p> -<p>In one of these houses—which one it is not easy to say, -as Thackeray has given us no clue—Lady Ann Newcome lived, -and at it Mrs. Hobson Newcome looked from afar with an envy which -betrayed itself in her constant reiterations of her contentment -with her own circumstances. Mrs. Hobson lived in Bryanston -Square, a dingily verdant quadrangle north of Oxford street, near -which Clive had a studio; and J. J. Ridley, Fred Bayham, Miss -Cann, and the Rev. Charles Honeyman, lodged together in Walpole -street, Mayfair. The Rev. <a name="page90"></a><span -class="pagenum">p. 90</span>Charles Honeyman’s chapel was -close by, and before the story of <i>Vanity Fair</i> reached its -end there was a charitable lady in the congregation who wrote -hymns and called herself Lady Crawley, and from whom William -Dobbin and Amelia Sedley, now united, shrunk as they passed her -at the fancy fair, recognizing in that altered person the -dreadful Becky.</p> -<p>In the eyes of the lover of Thackeray, no character of history -or fiction has lent more interest to Mayfair than Becky, to which -neighbourhood she came with her husband some two or three years -after their return from Paris, establishing herself in “a -very small, comfortable house in Curzon street,” and -demonstrating to the world the useful and interesting art of -living on nothing a year. There is more than one small -house in Curzon street, but among them all Becky’s is -unmistakable. It is <a name="page91"></a><span -class="pagenum">p. 91</span>on the south side of the street, near -the western end, and only a few doors farther east than the house -in which Lord Beaconsfield died. It is four stories and a -half high, and is built of blackish brick like its neighbours, -with painted sills and portico. Its extreme narrowness, -compared with its height, especially distinguishes it: the front -door, with drab pilasters and a moulded architrave, is just half -its width, and only leaves room for one parlour window on the -first floor. One can see over the railings into the -basement and through the kitchen windows. Phantoms appear -to us in all the windows—the ghost of Becky herself, -dressed in a pink dress, her shapely arms and shoulders wrapped -in gauze; her ringlets hanging about her neck; her feet peeping -out of the crisp folds of silk—“the prettiest little -feet in the prettiest little sandals in the finest silk stockings -<a name="page92"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 92</span>in the -world.” It was in this cozy little domicile that the -arch little hypocrite entertained Lord Steyne, whose house in -Gaunt Square is only a few hundred yards distant, and Rawdon -fleeced young Southdown at cards. No one can help smiling -at the remembrances that come upon him in looking at those -basement windows. No one who has read <i>Vanity Fair</i> is -likely to forget the picture of the sensual marquis gazing into -the kitchen and seeing no one there just before he knocks at the -door, where he is met by Becky, who is as fresh as a rose from -her dressing-table, and who excuses her pretended dishabille by -saying that she has just come out of the kitchen, where she has -been making pie, to which palpable lie the marquis gives an -audacious affirmation by adding that he saw her there as he came -in!</p> -<p>This little house was chosen for that <a -name="page93"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 93</span>scene in -which Thackeray’s genius rises to its highest point of -dramatic intensity; and so many literary pilgrims come to peep at -it that the tenants must be annoyed, though the policeman on the -beat has become so accustomed to them that he no longer eyes them -cornerwise or suspects them of burglarious intentions.</p> -<h2><a name="page94"></a><span class="pagenum">p. -94</span>IX.</h2> -<p>The places with which Thackeray was personally associated are -more interesting, perhaps, than the scenes of his novels. -In 1834, he lived in Albion street, near Hyde Park Gardens, and -it was there that he, a young man of twenty-three, began to -contribute to <i>Fraser’s Magazine</i>. In 1837, then -newly married, he lived in Great Coram street, close by the -Foundling Hospital. As I have stated, he had chambers at -No. 10, Crown Office Row, in the Temple, and at No. 88, St. -James’s street, both of which buildings are now -demolished. When he had become a successful author, <a -name="page95"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 95</span>he lived in -Brompton and Kensington, and at the latter place, to which he was -greatly attached, he died. He was at No. 36, Onslow Square, -Brompton, when he unsuccessfully offered himself as member of -Parliament for Oxford, and two years later, when he began to -discover the thorns in the editorial cushion of the <i>Cornhill -Magazine</i>. Mr. James Hodder, his private secretary, has -given us an interesting glimpse of him as he was while in Onslow -Square:—</p> -<blockquote><p>“Duty called me to his bed-chamber every -morning, and as a general rule I found him up and ready to begin -work, though he was sometimes in doubt and difficulty as to -whether he should commence sitting, or standing, or walking, or -lying down. Often he would light a cigar, and, after pacing -the room for a few minutes, would put the unsmoked remnant on the -mantel-piece and resume his work with increased cheerfulness, as -if <a name="page96"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 96</span>he -gathered fresh inspiration from the gentle odours of the sublime -tobacco.”</p> -</blockquote> -<p>Little wonder that he liked Kensington. It is the -pleasantest of the many pleasant London suburbs. Though it -is not four miles from Charing Cross, to which it is knitted by -continuous streets and houses, it is like a thriving country -town, old-fashioned, but prosperous, with shops as brilliant and -as well stocked as those of Regent street, and with many -evidences of antiquity, but none of decay. There are lofty -new buildings and old ones, behind the modernized fronts of which -you can see leaded dormer windows, angular chimney-pots, and -bowed-down roofs of red tiles. There are many weather-worn -but splendid mansions shut within their own high walls, and some -in less sequestered gardens. The place is famous for its -fine old trees and open spaces of verdure. Holland House is -<a name="page97"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 97</span>here, and -the palace in which Queen Victoria was born, with the beautiful -and deeply wooded gardens adjoining Hyde Park. The -inhabitants of the old suburb have had many illustrious persons -among them; and Thackeray is one of those best and most -affectionately remembered.</p> -<p>His tall, commanding figure was often seen in the old High -street, moving along erect, with a firm, stately tread, though -his dress was somewhat careless and loose-fitting; his large, -candid face was serious and almost severe as he walked on engaged -in meditation, but, being awakened from his reverie by the voice -of a friend, a glad smile quickly overspread it and illuminated -it. He had many friends among his neighbors, and often sat -down to dinner with them. He attended regularly the nine -o’clock services in the old parish church on Sunday -mornings.</p> -<p><a name="page98"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 98</span>From -1847 to 1853, Thackeray lived in the bay-windowed house known as -the “Cottage,” at No. 13 (now No. 16) Young street, -and in it <i>Vanity Fair</i>, <i>Esmond</i>, and <i>Pendennis</i> -were written. There are few houses in the great city which -possess a more brilliant record than this. Most of his work -was done in a second-story room, overlooking an open space of -gardens and orchards; and the gentleman who at present occupies -the house has placed an entablature under the window -commemorating the genius that has consecrated it. Between -the dates, 1847 and 1853, the initials W. M. T. are grouped in a -monogram in the centre of the entablature, and in the border the -names of <i>Vanity Fair</i>, <i>Esmond</i>, and <i>Pendennis</i>, -are inscribed. Just across the street Miss Thackeray (Mrs. -Ritchie) now lives, in full view of her old home, and in her -charming novel <i>Old </i><a name="page99"></a><span -class="pagenum">p. 99</span><i>Kensington</i>, she affectionately -calls Young street “dear old street!” There is -no doubt that the happiest years of Thackeray’s life were -spent in the old, bow-windowed cottage. <a -name="citation99"></a><a href="#footnote99" -class="citation">[99]</a></p> -<p>I have talked with many persons who knew him intimately, and -under various circumstances. All speak of him in one -way,—of his gentleness, his kindliness, his sincerity, and -his generosity. “That man had the heart of a -woman!” fervidly said one who was his next-door neighbour -for several years. This gentleman, Dr. J. J. <a -name="page100"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 100</span>Merriman, -whose family have lived in Kensington Square since 1794, -possesses a number of valuable souvenirs of the great author, -including some unpublished letters, in one of which Thackeray -regrets that he has not seen the doctor for some time, and -characteristically adds: “I wish <i>Vanity Fair</i> were -not so big or we performers in it so busy; then we might see each -other and shake hands once in a year or so.” On one -occasion the doctor begged him to write his name in a copy of -<i>Vanity Fair</i> which Thackeray had given him, and the latter -not only did this, but made an exquisite little drawing on the -title-page, than which the book could not have a more suggestive -or appropriate frontispiece. A little boy and girl are -seated on the ground, one blowing bubbles and the other hugging a -doll, while behind them looms up the portentous mile-stone of -life.</p> -<p><a name="page101"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 101</span>The -“dear old street,” as Miss Thackeray calls it, ends -in Kensington Square, which is full of old houses, to each of -which some historic interest belongs. The square was built -in the latter part of the seventeenth century, and in one of the -old houses Lady Castlewood, Beatrice, and Colonel Esmond lived, -and there sheltered the reckless and unscrupulous Pretender. <a -name="citation101"></a><a href="#footnote101" -class="citation">[101]</a></p> -<p>In 1853, Thackeray left Kensington and went to live in Onslow -Square, Brompton; but he came back to the old court suburb in -1861, and occupied the fine new house which he had built for -himself in the Palace Gardens. It is the second house on -the west side of the street, a substantial mansion of red brick, -adjoining a much more <a name="page102"></a><span -class="pagenum">p. 102</span>picturesque and older house covered -with ivy; and it was here that he died suddenly on December 24, -1863, in the room at the south-east corner of the second -story. The last time that I saw it, an auctioneer’s -flag was hung out, and the broker’s men were playing -billiards in the lofty northern extension which Thackeray built -for a library, and in which he wrote <i>Denis Duval</i>.</p> -<p>Thackeray was buried in Kensal Green cemetery in the -north-west of London, and was followed to the grave by Dickens, -Browning, Millais, Trollope, and many who knew the goodness of -the soul that had been called away. Kensal Green is as -unattractive as a burial ground could be. It is like a -prison-yard, with few trees, and inclosed by high brick -walls. But its numerous tenantry include many who have -worked faithfully and well in literature and <a -name="page103"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 103</span>art; and -surrounded by the memorials of these is one of the simplest -tombstones in the place, inscribed with two dates and the name of -William Makepeace Thackeray.</p> -<h2>FOOTNOTES.</h2> -<p><a name="footnote5"></a><a href="#citation5" -class="footnote">[5]</a> Mr. R. R. Bowker.</p> -<p><a name="footnote15"></a><a href="#citation15" -class="footnote">[15]</a> The school was founded by Thomas -Sutton, a rich merchant, in 1611. The buildings which are -mostly of the 16th Century, had been used until the Reformation, -as a monastery of Carthusian monks. -“Charterhouse” is a corruption of Chartreuse, and the -scholars still call themselves Carthusians.</p> -<p><a name="footnote19"></a><a href="#citation19" -class="footnote">[19]</a> Several relics of Thackeray are -preserved in the new school at Godalming, including some pen and -ink sketches made by him, and five volumes containing all the -existing MS. of <i>The Newcomes</i>. The MS. is written -partly in his own hand, partly in the hand of Miss Anne Thackeray -(now Mrs. Ritchie), and partly in another hand. Several -stones on which some of the old scholars, including Thackeray, -carved their names, have also been removed from the old school in -London to the new one.</p> -<p><a name="footnote29"></a><a href="#citation29" -class="footnote">[29]</a> One day, while the great novel of -<i>The Newcomes</i> was in course of publication, Lowell, who was -then in London, met Thackeray in the street. The novelist -was serious in manner, and his looks and voice told of weariness -and affliction. He saw the kindly inquiry in the -poet’s eyes, and said, “Come into Evans’s, and -I’ll tell you all about it. <i>I have killed the -Colonel</i>!” So they walked in, and took a table in -a remote corner, and then Thackeray, drawing the fresh sheets of -MS. from his breast pocket, read through that exquisitely -touching chapter, which records the death of Colonel -Newcome. When he came to the final <i>Adsum</i>, the tears -which had been swelling his lids for some time, trickled down his -face, and the last word was almost an inarticulate -sob.—<span class="smcap">F. H. Underwood</span>, in -<i>Harper’s Magazine</i>.</p> -<p><a name="footnote42"></a><a href="#citation42" -class="footnote">[42]</a> Mr. Edmund Yates states in his -interesting <i>Memoirs of a Man of the World</i>, that the Cider -Cellars, next to the stage door of the Adelphi, was the prototype -of the Back Kitchen, immortalized in <i>Pendennis</i>. The -Cave of Harmony, frequently mentioned by Thackeray, was sketched -from Evans’s, in Covent Garden.</p> -<p><a name="footnote72"></a><a href="#citation72" -class="footnote">[72]</a> “One day, many years ago, I -saw him chaffing on the sidewalk in London, in front of the -Athenæum Club, with a monstrous-sized, ‘copiously -ebriose’ cabman, and I judged from the driver’s -ludicrously careful way of landing the coin deep down in his -breeches-pocket, that Thackeray had given him a very unusual -fare. ‘Who is your fat friend?’ I asked, -crossing over to shake hands with him. ‘O! that -indomitable youth is an old crony of mine,’ he replied; and -then, quoting Falstaff, ‘a goodly portly man, i’ -faith, and a corpulent, of a cheerful look, a pleasing eye, and a -most noble carriage.’ It was the <i>manner</i> of -saying this, then and there, in the London street, the cabman -moving slowly off on his sorry vehicle, with one eye (an eye dewy -with gin and water, and a tear of gratitude, perhaps) on -Thackeray, and the great man himself so jovial and so full of -kindness!”—<i>Yesterdays with -Authors</i>. <span class="smcap">J. T. -Fields</span>.</p> -<p><a name="footnote99"></a><a href="#citation99" -class="footnote">[99]</a> “I once made a pilgrimage -with Thackeray (at my request, of course, the visits were -planned) to the various houses where his books had been written; -and I remember, when we came to Young street, Kensington, he -said, with mock gravity, ‘Down on your knees, you rogue, -for here <i>Vanity Fair</i> was penned! And I will go down -with you, for I have a high opinion of that little production -myself.’”—<i>Yesterdays with Authors</i>. -<span class="smcap">J. T. Fields</span>.</p> -<p><a name="footnote101"></a><a href="#citation101" -class="footnote">[101]</a> Kensington Square has had many -celebrated inhabitants, including Talleyrand, Joseph Addison, the -Duchess of Mazarin, and Archbishop Herring.</p> -<pre> - - - - -***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THACKERAY'S LONDON*** - - -***** This file should be named 62280-h.htm or 62280-h.zip****** - - -This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: -http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/6/2/2/8/62280 - - -Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions will -be renamed. - -Creating the works from print editions not protected by U.S. copyright -law means that no one owns a United States copyright in these works, -so the Foundation (and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United -States without permission and without paying copyright -royalties. 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