Thackeray: The Age of Wisdom 1847-1863 [2]

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THACKERAY BOOKS BY GORDON N. RAY

THE AGE OF WISDOM

The Letters and Priva te Papers of William Makepeace Thackeray. Four Volumes. z 945-1 946 The Rose and the Ring Reproduced in Facsimile from the Author's Original Manuscript in the Pierpont Morgan Library. 1947 The Buried Life. A Study ol the Relation between Thackeray's Fiction and His Personal History. 1952 Thackeray's Contributions to the "Morning Chronicle." 1955 Thackeray. The Uses of Adversity. 1811-1846. 1955

GORDON N. RAY

Thackeray. The Age of Wisdom. 1847-1863. z 958 Henry J ames and H. G. Wells (with Leon Edel) . z958 IN PREPARATION

The Life of H. G. Wells

LONDON

CJ.x/ord' 6lfnzPersz"ty gres.r 1958

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Oxford University Press, Amen House, London E.C.4 GLASGOW NEW YORK TORONTO MELBO URNE WELLINGTON BOMBAY CALCUTfA MADRAS KARACHI KUALA LUMPUR CAPE TOWN IBADAN NAIROBI ACCRA

Copyright

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1958 by the McGraw-Hill Book Company, Inc.

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.... UNIVERSITY OF YORK

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STor GWEN AND HENNING LARSEN

Preface This volume completes the only full-length biography of William Makepeace Thackeray ever authorized by his family. As with its predecessor, Thackeray : The Uses of Adversity, I have benefited throughout its preparation from the assistance of Mrs. Richard Fuller and Mr. W. T . D. Ritchie, his granddaughter and grandson. My edition of Thackeray's Letters has served as the foundation of my work, but I have also made very substantial use of the extensive manuscript material, described in my preface to Th e Uses of Adversity, which reached me after the publication of that edition. I have incorporated in this book certain of my earlier writings on Thackeray, notably passages from The Buried Life, and from my introduction to the Modern Library College Edition of Esmond in Chapter 6, and most of my PMLA article of December, i954, "Dickens Versus Thackeray: The Garrick Club Affair," in Chapter g. The Age of Wisdom differs from The Uses of Adversity in having as its subject "the finished man," to use Yeats's dis tinction, rather than "the unfinished man." Since it deals with what Thackeray was, rather than how he became what he was, it does not offer quite the variety of incident which led one amiable reviewer to declare that The Uses of Adversity "reads like a novel"; but it provides in compensation a deeper insight into Thackeray's character. "Adversity is sometimes hard upon a man," Carlyle once said; "but for one man who can stand prosperity, there are a hundred that will stand adversity." This book tells the story of how Thackeray met that subtler challenge. My subtitle is drawn from a ballad in which Thackeray describes how vii

Preface

Vlll

Grizzling hair the brain doth clear- ..• Once you have come to Forty Year. He was persuaded that "a shrewd and generous man (who has led an honest life and has no secret blushes for his conscience) grows simpler as he grows older; arrives at his sum of right by more rapid processes of calculation; learns to eliminate false arguments more readily, and hits the mark of truth with less previous trouble of aiming and disturbance of mind." But Thackeray was not an Olympian. Indeed, he once remarked, "If Goethe is a god, I'm sure I'd rather go to the other place." His wisdom lay rather in his remarkable understanding of the necessary limitations of workaday life and average human nature; and even in this area, as the reader will discover before he proceeds very far, it was sometimes belied by the actions into which he was led by his sensitive impulsiveness. When Thackeray told his American friend Mrs. Baxter, "Pendennis is very like me," she objected: "Surely, not, ... for Pendennis was so weak!" "Ah, well, Mrs. Baxter," he replied, "your humble servant is not very strong." Certainly no one would have found a more pungent relish in the sometimes ironical overtones of The Age of Wisdom as a description of his later life than Thackeray himself. Since most of the obligations which I contracted while writing Thackeray's biography are listed in my preface to The Uses of Adversity, I shall confine my present acknowledgments to reiterating my gratitude to Mrs. Fuller and Mr. Ritchie, to thanking Mr. Edward Aswell for his kind and expert services while a vice-president of the McGraw-Hill Book Company, and to recording that my friends Professor Gordon S. Haight of Yale University and Professor G. Blakemore Evans of the University of Illinois have once more put me in their debt by reading the proofs of this book. G.N.R. UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS II

November I957

Contents vii

Preface I

Old K ensington

2

The Great W orld

3

"Longing Passion Un fulfilled"

4

Horace in London

5

9

25 92 131

The Literary Life

Esmond

168 195 7 America 8 The N ewcomes 6

I

222

Changing Social Attitudes

IO

The Cornhill Magazine

II

A Portrait of Thackeray in L ater Life 322

I2

Later W ritings

I3

Palace G reen

r4

Epilogue

37 1 391

419

Notes

433

Index

5°3

250 291

58

List of Illustrations (Names of owners of originals from which illustrations have been reproduced are noted in parentheses.) FOLLOWING PAGE 144

1.

Th ackeray in 1852 From a chalk sketch by Samuel Laurence (Mrs. James Ritchie)

II. 13

Young Street From a p en-and-ink sketch by Eyre Crowe

m . Thackeray and Anny in 1848 From a note to John Leech IV.

A valentine From a note to Henry Cole, I4 February I852

v. The silver Punch given Thackeray by his Edinburgh admirers (Mrs. Fuller) VI.

VII.

"A View of Y~ Nursery-Garden at Hatton in Midd•" From a note to the Pollocks J ane Brookfield on her sofa From a pen-and-ink sketch by Thackeray (Mr. William Ritchie) Magdalene, William, and Jane Brookfield From a pen-and-ink sketch by Thackeray (Mr. William Ritchie)

xi

List of Illustrations

Xll

vm. Clevedon Court From a photograp h (the author) IX.

A pictorial comme ntary on the prospectus of a genteel school drawn for Mrs. Procter From a pen-and-ink sketch by Thackeray (Major MurraySmith)

x. The h alf-title of a presentation copy of The Kickleburys on the Rhine (B erg Collection)

x1. Thackeray full length From a statuette by Sir Edgar Boehm (National Portrait Gallery) xn. George Smith From an oil painting by G. F. Watts XIII.

Anthony Trollope in 1864 From a chalk drawing by Samuel Laurence (the author)

xiv. First draft of Thackeray's letter to Edmund Yates of 12 June 1858 (Mr. W. T. D. Ritchie) xv. A scene in Switzerland in 1859 From a water-color in Thackeray's sketch-book (Mrs. Fuller) xvi. Thackeray looking at prints From a pen-and-ink sketch xvn. Thackeray about 1860 From a photograph (Houghton Library) XVIII.

Major and Mrs. Carmichael-Smyth about 1860 From pencil sketches by Anny Thackeray (M r. W. T. D. Ritchie)

xix. Anny Thackeray, Henrietta Cole, Minny Thackeray, and Laetitia Cole From a photograph (the author)

List of Illustrations xx.

2

Palace Green From a pen-and-ink sketch by Thackeray (Mr. W. T. D. Ritchie)

The stairway at 2 Palace Green From a photograph (the author) Thackeray's chair, armoire, and drawing table From a photograph (the author) xx1. Thackeray in 1862 From a chalk drawing by Samuel Laurence executed in r864 (the author) Thackeray in 1863 From a photograph xxn. Anny Thackeray about 1864 From a photograph (the author) xxm. Minny Thackeray about 1864 From a photograph (the author)

Xlll

THACKERAY THE AGE OF WISDOM 1847 -

1863

Old Kensington I

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PART OF LONDON is more closely associated with Thackeray than Kensington. In or near this borough he maintained a r esidence for the last seventeen years of his life, from 1846 until 1853 at 13 Young Street, from. 1854 until 1862 at 36 Onslow Square, and in 1862 and 1863 at 2 Palace Green. 1 But Thackeray's Kensington was quite unlike the modern borough. In his time Kensington was still an "old court suburb," which, though no longer in "the country-a stagecoach between us and London passing four times a day," was " not as yet in the town." 2 Approaching Kensington from Hyde Park Corner, Leigh Hunt used to fancy "that the air, somehow, feels not only fresher, but whiter." 3 Houses lined the high road, it was true, but along Kensington Gore, at least, they occupied only one side of the way. And if Kensington High Street and Square were built up, to the south lay open fields , to the west the grounds of Holland House, and to the north the gardens of Kensington Palace. The atmosphere of the borough during the 1840s is best captured by Thackeray's older daughter Anny in the early pages of her finest novel, Old Kensington:

In those days the lanes spread to Fulham, white with blossom in spring, or golden with the yellow London sunsets that blazed beyond the cabbage-fields. In those days there were gardens, and trees, and I

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Tha ckeray : Th e Age of Wisdom

great walls along the high-road that came from London, passing through the old white turnpike. There were high brown walls along Kensington Gardens, reaching to the Palace Gate; elms spread their shade, and birds chirrupped, and the children played behind them. .. . The mist of the great city hid the horizon and dulled the sound of the advancing multitudes; but close at hand . .. were country corners untouched-blossoms instead of bricks in spring-time, summer shade in summer. There were strawberry-beds, green, white, and crimson in turn . .. . I believe that in those days there were sheep grazing in Kensington Gore. It is certain that Mr. Penfold kept Alderneys in the field beyond his orchard; and that they used to come and drink in a pond near his cottage ... in the window [of which] . .. a little card was put up, announcing that "Curds-andwhey were to be had wi thin." 4 Even Kensington High Street had the pleasant air of a country town, since its buildings were for the most part old and modest in size. Everywhere in this rustic ambiance were reminders of former splendour. Kensington Square, largely built during the seventeenth century, had been one of London's great centers of animation. It is recorded that once "upwards of for ty carriages were kept in and about the neighborhood," and "the demand for lodgings was so great that an ambassador, a bishop, and a physician, were known to occupy apartments in the same house." Long since deserted by fashion, Kensington Square had become by Thackeray's time a faded region of "obsolete-looking, though respectable houses, such as seem made to become boardingschools." Two notable show-places remained, however: Kensington Palace and Holland House. Leigh Hunt suggests that, if the Palace was undistinguished architecturally, it at least had about it an air of "Dutch solidity . . . [and] English comfort," which gave it "a sort of homely firesid e character," appropr iate enough to the sovereigns from William III to G eorge II, who had lived there, and to the royal dukes and superannuated functionaries whose needs it was subsequently made to serve. The great days of Holland House had ended with the death of the third Baron Holland in i 840, but its antique red brick exterior set Thackeray's mind running on the worthies who had once made this noble mansion illustrious, from Addison,

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OLD KENSINGTON

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Charles James Fox, and Sheridan, to the brilliant Whig society of Macaulay's early years. Certainly Holland House had many legends calculated to catch Thackeray's imagination: that of "lovely black-haired Sarah Lennox" lying in wait for the future George III and "making hay at him in the lawn," for example, or that of Addison composing his Spectator papers between two bottles of wine in the magnificent library, an apartment go feet long by i 7 feet wide, "comforting his ethics by taking a glass of each as he arrived at each end of the room ." 5 Indeed, one can imagine that as he strode about Kensin gton, Thackeray re-created for himself the whole of a b ygone society, much as Leigh Hunt does in his Old Court Suburb: Here .. . stands a beauty, looking out of a window; there a wit, talking with other wits at a garden-gate; there, a poet on the green sward, glad to get out of the London smoke, and find himself among trees. Here come De Veres of the times of old; Hollands and Davenants, of the Stuart and Cromwell times; Evelyn peering about him soberly, and Samuel Pepys in a bustle. Here advance Prior, Swift, Arbuthnot, ~ay'. Sir Isaac Newton; Steele from visiting Addison, W alpole from vlSltmg the Foxes, Johnson from a dinner with Elphinstone, Junius from a communication with Wilkes. Here, in his carriage, is King William the Third, going from the Palace to open parliament; Queen Anne, for the same purpose; George the First, George the Second . . . ; and there, from out of Kensington C:ardens, comes bustling, as if the whole recorded polite world were m flower at one and the same period, all the fashion of the gayes t times of those sovereigns, blooming with chintzes, fullblown with hoop-petticoats, towering with top-knots and toupees. H~re c~mes "Lady Mary," quizzing everybody, and Lady Suffolk, lookmg discreet; there the lovely Bellendens and Lepels; there Miss Howe, laughing with Nancy Lowther (who made her very grave af~erwards); ~here Chesterfield, H anbury Williams, Lord Hervey; Miss Chudle1gh, not overclothed; the Miss Cunnings, drawing cr?wds of admirers; and here is George Selwyn in terchanging wit with my Lady Townshend, the "Lady Bellaston" (so, at least, it has been said) of "Tom Jones." 6 Not that the Kensington society of his own time failed to provide Thackeray with abundant material for meditation. He

4

Thacheray: The Age of Wisdom

knew intimately the Kensington world of the i84os, a world "somewhat apart from the big uneasy world surging beyond the turnpike-a world of neighbours bound together by the old winding streets and narrow comers in a community of venerable elm-trees and traditions that are almost levelled away," 7 and he preserved it for posterity in the sharp vignettes of Our Street, where Kensington Square and Young Street are faithfully presented under the names of Pocklington Square and Waddilove Street. 8 Nor did he omit to mention the "infants [who] are the spawn of the alleys about our Street," remarking, however, that "only the parson and the typhus fever visit those mysterious haunts which lie couched about our splendid houses like Lazarus at the threshold of Dives." 9 Anny Thackeray and Leigh Hunt also emphasize this omnipresent Victorian juxtaposition. The former describes at length "the dirty little back streets and by-lanes behind Kensington square," where the poor existed as best they could in "queer huddled-up houses." 10 The latter notes that a Rookery which bore comparison with St. Giles's was located just off the High Street. Here about a thousand men and women, whose "ragged and dissolute looks ... present a painful contrast to the general decency," were crammed "into a place which ought not to contain a hundred." 11 Young Street partook somewhat of this mixed atmosphere, being "a shabby street, with shops at one end and old-fashioned houses stone-stepped, bow-windowed at the other," though there lingered about it, at least for Thackeray and his daughters, "an echo ... of the quaint and stately music of the past." 12 Thackeray's house was number i 3 (it still resists the everthreatening encroachments of modern commerce as number i6), a comfortable and commodious structure with bow windows on each side of the front door. The red brick had recently been painted white, in compliment, it would appear, to the "splendid new white-stuccoed, Doric-porticoed" houses springing up around it. 13 The basement supplied ample accommodations for servants. On the ground floor were drawing-room, dining-room, and Thackeray's study. The first of these, "with the bow windows, the oak-leaved carpet, the polished book case with its glass doors," and the round table in the middle "with

OLD KENSINGTON

5

its dial of books arrayed in a circle," was most cozy and agreeable. The books included bound volumes of Punch, "the lovely red silk Annuals and Keepsakes," and the latest works in ~elles-lettres, such as Ruskin's Seven LamjJs of Architecture, which Anny remembered as "a volume bound (so it seemed to us children) in moulded slabs of pure chocolate." 14 An unexpected ornament of the little drawing-room was a bust of George IV on the mantelpiece. When Bedingfield expressed his astonishment at finding the effigy of this monarch in the home of his arch-enemy, Thackeray laugh ingly explained: "Yes, the other day I noticed it in a friend's house, and exclaimed, 'What! have yo u got that snob?' The next morning I found it here." 1s Thackeray's study was at the back of the house. A vine, which he never tired of drawing, shaded his two windows; and he looked out, Anny relates, upon "the bit of garden, and the medlar tree, and the Spanish jessamines of which the yellow flowers scented our old brick walls." On the first floor were guest rooms and Thackeray's bedroom (over his study); on the second floor were further rooms for the servants and a bedroom and schoolroom for Anny and Minny, the latter over Thackeray's bedroom. I liked the top schoolroom the best of all the rooms in the dear old

hou~e [~nn~ recalls]; the sky was in it and the evening bells used

to rm.g mto. rt across the garden, and seemed to come in dancing and clanging wrtl~ the sunset; ~nd th~ floor sloped so, that if you put down a ball rt would roll m a leisurely way right across the room of its own acco:d. And th ~n there was a mys tery-a small trap-door between the wmdows which we never could open. Where did not that t:rap-door lead to! It was the gateway of Paradise, of many paradrs~s to us. We kept our dolls, our bricks, our books, our baby houses m the top room, and most of our stupid little fancies. . The garden behind the house "was not tidy" perhaps, "but it was full of sweet things." In addition to those already mentioned, " there were verbenas-red, blue, and scented; and there were lovely stacks of flags, blades of gTeen with purple heads between, and bunches of London Pride growing luxuriantly; and there were some blush roses at the end of the garden, which were not always quite eaten up by the caterpillars." io Here

Thackeray: The Age of Wisdom

OLD KENSINGTON

Minny loved to dance about on the little green lawn , her long, thick curls shining like a burning bush, to feed her cats from saucers placed in a row on the terrace under Thackeray's study, and to dig "deep holes w'1 she meant to reach the centre of the earth," while Anny watched her fondly from the window.17

was at least a very affectionate child, loving dearly a doll "with long eyel~shes & a wax neck"; keeping "a menagerie of snails and flies m the sunny window-sill [of the schoolroom] , these latter, chie~y in~alids. rescued out of milk jugs, [lying] upon rose-leaves m various little pots and receptacles"; and displaying great de~otion to. the Kensington cats, which she "used to adopt and christen .. . m turn by the names of her favourite heroes; she had Nicholas Nickleby, a huge grey tabby, and Martin Chuzzlewit, and a poor little half-starved Barnaby Rudge, and many others." 8 Minny too was clever, but in a different way from Anny. The sentimental enthusiasms which sometimes distracted her older sister never dimmed Minny's vision, and even as a girl she was remarkable for calmness of mind and delicate tact. As she grew older, Thackeray came more and more to regard her as the balance-wheel of the family. Since Thackeray liked "a lazy, liberal, not ex travagant but costly way of life," the domestic staff at 13 Young Street was never fewer than three-manservant, housekeeper-cook, and maid-and at one time expanded to five, the additions being a second maid and a coachman. 9 Two of these servants were fixtures for many years, Mrs. Gray the housekeeper and Eliza Jordan the maid, "who used to be very kind to us," Anny recalls, "& of who1'.1 we were very fond ." 10 After several years of driving about behmd a bony horse in "a bright blue fly, with a drab inside to it, and an old white coachman on the box," Thackeray "bought the whole concern," and sent Jackson, the driver, off "to be measured for a great coat" boasting buttons which "shone resplendent with the Thackeray crest." 11 It proved difficult to keep the manservant's position filled. John Goldsworthy h~d died in 1845; but on moving to Young Street Thackeray hired another "John," whom he needed to send "out on errands Y:i the day running backwards & forwards to printing offices." 12 The departure of this worthy introduced a troubled interregnum, the vicissitudes of which added verisimilitude to one of Thackeray's liveliest Punch papers, " Hobson's Choice: or the Tribulations of a Gen tleman in Search of a Man-Servant." 13 But in February, 1850, a few days after the concluding instalment of "Robson's Choice" appeared, Thackeray hired

6

I I Thackeray's daughters were at this time in "the great pinafore age," 1 ••• "very young folks standing on tip-toe to look at life, which they gazed at with respectful eyes, believing all things, hoping all things, and interested in all things beyond words or the power of words to describe." 2 Anny had become "a great sensible clever girl, with a very homely face, and a very good heart and a very good head and an uncommonly good opinion of herself as such clever people will sometimes have." Thackeray continually remarked upon her "brains," and was consoled for his inability to find and keep a satisfactory governess by the reflection that "with her particular bent and strong critical faculty, she will learn for herself more than most people can teach." 3 Her letters were so "clever humourous & wise" that they were "fit to be printed in a book"; and by 185 2, when she was fifteen, she had written "several novels and a tragedy." 4 Yet Anny had her cross to bear, for she was a plump girl (her candid father sometimes addressed her as "Fat" or "Fatty") whose blooming health was the most prepossessing aspect of her appearance. Thackeray imagined her saying to herself, quite humbly : "I am very plain & clumsy, I must try & make myself useful & liked by helping people." 5 Certainly she cherished and spoiled her "little sister," who was after all only three years younger than herself, humouring her occasional fits of ill temper, and constantly thinking of her welfare. Minny was a frai l, pretty girl, "willing, good-natured, honest, and disposed to do her best," 6 but timid and retiring. Lady Ritchie later described her as "the tenderest, faithfullest, and most unspeakably loving sister that any one ever had." 7 She

7

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Thacheray: The Age of Wisdom

Samuel James, who served him with matchless loyalty and devotion for two and a h alf years. . Thackeray realized from the fi_rst that h~ had a treasure. m James, "a capital man an attentive alert silent plate-cleaning intelligent fellow"; but only gradually did he become aware of the full range of James's abilities. Though a self_-e~u_cated man whose speech was still marked by Cockney peculiarities, he had read widely in both English and French literature; and Thackeray once told Mrs. Brookfield of receiving "a. letter ~rom Mr James, a composition as elegant a~ you could wri~e or lus R:verence." Thackeray found congemal both James s sturdy m~e­ pendence, which arose fro?1" his c~nsc~ousness of the disparity between his talents and his rank m life, and the reserve and melancholy of his demeanour which was no dou~t to ~e traced to an unhappy marriage with a wife who harried him ~r?m quarters nearby. At any rate, }"hackeray w~s soon writmg jestincrly to his daughters of James his Vice-regent upon earth,?' and James became a constant companion of his travels, regarded more as a friend than a servant.14 . Anny tells how it became a matter of senous concer:i to her and Minny that after a while James.seemed next to their father the most important member of the household. He was more than devoted. We used to think he was a sorce~er. He used to guess at my father's thoughts, plan for him, work for him, always knew before hand what he would like far be~ter th~n .we ever did. I remember that we almost cried on one occas10n, thmkl'.1g that our father would ultimately prefer him to us. He used to wnte to the papers, and sign his letters, "Jeames de la Pluche, i3 Young Street." "Like to see my last, miss?" he used to say, as he put down a paper on the schoolroom table. He was a very good and clever man, though a stern ruler. My father had a real fri~ndship and regard for him, and few of his friends ever de~erved it more. He lived alone downstairs, where he was treated with great deference, and had his meals served separately I believe. He always cal~ed my father "the Governor." He was a littl~ man, and was very like Holbein's picture of Sir Thomas More m looks. I ren:ember on one occasion coming away from some lecture or entertamment. ~s we got out into the street it was raining. "It ~ms turned cold," said my father, who was already beginning to be ill. At that moment a

OLD KENSINGTON

9

voice behind him said, "Coat, sir? Brought it down"; and there was De la Pluche, who had brought his coat all the way from Kensington, helping him on with it. My father thanked him, and then mechanically felt in the pocket for a possible cigar-case. "Cigar? Here," says De Ia Pluche, popping one into my father's mouth, and producing a match ready lighted.15 Even his devotion to Thackeray did not entirely reconcile James to domestic service, however; and in August, 1852, he elected to try his fortunes in Australia rather than accompany Thackeray to the United States. His farewell letter revealed a further instance of his thoughtfulness. Anny tells the story. Since 13 Young Street was more or less a bachelor's establishment, ... the arrangements of the house varied between a certain fastidiousness and the roughest simplicity. We had shabby table-cloths, alternating with some of my grandmother's fine linen; we had old Derby china for our dessert of dried figs and dry biscuits, and a silver Flaxman teapot (which always poured oblations of tea upon the cloth) for breakfast, also three cracked cups and saucers of unequal patterns and sizes. One morning, Jeames de Ia Pluche .. . brought in a hamper which had just arrived. When it was unpacked we found to our great satisfaction, that it contained a lovely breakfast array. A china bowl for my father's tea, ornamented with his initials in gold amid a trellis of roses; beautiful cups for the young ladies, lovely gilt milk-jugs, and a copy of verses, not written, but put together out of printed letters from the Times. I quote it from memory: Of esteem as a token Fate preserve it unbrokenA friend sends this tea-dish of porcelain rare. And with truth and sincerity Wishes health and prosperity To the famed M.A. Titmarsh of Vanity Fair. We could not imagine who the friend was from whom the opportune present had come. For many breakfasts we speculated and wondered, guessing one person and another in turn, while we sat at our now elegant board, of which Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes himself might have approved. In his letter James identified h imself as the donor and added Teproachfully : "I sent you the breakfast things; you guessed a

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Thackeray : The Age of Wisdom

great many people, but you never guessed they came from me." 16 On his departure James left behind both his wife, "who seems to have led him a sad life by her jealousy [Thackeray noted] and said most unkyind things rullative both to Eliza and Cook," 17 and their little boy. At first he found life very difficult in Melbourne, where he settled; but later he seems to have prospered. He followed Thackeray's career with great interest, sending him long letters in which his own troubled history was recounted and his former master's latest books criticized; and after Thackeray's death, he continued this correspondence with 18 Anny, who was still hearing from him occasionally in the i8gos. Nor did Thackeray forget his old friend. In i 855 he put James into his comedy The Wolves and the Lamb as John Howell, "butler and confidential servant," a figure who interestingly anticipates Barrie's admirable Crichton. Howell is a self-educated but ambitious child of the people who had thought of turning printer, "like Doctor Frankling," before he subsided into domestic service. His master, Horace Mulliken, vows that "he can't do without him," for Howell "keeps all his accounts, sorts all his letters, manages all his affairs, [and] may be trusted with untold gold." The fearlessness that he displays in coming to the defence of Miss Prior, Mulliken's persecuted governess, makes him the hero of the play; and he at last withdraws with his master's blessing to live an independent life, convinced that 19 he is "not fit to be a servant in this house any longer." The difficulty of staffing 13 Young Street with satisfactory servants was as nothing, however, compared with the complications resulting from the introduction of a governess into what was in effect a bachelor household. In the Victorian mind the governess was a symbol of temptation. Being neither a lady nor a servant, she was an object of suspicion to both classes, and the thought of such a person domiciled with a man living apart from his wife was in itself enough to occasion the direst thoughts. Certainly Mrs. Carmichael-Smyth required constant reassurance regarding the propriety of Thackeray's arrangements. About one governess, for example, Thackeray told his m other: ''I'll wrap her up in precautions. I'll keep myself safe & clear in con-

OLD KENSINGTON

11

science concerning her." 20 But such asseverations went for nothi~g when the second edition of Jane Eyre with its florid dedication to Thackeray appeared in January, 1848. Many tongues were soon busy with what seemed on the surface a choice bit of scandal. Jane_ Eyre was assumed, so Miss Rigby wrote some months later ma Quarterly Review article on Vanity Fair, Jane Eyre, and the Report for I847 of the Governesses' Benevolent Institution, "to have proceeded from the pen of Mr. Thackeray's governess, whom he had himself chosen as his model of ~ecky, and who, in mingled love and revenge, personified him m ret_u rn as Mr. Rochester." 21 Even Mrs. Carmichael-Smyth for a while lent an ear to this canard. Thackeray wrote to Mrs. Sartoris in i 85 6: My relations some 7 or 8 years ago accused me too (no didn't accuse only insinuated) that I had cast unlawful eyes on a Governessthe story of J_ane Eyre, seduction, surreptitious family in the Regents Park, &c, which you may or mayn't have heard, all grew out of this confounded tradition-and as I never spoke 3 words to the lady and had no more love for my Governess than for my grandmother, and as the calumny has been the cause of a never-quite-mended quarrel and of the cruellest torture and annoyance to me, whenever I hear of poor gentlemen and poor governesses accused of this easy charge, I become wild and speak more no doubt from a sense of my own wrongs than theirs.22 It is clear that with Mrs. Grundy to placate on the one hand, and on the other the necessity of finding someone who would fit with reasonable harmony into a family of unusual sensitivity, refinement, and intelligence, the selection of a governess was n~t an easy task. ~uring the winter of i846-1847 Thackeray tned to make do with his mother's friend, hearty, middle-aged Bess Hamerton. At first he found her "great in the household affairs and the best & briskest of all managers." But in March, 1847 he dismissed this bustling Irishwoman, whose officious dulness had_become intolerable both to him and to Anny. Next came Miss Drury, the daughter of a Staffordshire clergyman , about whom Tha~keray _reported in June : "the children get alon~ very well wit? their governess a nice sober hearty jolly ladylike person-with whom there's no danger of falling in

12

Thackeray: The Age of Wisdom

love." But by October she too had departed. !hen followe~ Miss Alexander, "a very nice plain kind-looking. g~vernes~, who was the twenty-eight-year-old daughter of a ships captain. She turned out to be "another bore," "no more a fit match for Anny's brains, than John is for mine." Thackeray told ~itz­ Gerald how "Leech drew a caricature the other day of a little boy & Guardsman, under w4 was a dialogue with 'Little boy loq.' Isn't Boyloq a French author? asked the Governess." Yet Thackeray kept her through the summer of i 848, because she was at least "a most excellent affectionate dutiful woman." There ensued a lonrr interval in which the girls got along as best they could withour° a companion. D~ring the winter of .i848i849 they had a series of masters to instruct them'. and in .the spring Mrs. Carmichael-Smyth came over from Pans for a time to be, as Thackeray put it, "my comfort my housekeeper and rroverness in chief." Early in the following year Thackeray hired Miss Trulock, by far the best-trained and most intelligent of the series, who remained in the Young Street house~old until it was broken up when Thackeray departed for the United States in the autumn of i852. I t is not surprising that he felt impelled to tell his daughters regretfully : "ballottees. from one Governess to another ... your young days pass away without any larning." 23 The comfortable guest rooms on the first fio~r at i3 Yo~ng Street were often in use. From October, i846 until the following autumn, Thackeray's grandmother, Mrs. Butler, resi~ed in them. Though she was in her late seventies and very infi~m, she continued to display the asperity and independenc.e which the family had come to expect of her. "The old lady. is pret~y cheerful," Thackeray told Mrs. Carmichael-Smyth in Apnl, "orders the dinners, seems very fond of me: bullies Anny: and I think is as happy with us as may be." The following month, though "moving surely downwards," she was still "in p~etty good spirits, and pleased with her littl~ househ?ld. occupations, fidgetting the servants, quite unrestrai~ed & r~nging t~e bells with unbounded liberty." No doubt it was inconvenient t? have her in the house, but she had to be kept away from Pans where Charles and Mary Carmichael, with whom she was at

OLD KENSINGTON

feud, were expected shortly by the Carmichael-Smyths.24 And for the most part she was quiet enough. Anny recollected her as "an old lady wrapped in Indian shawls," who talked little, b ut "put on her spectacles and read 'Vanity Fair' in the intervals of her books of devotion." 25 There is evidence, indeed, that she recognized Thackeray's portrait of her as Miss Crawley and was flattered by it, just as she was by the news that her grandson was beginning to be taken up by fashionable society.26 At !a~t Mrs. Butler grew tired of London and departed for Pans m the company of the girls. There she died without pain on l November i847, Mrs. Carmichael-Smyth and her favourite Minny comforting her during her "last scenes." 27 Thackeray was her executor and principal heir; but though she had long been regarded as the capitalist of the family, she left very little. The French Revolution of 1848 drove Louis Marvy, Thackeray's painter friend of early years, into English exile. He was a guest in Young Street during the winter of 1848-i849; and to put him in the way of earning his living, Thackeray agreed with the publisher Bogue to provide text for a volume of engravings by Marvy to be entitled Sketches After English LandscajJe Painters and to get permission from the leading artists of the day to have their work thus reproduced. Marvy's time passed in this employment and in engraving Thackeray's illustrations for Dr. Birch and His Young Friends. 28 Anny remembered that he "was a very c.harming and gentle person, in delicate health. He used to work hour after hour at his plates. He lived quietly in our house chiefly absorbed by his work." 29 Marvy was allowed to return to France later in i849; but he died on 15 November i 850, not long after the publication of Sketches After English Landscape Painters; and Thackeray for many years thereafter helped to provide for his widow both from his own pocket and by soliciting contributions from friends . There were other guests at 13 Young Street, thourrh none . b r emained as long as Mrs. Butler and Marvy. Thackeray's brother-in-law, Captain Arthur Shawe, "the kindest creature: but the slowest coach in the world," stayed there with Thackeray before the arrival of his daughters in 1846. In May, 1848 Thackeray was host for a time to the daughter of Mrs. Blechyn-

14

Thackeray: The Age of Wisdom

den, his illegitimate half-sister. Thackeray was amused when his "black niece" wrote to Mrs. Carmichael-Smyth "as her 'dear Grandmamma.'" "Fancy the astonishment of that dear majestic old woman!" he exclaimed to FitzGerald. But he was also profoundly relieved at Miss Blechynden's departure. The Carmichael-Smyths yearned after 13 Young Street because Anny and Minny were there; but until July, 1848, when Thackeray settled the Major's last debt, fear of creditors kept the couple in France. With "dear old GP ... no longer a Robin Hood," however, they were able to visit Thackeray in October of that year, "when it was quite a sight to see the poor old Mother with the children," and for a longer stay in the spring of 1849. On the latter occasion Thackeray at first found their presence something of a trial; he was "gloomified," he said, by his "solemn old people." But soon Mrs. Carmichael-Smyth's devotion made him ashamed of this feeling. Speaking one night at the Literary Fund dinner, he narrowly escaped breaking down completely. On his return to Young Street, he told Mrs. Brookfield, I found the house lighted up, and the poor old mother waiting to hear the result of the day-so I told her that I was utterly beaten & had made a fool of myself, upon w!J with a sort of cry she says "No you didn't old man"-and it appears that she had been behind a pillar in the gallery all the time and heard the speeches-and as for mine she thinks it was beautifuJ.3°

OLD KENSINGTON

and individualities of their own. "We should pay as much ~everence to youth as we should to age," he urged throuo-h Mr. Brmvn." "There are points in which you youno- folks are altogether our superiors; and I can't ~elp constantlybcrying out to persons of my own years, when busied about their young people-leav,; ~hem a!one.'' Like_ Esmond he brought up his descendants with as little a~ possible of the servility at present exacted by parents from children (under which mask of duty there often lurks i~difference, contempt, or rebellion).'' a Yet at the same time Thackeray's m anner to Anny and Minny was somewhat grave and reserved. "It's odd how one can make fun & dance with other folks children and not with one's own " he once remarked to Mrs. Brookfield. "I can't be jocular wi;h them. someh.m~.'' ~No ?oubt his sobriety of manner helped him to .mm~le d_isCiplme with freedom in a way which Anny neatly epitomizes m her reference to the "hand ... which ruled and blessed at h ome.'' 5 "My dear old Nan goes on thinking for her;,elf and n~ small beer of herself," Thackeray told his mother. I am obliged to snub her continually, with delight at what she sa~s all the time.'' 6 So profound was the love between him ~nd his daught_ers that his lightest word had the force of law. Papa ~lways hke_d everything we did," Anny explains, "& we never liked an~thmg m\lch .until we knew he approved.'' 7 How absolute was his au_thonty 1s perhaps best illustrated in Anny's story of the ~rav~llmg trousseau which she and her sister prepare? for thelf tnp to the Continent with Thackeray in 1851. It consisted, she writes,

III Thackeray was devoted to his children and bent his mind and energy to provide them, even in the absence of their mother, with "the best learning of all, love and usefulness, and the kindly play of interest, and the faith of home, its peaceful rest and helpful strength.'' 1 But he did not content himself with protecting them from the "rough words & brutal treatment" which were too often the lot of Victorian children and of which 2 he had himself experienced a surfeit at Charterhouse. He also insisted on treating them as fellow human beings with rights

of m~sce ll~n eo us articles belonging to the fancy goods department of thmgs m general, rather than to the usual outfit of an English g~ntleman's family, . . . but I felt that whatever else might be defic1~i;t our new bonn~ts would ~ring us triumphantly out of every crms. They w~re ahke, but with a difference of blue and pink wreaths of acacia, and brilliant in ribbons to match, at a time when people affec ted ~ess dazzling colours than they do now ... . [When] we reached foreign parts and issued out of the hotel dressed and wreathed and triumphantly splendid, my father said: "My dear children, go back and put those bonnets away in your box, and don't ever wear them any morel Why, you would be mobbed in these

Thackeray: The Age of Wisdom

places if you walked out alone with such ribbons!" How the sun shone as he spoke; how my heart sank under the acacia trees. But the bonnets were quickly discarded. 8 The demands upon Thackeray's time multiplied after the success of Vanity Fair, yet prosperity did not cause him to lose touch with his daughters, as he once had with his wife. "Though my father was very busy, and often away from home," Anny writes, "we seemed to live with him, and were indeed with him constantly-in the early mornings, and when he was drawing, and on Sundays especially, and on holidays when the work was finished." 9 Anny and Minny had the sense of sharing in his writing, for he often talked about it with them, and they were accustomed to the sight of "the Printers devil waiting downstairs for cop." Only when he was late with his number of Vanity Fair or Pendennis did he become preoccupied. "Towards the end of the month," he told his mother, "I get so nervous that I don't speak to anybody scarcely, and once actually got up in the middle of the night and came down & wrote in my night-shimee." 10 The illustrations to his books never gave Thackeray this kind of trouble. "They are a great relief to my mind," he told Bedingfield; "I can always do them." 11 Anny recollects that "The hours which he spent upon his drawingblocks and Sketch-books brought no fatigue or weariness; they were of endless interest and amusement to him, and rested him when he was tired." 12 Some of the girls' pleasantest memories, indeed, centred about their father's drawing. "Wood-blocks played a very important part in our lives in those days" [Anny relates], "and the house was full of them, and of drawings and notebooks and scrapbooks. Friends were constantly turned into models for wood-blocks and etchings. Once a month an engraver used to come to 'bite-in' the plates in the dining-room. One young friend of ours, called Eugenie [Crowe], used very often to sit to my father. She used to be Amelia and the Miss Osbornes, in turn, while my sister and I figured proudly as models for the children fighting on the floor." 13 Not that Thackeray's sketches were by any means limited to illustrations for his own work. He continued to draw whatever caught his eye in the scenes around him and to underline the absurdities of con-

OLD KENSINGTON

temporary taste, manners, and writing in drawings hardly less numerous and much more expert than those which he had executed as a boy at Larkbeare or as a young man at Paris. The reader will find ·examples of this "familiar stream [which] flowed on," Anny writes, "loved but unheeded by us," 14 in several of the illustrations to this volume. When Thackeray's work was over, his first thought was for his children. Kensington itself offered a good many resources to the family. They frequently went for long walks in the Park, skirting the Serpentine and "the old palace that stands blinking its sleepy windows across elmy vistas, or into tranquil courts where sentinels go pacing." They knew intimately the churches of the borough. Occasionally they sat in the strangers' pew at Kensington Palace Chapel, where from a "mahogany box with red stuffings" they contemplated "the great prayer-books, with all the faded golden stamps of lions and unicorns." 15 But as a rule they were content to attend the parish church of St. Mary Abbots, a small and homely edifice of brick with a square tower and flagstaff, built for the most part between 1694 and 1704. 16 Its interior, crowded with monuments and pews (containing "high stools, through which elbows of straw were protruding"), 17 was not impressive; nor was its external appearance, with its churchyard-burial ground surrounded by an "iron cage" or fence, very dignified. Yet Thackeray and his daughters had a fondness for this "restful grey church" and for the charity children's singing there; and they were usually to be seen at the nine-thirty Sunday morning service in their pew opposite the carved tomb of the Earls of Wanvick. 18 On birthdays, holidays, and other emergent occasions Thackeray prepared special treats for Anny and Minny. Together they visited the Colosseum (an entertainment palace in the Regent's Park, where one could view panoramas of London and Paris, the cyclorama of the Lisbon earthquake, the Hall of Mirrors, the Gothic Aviary, and the Stalactite Caverns), the House of Lords, the Zoological Gardens, and many other points of interest. Sometimes they went farther afield to Hampton Court, to Kew Gardens, to Eton and Windsor, to Gravesend "to eat fresh shrimps out of the river," 19 and even to Fareham,

18

Thackeray: The Age of Wisdom

where Aunt Becher still survived. Like their father in his youth, Anny and Minny conceived a passion for the theatre, which Thackeray gratified as often as he could. As they grew older, the opera too became a part of their lives. Magnificent envelopes, with unicorns and heraldic emblazonments, used to come very constantly, containing tickets and boxes for the opera [writes Anny]. In those days we thought everybody had boxes for the opera as a matter of course. We used to be installed in the front places with our chins resting on the velvet ledges of the box. For a time it used to be very delightful, then sometimes I used suddenly to wake up to find the singing still going on and on as in a dream. I can still see Lablache, a huge, reverberating mountain, a sort of Olympus, thundering forth glorious sounds, and addressing deep resounding notes to what seemed to me then a sort of fairy in white. She stood on tiny feet, she put up a delicate finger and sent forth a sweet vibration of song in answer, sweeter, shriller, more charming every instant . . . . The singer was Mademoiselle Sontag; it was the Elisire, or some such opera, overflowing like a lark's carol. All the great golden house applauded; my father applauded. I longed to hear more, but in vain I struggled, I only slumbered again, waking from minute to minute to see the lovely little lady in white still standing there, still pouring forth her melody to the thousand lights and people. 20 Thackeray and his children were made welcome in many households. "My father liked to take us about with him," Anny recalled, "and I am surprised, as I think of it, at the great goodnature of his friends, who used so constantly to include two inconvenient little girls in the various invitations they sent him. We used to be asked early, and to arrive at all sorts of unusual times. We used to lunch with our hosts and spend long afternoons, and then about dinner-time our father would come in, and sit smoking after dinner, while we waited with patient ladies upstairs." 21 Thackeray's cousin Mrs. Irvine lived with her husband and their eight children in Little Holland House nearby. Though this edifice in Nightingale Lane could not compare in splendour with Holland House itself, it was "still a mansion; isolated, countryfied, and standing in a garden"; 2 2 and the girls found it exciting to visit there. That the intimacy of the two families was close is attested by a number of charm-

OLD KENSINGTON

ing letters; but it came to an end when the death of Colonel Irvine late in 1849 compelled his widow to find less sumptuous quarters. John Leech and his wife were neighbours _for a time at 31 Notting Hill Terrace, 23 though Anny's memories were of their Brunswick Square house: We used to play with the baby, we used to turn over endless books of pictures, and perhaps go out for a walk with kind Mrs. Leech, and sometimes (but this happened very rarely) we used to be taken up to the room where John Leech himself sat at his drawing-table under the square of silver paper which softened the light as it fell upon his blocks. There was his back as he bent over his work, there were the tables loaded with picture-books and drawing-blocks, huge blocks, four times the size of any at home, ready for next week's Punch; but our entrance disturbed him (we instinctively felt how much), and we used to hurry quickly back to the drawing-books downstairs, and go on turning over the pencil sketches. 24 Henry Cole and his family also lived near at hand. In Paris, when he was known to Anny and Minny only as an acquaintance of their father's, they had come to admire the children's books which he wrote under the name of "Felix Summerly," and to envy the daughters, Laetitia, Henrietta, and Mary, to whom he dedicated these volumes. "I used to think that they must be the happiest little girls in the world," Anny told Laura Stephen, "but I never thought we should ever know them." 25 Now the Cole children were playfellows, with whom Anny and Minny "used to go for straggling walks on early summer mornings, ... [starting] about six o'clock and bring[ing] home branches of hawthorn blossom to decorate our school-rooms and to remind us that it was May time." 26 Somewhat less easy of access, but still among the Thackerays' intimates, were the Crowes in Hampstead and the Pollocks at Hatton, Middlesex. Thackeray used the beautiful Eugenie Crowe as a model for his illustrations; he was a generous patron to her brothers Eyre and Joseph; and her younger sister Amy became perhaps the closest friend of his children. When Eyre Evans Crowe lost his post with the Daily News in 1851, Thackeray was for some time the financial mainstay of the family. No such help was required by the opulent and patriarchal Sir

Thacheray: The Age of Wisdom

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Jonathan Frederick Pollock, Lord Chief Baron of the Exchequer. This remarkable old gentleman, who had twentyfour children by two marriages, lived in great comfort on his country estate, where Thackeray and his gir ls were frequently made welcome. Plate VI, "A View of Y~ Nursery-Garden at Hatton in Middx," affords an example of Thackeray's mild jokes about the fulness of his friend's quiver. Finally, there was the Brookfield home at 15 Portman Square, where, as Chapter 3 will relate, Anny and Minny were for a time frequent visitors. Thackeray's literary friends also went out of their way to be kind to his children. His letters to Mrs. Procter are dotted with such appeals as the following: "The little girls are glad and free, to wait upon the Misses P . You ask my children as I see, to come to dinner and to tea, but why the deuce you don't ask me, that is a point I cannot see." It was in part out of gratitude for the kindness shown his family at 13 Upper H arley Street that Thackeray dedicated Vanity Fair to Procter, writing to Mrs. Procter at the time: "I should have liked to put down you too but suppose [I] mustn't say of a lady that I am affectionately yours." The coolness that had developed between Thackeray and Carlyle did not prevent Mrs. Carlyle from inviting Anny and Minny to her little haven at Chelsea "with a snuffy Scotch maid to open the door, and the best company in England ringing at it." 27

Chelsea through the snow, and across those lanes which have now become South Kensington, and when we arrived, numb and chilled and tired, we found in the dining-room below, standing before the fire, two delicious hot cups of chocolate all ready prepared for us, with saucers placed upon the top. "I thought ye would be frozen," said she; and the hot chocolate became a sort of institution. Again and again she has sat by, benevolent and spirited, superintending our wintry feasts, inviting our confidences, confiding in us to a certain degree.2s

20

The old house in Cheyne Row is one of the first things I can remember when we came to London [writes Anny]. Its stillness, its dimness, its panelled walls, its carved banisters, and the quiet garden behind, where at intervals in the brickwork lay the tobacco-pipes all ready for use; little Nero, the doggie, in his little coat, barking and trembling in every limb- . . . [and] best of all .. . Mrs. Carlyle herself, a living picture; Gainsborough should have been alive to paint her; slim, bright, dark-eyed, upright, in her place. She looked like one of the grand ladies our father used sometimes to take us to call upon. She used to be handsomely dressed in velvet and point lace. She sat there at leisure, and prepared for conversa tion. She was not familiar, but cordial, dignified, and interested in everything as she sat installed in her corner of the sofa by one of the little tables covered with nicknacks of silver and mother-of-pearl. Almost the first time we ever went to see her we had walked to

21

Yet glorious as these meetings were, they paled beside the rare occasions on which Anny and Minny attended the children's parties given by Dickens at I Devonshire Terrace. There were other parties, and they were very nice [Anny concedes], but nothing to compare with these .. .. The spirit of mirth and kindly jollity was a reality to everyone present, and the master of the house had that wondrous fairy gift of leadership ... by which he inspired every one with spirit and interest. One special party I rem ember, which seemed to me to go on for years with its kind, gay hospitality, its music, its streams of children passing and re-passing. We were a little shy coming in alone in all the consciousness of new shoes and ribbons, but Mrs. Dickens called us to sit beside her till the long sweeping dance was over, and talked to us as if we were grown up, which is always flattering to little girls. Then Miss Hogarth found us partners, and we too formed part of the throng. I remember watching the white satin shoes and long flowing white sashes of the little Dickens girls, who were just about our own age, hut how much more graceful and beautifully dressed. Our sashes were bright plaids of red and blue, a tribute from one of our father's Scotch admirers (is it ungrateful to confess now after all these years that we could not bear them?); our shoes were only bronze .... [Later in the evening] the hall was crowded, and the broad staircase was lined with little boys-thousands of little boys whose heads and legs and arms were waving about. They were making a great noise, and shouting, and the eldest son of the house seemed to be marshalling them. Presently their noise became a cheer, and then another, and we looked up and saw that our own father had come to fetch us, and that his white head was there above the others; then came a third final ringing cheer, and some one went up to him-it was Mr. Dickens himself-who laughed and said quickly, "That is for you!" and my father looked up surprised,

Thackeray: The Age of Wisdom

OLD KENSINGTON

pleased, touched, settled his spectacles and nodded gravely to the Ii ttle boys. 29

forward over the table, not eating, but listening to what he said as carved the dish before him .... It was a gloomy and silent evenmg. Every one waited for the brilliant conversation which never began at all. Miss Bronte retired to the sofa in the study, and murmured a low word now and then to our kind governess, Miss Truelock. The room looked very dark, the lamp began to smoke a little, the conversation grew dimmer and yet more dim, the ladies sat round still expectant, my father was too much perturbed by the gloom and the silence to be able to cope with it at all. Mrs. Brookfiel?, wh? was in the doorway by the study, near the corner in which Miss Bronte was sitting, leant forward with a little commonplace,. since brilliance was not to be the order of the evening. "Do you lik~ London, Miss Bronte?" she said; another silence, a pause, then Miss Bronte answers, "Yes and No," very gravely; Mrs. Brookfield has h erself reported the conversation. My sister and I were m~ch too young to be bored in those days; alarmed, impressed we ~ught be, but not yet bored. A party was a party, a lioness was a l10ness; and-shall I confes s it?-at that time an extra dish of biscuits was. enough to mark the evening. We felt all the importance of the occas10n; tea spread in the dining-room, ladies in the drawingroo~; we roamed abou~ inconvenien tly, no doubt, and excitedly, and m one of my excurs10ns crossing the hall, after Miss Bronte had left I was surprised to see my father opening the front door with his hat on. He put his finger to his lips, walked out into the darkness, and shut the door quietly behind him. When I went back to the drawing-room again, the ladies asked me where he was. I vaguely answered. that_ I thought he was coming back .... [But] overwhelmed by the s1tuat10n, my father had quietly left the room, left the house, and gone off to his club.31

22

Thackeray did what he could to return these hospitalities at 13 Young Street. The girls b ecame accustomed to dinners "in boy as the French say," 30 and from time to time their father essayed more ambitious parties. Certainly "A Little Dinner at Timmins's" and other Punch papers testify to his curious knowledge of the complications of entertaining on limited resources and in cramped surroundings. At first Anny and Minny were sent away with the governess when a party was in prospect, but later they were allowed to remain. Of all these occasions Anny best remembered the evening in i850 when Charlotte Bronte came to dine. I can still see the scene quite plainly! [she wrote many years later] -the hot summer evening, the open windows, the carriage driving to the door as we all sat silent and expectant; my father, who rarely waited, waiting with us; our governess and my sister and I all in a row, and prepared for the great event. We saw the carriage stop, and out of it sprang the active well-knit figure of young Mr. George Smith, who was bringing Miss Bronte to see our father. My father, who had been walking up and down the room, goes out into the hall to meet his guests, and then after a moment's delay the door opens wide, and the two gentlemen come in, leading a tiny, delicate, serious little lady, pale, with fair straight hair, and steady eyes. She may be a little over thirty; she is dressed in a little barege dress with a pattern of faint green moss. She enters in mittens, in silence, in seriousness; our hearts are beating with wild excitement. This then is the authoress, the unknown power whose books have set all London talking, reading, speculating.... The moment is so breathless that dinner comes as a relief to the solemnity of the occasion, and we all smile as my father stoops to offer his arm; for, genius though she may be, Miss Bronte can barely reach his elbow. My own personal impressions are that she is somewhat grave and stern, specially to forward little girls who wish to chatter; Mr. George Smith has since told me how she afterwards remarked upon my father's wonderful forbearance and gentleness with our uncalledfor incursions into the conversation. She sat gazing at him with kindling eyes of interest; lighting up with a sort of illumination every now and then as she answered him. I can see her bending

23

h~

E ven Miss Bronte's visit could not compare, however, with the long-await_ed summer of i 85 1 during which Thackeray took An~y and Mmny, aged fourteen and eleven respectively, on their first "grand tour of Europe." 32 DurinCT the six weeks of their trav~ls they v~sited Ge~many, Switzerla~d, northern Italy, and Austna. The girls were m a continuous state of excitement throughou_t the adventure. On the Antwerp packet they met Charles Kingsley and his family; the cities of the Rhine, the Alps, Venice, and Dresden were revelations to them; and on the wa~ hom e they had the pleasure of stopping in Weimar, about which they had heard so often from their father, and meeting

24

Thackeray: The Age of Wisdom

his friends Dr. Weissenborn and Ottilie van Goethe. 33 If Thackeray reflected at first that "travelling as paterfamilias, with a daughter in each hand, ... you are an English gentleman: you are shy of queer-looking or queer-speaking people, you are in the coupe, you are an Earl, confound your impudence"; he conceded later that he had enjoyed the trip ten times as much as he should have alone, when indeed he "shouldn't have had the courage to make it probably, and should have yawned away a few weeks at a Rhine watering place." Moreover, this period of constant intimacy with his children gave him new reasons for loving them. Anny, in particular, he found "a fat lump of pure gold-the kindest dearest creature as well as a wag of the first order." 84 Of necessity Thackeray could give only a part of his life to his daughters. There were many aspects of his existence that they could not share, and he had to spend much of his time away from them. But when he was at home, he talked to them about these hidden friends and experiences; and when he was away, he wrote affectionate, gossiping letters to "dearest Fattyminny," "my dear little gurgles," or "my dear little women." He did all that he could, indeed, to provide them with a quiet, happy childhood which would be a secure anchor in after-life. Looking back on these years at i 3 Young Street by the light of mature experience in a wider and more brilliant scene, Anny reflected: "I cannot help thinking how much more interesting to remember are some of the shabby homes in which work and beauty and fun are made, than those more luxurious and elaborate, which dazzle us at the time." 35

The Great World UNIVERSITY OF YORK I T WAS THACKERAY'S

K

LIBRARY

good fortune to come to know London

~ociety ~uri1:1g the final period of aristocratic predominance

m English life. Even the French Revolution of i848 failed to shake the Englis? aristo~rac~'s a~surance. When Thackeray, fresh from a Chartist meeting mspired by this event, tried to persuade "the fine .folks ~t Mrs. Fox's that revolution was upon us; that we were wICked m our scorn of the people," they would not listen. "They all thought that there was poverty & discomfort to be sure, but that they were pretty good in themselves; th~t powder & liveries were very decent and proper though certamly absurd-the footmen themselves would not give them up." 1 This view was confirmed by poor Louis Philippe in his English e~ile. "Here everything is so well riveted," he enviously assured his hosts. 2 Three years later, after the triumphant success of the Great Exhibition of i85i, Macaulay noted in his journal: "There is just as much chance of a Revolution in England at present as of the falling of the moon." 3 Only in i854, when England's initial failure in the Crimean War revealed the extent to which incompetence and corruption pervaded high places, was aristocratic ascendancy really shaken. 4 London society in i 84 7, so Sir William Fraser relates, "consisted of from 300 to 500 persons; not more. The former number represented those who met at the best Balls and evening :i.5

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parties. A single new face added to this circle would be observed. Everyone knew everyone else; at least by sight." 5 These observations are confirmed by Lady Dorothy Nevill, who remarks that the London world when she became acquainted with it in the 1840s was "more like a large family than anything else." 6 Within this restricted group the territorial aristocracy still held the first place. "Down to the middle of the century or later," Sir Frederick Pollock contends, "rank and title carried far more dead weight, so to speak, than they do now." 7 Certainly no one could hope to understand the scene who was not aware of "the network of family connexions, by which, as the strawberry leaves recede, ducal families can trail off into obscurity." 8 Yet, curiously enough the court und er Victoria did not enjoy nearly the social prestige that it had under George IV, whether as Regent or as King. Many Victorian aristocrats agreed with Lord Stanley of Alderley that the court was "dull & stupid," and that having nothing to recommend it but "virtue & respectability," it fell below the "calibre & character of good society." 9 It was the prevailing view that English society was fortunate in its aristocratic domination. So Emerson regarded "the lords" as a "social church," a "romance adorning English life." 10 The English gentleman, as represented in this class, was not necessarily clever, or endowed with practical ability, or expert in making money; yet somehow, through breeding and training, he was different from and superior to the workaday world. Moreover, as Bagehot pointed out, deference to the aristocracy at least prevented "the rule of wealth, the religion of gold." 11 Yet if the English aristocracy was remote and imposing, it was not entirely inaccessible. Far from being a noblesse on Continental lines, holding aloof from marriages with persons of lower degree, it embraced a policy of calculated misalliances. Though Pitt's suggestion that every man with an income of ten thousand a year should be raised to the peerage 12 was never seriously considered, the very wealthy could be sure of an eventual welcome to London society if they behaved circumspectly and adapted themselves to prevailing usages. Men of talent were more rapidly absorbed. In the early part of the century,

it is true, Stendhal had held that "!'esprit et le talent perdent vingt-cinq pour cent de leur valeur en arrivant en Angleterre," 13 and as late as 1832 Bulwer Lytton had noted the prevailing contempt for intelligence as a mark of "odd persons not in society," and had quoted an eminent man of science as saying, "I am nothing here [in England] . . .. I am forced to go abroad some times to preserve my self-esteem." 11 But by 1845 Lockhart was persuaded that there was no longer any "prejudice against literary men being entertained among the higher circles of English society." He told Abraham Hayward, indeed, that "science and literature are flattered by the aristocracy-the real aristocracy-in a degree remarkable contrasted with their social treatment of the great professions themselves." 15 Certainly the new-corner found himself in a social world well adapted to conciliate its cri tics. The Victorian aristocracy had an engaging charm that was almost irresistible. Its familiars won golden opinions by their good looks, elegance, .and gracethe products of generations of ease and security-and by their "ex treme simplicity of manner," born of absolute confidence. 16 Their great deficiency was in intellectual cultivation, a lack which made Arnold call them "barbarians," and led Carlyle, who for the rest thought them "the best, or as good as any class we have," to regret that "their whole breeding and way of life is to go 'gracefully idle.' " 17 This enforced leisure bore more heavily on women than on m en. Educated chiefly in "elegant accomplishments," many great ladies were content to "glitter with the glory of the h umm ing bird"; but stronger spirits, acutely conscious of unrealized potentialities, sometimes came to regard society as empty and delusive. Men, on the other hand, had the consolation of reflecting that they and their friends, as leaders in government, diplomacy, the professions, and the arts, in effect guided the des tiny and moulded the opinions of England. Despite the propriety of their manners and the burden of responsibility that they bore, the early Victorian upper class was oddly cynical. Charles Buller said that they were marked by a "high sense of personal honour" and a "low feeling of public duty." 1s Out of sight was out of mind; and, as Arnold noted,

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London society was hardly more troubled than Roman society had been by "its internal canker of publice egestas, privatim opulentia, ... unequalled in the world." 19 Hence dedicated intellectuals usually felt ill at ease in the London world. Typical was the response of John Stuart Mill, who concluded that it could only satisfy " persons of a very common order in thought or feelin g." Mill was appalled, above all, by its levity and triviality, finding equally objectionable "the habit of, not indeed professing, but taking for granted in every mode of implication, that conduct is of course always directed towards low and petty objects," and the tendency to consider "all serious discussion on matters on which opinions differ . . . ill-bred." 20 And certainly polite conversation aimed above all at deftness and polish, skimming adroitly from one topic to another and avoiding whatever turgid depths might lie below. London society was seen to best advantage during the season, which extended from Easter until mid-July. The palatial private mansions of the West End, the superb public buildings of the metropolis, and the green reaches of Hyde Park provided a splendid setting for the season's activities which might extend for a faithful devotee to "fifty balls, sixty parties, about thirty dinners, and twenty-five breakfasts." 21 Balls, of which there were two or three a week, began late in the evening, after Parliament concluded its labours for the day, and sometimes lasted until dawn. They could be given only by the very wealthy, since a great town house was required to hold the hundreds of guests customarily invited, the cost of entertaining whom sometimes ran as high as £700. Scores of liveried and bewigged servants were in attendance. Everywhere wax tapers provided brilliant illumination. The ladies' toilettes de balle were of the utmost elaboration and were judged incomplete without a display of jewelry. 22 Yet somehow the atmosphere of a family party was maintained. "You were conscious that if your name were not known to the personage on the stairs," writes Sir William Fraser, "the Ball had been given in a cheap, and therefore unworthy manner." 23 Dinners varied greatly in grandeur. At the most imposing, dress was almost as elaborate as at the great balls, though neces-

sarily the guest list was far shorter. The meal, which began at seven or seven-thirty, was abundant and varied. Mrs. Bancroft enumerates the following dishes at a dinner given by Lady Charleville in 1847, a quite typical r epast, so she assured her correspondent: fish (cod, garnished with smelts), four entrees, turkey, a saddle of mutton or venison, pheasant or partridges, "sweets," and after the cloth was removed, fruit. 24 With such a meal was served a choice of light wines (champagrie being particularly favoured), which by this time had replaced the fortified wines of the eighteenth century and Regency as dinner beverages. Since general conversation was expected, as was impossible at balls, care was taken to compose a harmonious guest list, and li terary lions were particularly welcome. According to Sydney Smith, the attitude of London hostesses was: "Here's a n ew man of genius arrived; put on the stew-pan, fry away; we'll soon get it all out of him. " 25 Breakfasts were of two kinds, entertainments chiefly for men which began at nine-thirty or ten in the morning and continued for two or three hours, and al fresco afternoon parties for ladies and gentlemen held during the summer months on country estates near London. 26 Among breakfasts of the former variety, which were regarded as the particular province of literary men, those given by Samuel Rogers and Richard Monckton Milnes were famous. Since these were informal gatherings, where conversation was all-important, they served admirably as a testing ground on which the potentialities for society of new celebrities could be estimated. Less significant were evening parties not marked by dancing (a "stiff-large-dull-strange-run against everybody-know nobody sort of party" is Ruskin's description of one of these affairs),27 and five-o'clock teas which at this time were just beginning to be popular. 2 8 Yet extensive as this list may seem, it only begins to describe the activities of the season. Hyde Park was an attraction every afternoon, and in the evening society still patronized the opera, where the eminently respectable Jenny Lind was vying with the splendid but abandoned Grisi. In addition, every season had its schedule of special events which included exhibitions at the Royal Academy and the Water Colour

29

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Societies, the Lord Mayor's dinner, the Derby, Ascot, and, of course, receptions at court. Into the interstices of this formidable program, obligatory "visits" had somehow to be fitted. Against this colourful backdrop a fascinating human drama was played out. The participants had the exciting sense of being at the heart of affairs, for the men who moved the world still felt a binding responsibility to play their parts worthily in society. The "exclusiveness of habits" and "isolation of life" which Milnes accurately predicted would eventually overtake the upper classes, thus impairing "the due relation of classes and alter[ing] the political structure of our civil existence," 29 had as yet hardly begun. The neophyte beheld, therefore, "worlds within worlds, high diplomatic figures, the partisan leaders, the constant stream of agitated rumours about weighty affairs in England and Europe; ... much of the governing force of England still gathered into a few great houses, exclusive and full of pride." 30 No doubt political partisanship was intense; during their long careers, indeed, Disraeli and Gladstone met only once at dinner. 3 1 Yet both Tories and Whigs felt that they belonged to a single social world; nor were there lacking nonpolitical salons such as those of Lady Blessington and the Miss Berrys which provided neutral ground where men of both parties migh t come together. Interests of another sort were at stake in the marriage mart which was so prominent a feature of every London season. Bagehot's epigram, "A man's wife is his fault; his mother is his misfortune," may seem merely cynical to us; in early Victorian times it was an acute social observation. Until they were securely engaged, heirs to titles and fortunes assumed an importance quite disproportionate to their intrinsic merit. So we find Mrs. Stanley commenting about Lord Pomfret and Lord Goodrich in i846: "certainly they are two of the most insignificant ugly little mortals I ever saw-eldest sons do not shine this year." 32 Similarly, once young ladies were launched in society by being presented at court, they were watched by :heir eld_ers with an anxious care devoted to them at no other time durmg their careers. Blanche Stanley, for example, was a sensitive, emotional girl, much given to novel-reading. It was with pro-

found disquiet that her mother noted the impression upon Blanche of Lady Ponsonby's The Discipline of Life in i848: "the all powerful influence of love, & love at first sight too, has a mischievous effect & she likes the book extremely." This news confirmed the worst forebodings of Blanche's grandmother, who had always regarded her as a "dangerously romantick girl." "You will be a lucky mother if you do keep clear from all shoals [she said]-the mischief is indeed soon done & it is so difficult to push off the breakers in time, but the greatest difficulty is for the eyes of parents to be sufficiently open." 33 Both ladies breathed deep sighs of relief when their charge, having avoided love involvements which might have led to an elopement or runaway marriage, at last found safe harbour in a mariage de convenance with the wealthy and worthy, if rather stupid, Earl of Airlie. It was sometimes pretended that since young people in England conducted their own love-making, there were fewer mercenary unions than abroad, where society marriages were almost invariably arranged by relatives. "Very possibly," was Bulwer Lytton's dry comment on this proposition, "but, in good society, the heart is remarkably prudent, and seldom falls violently in love without a sufficient settlement: where the heart is, there will the treasure be also!" 34 Given the elements of publicity and prolonged suspense involved, it will be readily understood how the season's matchmaking came to have as much interest and to attract almost as many wagers as the races at Newmarket. London society was intensely competitive in other ways. Since so many issues of importance were decided in the London world, since position there counted for so much in practical affairs, undercurrents of envy and ambition were evident enough to the discerning eye under the easy play of light conversation and polished manners. This aspect of the scene could be observed with particular clarity in the ever-renewed spectacle of "new people" striving to gain a foothold in society. Talent or accomplishments were of great service here. The task could be formidably difficult for the merely rich, as may be shown from the career of George Hudson. A farmer's boy with an exiguous education, Hudson achieved national prominence

31

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in the 1830s as the "Railway King." As his operations widened, he became a Member of Parliament, was taken up by the Duke of Devonshire, and had banquets given in his honour. The elite of society visited his town house and country estate, but on very curious terms. Mrs. Bancroft tells how Mrs. Hudson persuaded ladies of fashion to serve as patrons at her affairs and invite all the guests: "Lady Parke ... [wroteJ that she would be happy to meet me at Mrs. Hudson's splendid mansion, where would be the best music and society of London; and, true enough, there was the Duke of Wellington and all the world. Lady Parke stood at the entrance of the splendid suite of rooms to receive the guests and introduce them to their host and hostess." 35 All the while Mrs. Hudson's social ineptitudes were the subject of covert amusement. "When she had a dinner party," Lady Dorothy Nevill relates, "[this lady] was wont to say to her maid, 'Dress me for ten, dress me for twenty,' tempering the magnificence of her apparel according to the number of her guests." 36 Again, ordering a gateau from a Parisian confectioner, she was reported to have answered the question, "De quel grandeur le voulez-vous?" with "A ussi grand que mon derriere." 37 Hudson had no real social position, in fact, and when his downfall came through the collapse of overextended operations, he became the target of universal execration. Macaulay in 1849 called him "a bloated, vulgar, insolent, purseproud, greedy, drunken blackguard," and recalled that "when he swaggered up to the house he looked like Mammon & Belial rolled into one"; 38 and Carlyle in his Latter-Day Pamphlets of the following year devoted a chapter to indignantly repudiating the suggestion that a statue be erected to this "Gambler swollen big." 39 English society under Victoria was far more decorous and formal than it had been under George IV. Lax morality and eccentric behaviour entailed increasingly heavy social penalties. Yet the very rigorousness of this new code makes all the more piquant, at least to the modern observer, the existence alongside London society of an extensive and flourishing demimonde which parodied its customs and usages. The double standard was firmly established. Ladies whose conduct or do-

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33

mestic circumstances were at all ambiguous quickly found themselves excluded from the great world, as the very different histories of Lady Blessington, Effie Millais, and George Eliot sufficiently demonstrate. Leveson-Gower asserts, indeed, "that with scarcely an exception all the pretty women of this society bore spotless reputations." 40 Gentlemen, on the other hand, could pass freely from one sphere to the other without damaging their reputations. It did a young man no harm to be seen gambling at London clubs and the races, or to appear openly with his mistress in Hyde Park or at Ascot. Confronted by these spectacles, indeed, many young ladies of the great world came to regard a rake as a particularly interesting figure and to think of his viciousness as an ingratiating foible which at least offered the assurance that he was not tame. 41 During these "last high days of the undisputed sway of the territorial aristocracy in England," 42 it may fairly be said that London society embodied for the rest of the nation all that splendour, luxury, and personal privilege could do towards making life agreeable and exciting. To sensitive, creative minds, attuned to its manners and standards, it had the same kind of fascination that the Parisian monde possessed for Balzac or Proust. So Henry James "remounting the stream of time" to the London world as he had first known it, did not hesitate to declare his fondness for "the class, as I seemed to see it, that had had the longest and happiest innings in history." London then was ruled by easy-going gods ... not of this fierce age. Amiabilities and absurdities, harmless serenities and vanities, pretensions and undertakings unashamed, still profited by the mildness of the critical air and the benignity of the social--on the right side at least of the social line. It had struck me from the first that nowhere so much as in England was it fortunate to be fortunate, and that against that condition, once it had somehow been handed down and determined, a number of the sharp truths that one might privately apprehend beat themselves beautifully in vain. I say beautifully for I confess without scruple to have found again and again at that time an attaching charm in the general exhibition of enjoyed immunity, paid for as it was almost always by the personal amenity, the practice of all

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T _hackeray: The Age of Wisdom 4

eray." But by this date his position was in fact secure. Early in the following year Lady Charlemont, a "beautiful serene stupid old lady," was heard inquiring at a dinner party: "Isn't that the great Mr Thackeray?" 5 The leaders of society had accepted him as one of themselves, and there lay ahead only a series of fresh triumphs which culminated in the brilliant social success of his lectures on the English Humourists in 185 i. Thackeray did not achieve his enviable standing without opposition. His rise to celebrity was abrupt-almost as meteoric, indeed, as that of Becky Sharp; and particularly because of his association with Punch, he was at first regarded in many quarters as a dangerous radical. His initial visits to Holland House, for example, were not without their difficult moments. In 1847 Lord Holland told his wife that Thackeray, as he walked away from an entertainment there, had said to his chance companion, Mr. Rumbold, "that we liked agTeeable people and did not care for their rank and quarterings, that our house was open to all." Whereupon Rumbold replied, not knowing to whom he was speaking, "Oh, yes, ... I hear they even receive Mr. Thackeray of Punch celebrity." 6 Later it was not Punch but his novels that aroused anticipatory hostility. In 1849 we find the venerable Lady Stanley of Alderley, a gran de dame whose aristocratic morgue was by this time as obsolete as her spelling, writing to her daughter-in-law and Thackeray's friend Lady Eddisbury: "I have read Vanity Fair & how anybody can like to associate with the author astonishes me-tho' I daresay his conversation may not be like his book exactly but I should so dislike the man who could give such a work to the publick. Where do you meet him?" And though this vigorous old lady had conceded Thackeray's success a year later, she was not reconciled to it: "How can you tolerate Thackeray for shewing you all up in the manner he does," she wrote, "mothers & daughters, & to call one of the latter Blanche [Blanche Amory in Pendennis] ! Really he should be banished from the society which he has so wonderfully found his way into only to hold it up to ridicule." 7 Other checks encountered by Thackeray in his rise to social prominence are less well authenticated. There are several anecdotes, for example, concerning his encounters with Rumsey

sorts of pleasantness; if it kept the gods themselves for the time in good humour, one was willing enough, or at least I was, to be on the side of the gods.43 In like manner George Santayana said, even of the pallid afterofow of this mode of existence that he came to know at 0 the end of the century: "English high life ... at once established itself in my regard side by side with ancient and Catholic life as one of the high lights of history." 44

I I Thouo-h Anny was stating the simple truth when she wrote, "My father lived in good company," 1 Thackeray had risen to prominence in the London world only with his Vanity Fair; and later commentators who formed their impression of his social position from what they heard of his way of life before he became famous have sometimes denied that he wrote with authority about society .2 As late as 1846 his circle of acquaintance was almost exclusively middle class. Early in 1847, however, he was taken up by Lord Holland and Mrs. Caroline Norton among others, and by July his acquaintance with the great world had been much extended. Even before the 1848 season opened, he was an authentic celebrity. In January he wrote : "I get such a deal of praise wherever I go that it is rather wearisome to hear. ... This London world is full of a parcel of good-natured tom-fools and directly one b~gins to cry all the rest say prodigious." He went on to tell his mother with some amusement of the verdict delivered by his friend Hayward: "He has succeeded in society, . .. his manners are brusque but they like him." On 18 July of that year, his thirty-seventh birthday, he confided to her: "all of a sudden I am a great man. I am ashamed of it: but yet I can't help seeing it-being elated by it trying to keep it down." 3 No doubt .for a time s~me of Thac~­ eray's new acquaintances regarded him as a transitory figure m their orbit. Even as late as June of i849, for example, Lockhart writes condescendingly of dining with "Vanity Fair Thack-

?

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Thackeray: The Age of Wisdom

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Forster, society reporter of the Morning Post. This newspaper, according to one of its historians, was "the organ of the two most aristocratic classes of English society- of gentlemen, and of persons who are known as gentlemen's gentlemen; of ladies, and of ladies' maids." 8 Under the leadership of Jerrold, but with Thackeray's enthusiastic co-operation, Punch mercilessly satirized the Morning Post's aristocratic pretensions by personifying it as the flunky "Jenkins" and showing this imaginary personage in all manner of ludicrous positions. Forster took these onslaughts upon Jenkins as a personal affront, and sought revenge for them by omitting Thackeray's name from the list of guests at the fashionable gatherings which he reported in the Morning Post's columns. It is alleged that, when Thackeray on one occasion endeavoured to alter this practice by stopping at the door to tell Forster, "My name is Thackeray," that worthy replied, "Yes; and mine is Jenkins." 9 In any event, the Morning Post continued to suppress Thackeray's name in its accounts of leading social functions. If Thackeray did not find an entirely cordial welcome in society, neither was he spared the criticisms of friends who could not accompany him into this new world. One eveqing in i848, for example, he went with his Punch companions to see the horse-riders at Drury Lane. There he was invited by Count D 'Orsay, Dr. Quin, and the Earls of Chesterfield and Granville into a stage box. He passed a pleasant half hour with these Victorian dandies, finding them "perfectly good humoured easy & unaffected," and returned to his friends.

wrote to tell him that "It is not true what Gurlyle has written to you about my having become a tremenjuous Lion." Thackeray kept up his earlier friendships with remarkable fidelity; but after his circle of acquaintance was multiplied by success, he necessarily saw many of his middle-class intimates less often than before, and some of them were consequently offended. By i850 he was remarking ruefully: "It is supposed, I believe, that I live entirely" in the fashionable world; "and the wonder is that people don't hate me more than they do." 10 So it was that the legend grew up of a Thackeray devoted to society and indifferent to former familiars; and we find Harriet Martineau, whose information can only have been second-hand, writing that his "frittered life, and his obedience to the call of the great, are the observed of all observers." Miss Martineau's severity derived from her distress at seeing a member of " the aristocracy of nature," as she put it, "making the ko-too to the aristocracy of accident"; 11 and in this she certainly spoke for most Victorian intellectuals. One after another, the eminent writers of the day sampled London society, found themselves ill at ease in it, and withdrew, hurt and hostile. Though Carlyle went into the great world occasionally, he could never overcome the feeling that his aristocratic friends looked at him "out of the boxes" as a "curious thing." 12 Dickens, Ruskin,13 Charlotte Bronte, and Tennyson were other writers of genius who made the experiment of London society and retired from it unhappy. They would all have understood General Gordon's comment not long before his death at Khartoum: "I would sooner live like a Dervish with the Mahdi, than go out to dinner every night in London." 14 And even when a literary man did adapt himself to the great world, he sometimes continued to betray the stigmata of his initial diffidence and suspicion. So Lady Ashburton once said of Thackeray's friend George Venables, "it is surely not necessary that he should enter every drawing-room with the feelings of Prometheus prepared to defy the vulture." 15 Thackeray's response to society was quite different. Like Macaulay and Lockhart twenty years before, he came very quickly to feel at home in it. Commenting to his mother on

Leech was sulky, [Thackeray noted in his diary]. Quin is a humbug and quack says he. I know it. I said I knew Q to be a very kind and good natured and serviceable man : and cited things in his favor. L: still angry says-Quin is compared with a regular physician what Dorsay is compared to a regular gentleman! I wonder what he and Lemon were talking about: when I left the pit and went into the genteel box?-'That d-- lickspittle Thackeray' &c-it was evident: and yet I didn't kiss anybody's tails at all. Even FitzGerald was at this time brought to question Thackeray's loyalty, though he was quickly reassured when Thackeray

37

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Thackeray: The Age of Wisdom

Hayward's assurance _that he had succeeded in .~ociety despite th brusqueness of his manners, he remarked: He seems and th~ great people too perhaps rather surprized that I am [a] ntleman-they dont know who I had for my father & mother ~~d that there are 2 old people living in Paris on 200 a year, as grand folks as ever they were. I have never seen fine_r gentlefolks than you two-or prouder." 16 Indeed, we may _fai~~y apply to Thackeray his own words about John Pendenms : As for the pedigree, he had taken it out of a trunk, as Sterne's officer called . sword • now that he was a gentleman and . could . show for h is it." 17 Since Thackeray was, in fact, un ho:nme qui sait se conreturnino- to the social sphere of his youth after fifteen · d uire, o £ 1 · years of exile, it was na~ural t?at he should feel com ortab e. m it, and that his new friends m turn should feel at ease with . 18 As George Aurrustus Sala summed the matter up, Thackh im. " f era was all his life a natural "swell," though or many years a y m . di.ffi cu 1ties. . " 19 "swell . Thackeray enjoyed "the calm contemp~~uon of t~at grand s ectacle denominated 'the upper world, because like_ Lo~kp t he found it "infinitely the best of theatres, the actmg mh ar · "20 H e was en_t ercomparably the first, the actresses the pre_ttiest. . d b "Vanity Fair talk," even when it was empty and pomttame Y . · · A · 1 ny typica 1ess, because it was so amusmglyh characteristic. "d 1. h full figure from the great wor l,d, w~et er a e ig t y vacuous " C 0 10 nel a Prince at Spa who is seventy-two years of age and dandy Lord wears fr'i.lls to his trowsers" ' or the middle-aged . Howden ("Beau Caradoc" that was) had his appeal for Thackho could truthfully say, "I like to hear people of all eray, " w21 When the Morning Chronicle . quote d a pamp hi et b y 1. f sorts. . Thiers calling "philosophers & historians . the natur~ ists o so. " Thackeray added his kind of novelist to the list, remarkciety, · f 1 · · t Jane Brookfield that "to behold the habits o peop e is a mg o . . l.k 22 Frequentmg sooety i ' e ailino- source of pleasure." never f " . . · · l ,, Proust in part to seek "la verification d~ la _mecanique socza e, he found even gradations in rank unobjectionable from the aroi· nt of view since they at least served the purpose of . · tistic p ' · · h making differences in character and manners salient m w at 0

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39

might otherwise have been a mere nondescript and confusing mass. As Gilbert was later to remark: Where everyone is somebodee, Then no one's anybody. "God bless every one of 'em-," he once wrote to Mrs. Brookfield, "the snobs as well as the swells, the dear old stoopids as well as the sparkling wits. They come tumbling into my memory next morning all fighting for places in the 'Ghouls of Gadara Grange,' or in whatever may be the elegant society novel I am for the moment engaged on." 23 Nor did the splendour and elegance of the great world fail to make a strong appeal to Thackeray. "He was a man of sensibility"; as Locker-Lampson points out, " he delighted in luxuriously furnished and well-lighted rooms, good music, excellent wines and cookery, exhilarating talk, gay and airy gossip, pretty women and their toilettes, and refined and noble manners, le bon gout, le ris, l' aimable liberte. The amenities of life and the traditions stimulated his imagination." 2 4 In the ligh t of Thackeray's philosophy of discriminating enjoyment, even the creature comforts provided by society were not to be underestimated. His joking words to Lady Blessington, a fellow gourmet, "I reel from dinner party to dinner party-I wallow in turtle and swim in Shampang," 25 imply no dissatisfaction with this regimen, which he accepted each year from April to July as the season "set in with its usual severity." So we find him writing in a Punch paper of i850, where his own opinions appear under the thinnest of disguises: it is natural that a man should like the society of people well-to-do in the world; who make their houses pleasant, who gather pleasant persons about them, who have fine pictures on their walls, pleasant books in their libraries, pleasant parks and town and country houses, good cooks and good cellars: if I were coming to dine with you, I would rather have a good dinner than a bad one; if So-and-so is as good as you and possesses these things, he, in so far, is better than you who do not possess them: therefore I had rather go to his house in Belgravia than to your lodging in Kentish Town. That is the rationale of living in good company.26

Thackeray: The Age of Wisdom

Though Thackeray never ceased to take a critical view of London society, his estimate of it changed drastically as he came to know it better. While he regarded it as a mere fair of vanities whose specious attractions should be resisted, he found abundant instances to confirm this point of view. In April, i 847, for example, he told Lady Ashburton of the revulsion inspire? in him by the gross flattery of Sir Robert Peel, who was at this time seeking to strengthen his position with the press. At an exhibition of his collection of paintings, Peel greeted him with the words: "Mr. Thackeray, I am rejoiced to see you. I have read with delight every line you ever wrote." When Thackeray endeavoured to turn the compliment by commenting that it must delight Peel to live among such works of art, Peel replied: "I can assure you that it does not afford me such satisfaction as finding myself in such society as yours!" 27 In July of the same year, we find him analysing "Vanity Fair benevolence" as illustrated in the toadying of FitzGerald's wealthy mother at a grand party. 2 8 Thackeray remained firm in his scepticism until Vanit y Fair was nearly completed. "!'hen he bega.n to ask himself whether he had not been deceived by unfair preconceptions. On 28 March 1848 he wrote to Lady Holland: What a shame it is to have doubted a lady from whom I have had nothing but graciousness and kindness. I am beginning to see the folly of my ways & that people are a hundred times mo.re frank, kind & good-natured than a certain author chooses to pamt them. He shan't wear yellow any more: it is he who is jaundiced and n?t the world that is bitter: in fine .. . I will have my next book m rose colour and try and amend.29 And similar confessions of error followed later in the year to Lady Blessington and Lady Castlereagh. 30 Henc.e forth Thackeray's attitude to society was one of balanced praise and blame, of ironical reproof rather than indignant remonstrance. When Charlotte Bronte in 185 3 received from George Smith an engraving of Laurence's portrait of Thackeray, she exclaimed: "And so a lion came out of Judah." Thackeray's comment on this anecdote was : "I never could see the lion." 31 Thackeray's altered attitude had the unexpected effect of

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making him the champion of the London world against the onslaughts upon it of his old master Carlyle. During the 1840s Carlyle came more and more to envision himself as a new Moses sent to admonish these "Dwellers by the Dead Sea," who, havina0 forgotten "the inner facts of Nature and taken up with the• falsities and outer semblances of it, were fallen into sad cond1tions,-verging indeed towards a certain far deeper Lake." 32 "We seem to me a people so enthralled and buried under bondage to the Hearsays and the Cants and the Grimaces," he told Browning, "as no people ever were before. Literally so. From the top of our Metropolitan Cathedral to the sill of our lowest Cobbler's shop it is to me, too often, like one general somnambulism, most strange, most miserable,-most damnable! ... Surely, I say, men called 'of genius'-if genius be anything but a paltry toybox fit for Bartholomew Fair-are commissioned and commanded under pain of eternal death, to throw their whole 'genius,' however great or small it be, into the remedy; into the hopeful or the desperate battle against this! And they spend their time in traditionary rope-dancings, and mere Vaux hall gymnastics .. .. Dickens writes a Dombey and Son, Thackeray a Vanit y Fair; not reapers they, either of them! In fact the business of the rope-dancing goes to a great height." 33 But Thackeray was no longer willing to accept his old friend in the prophetic role. " Gurlyle is immensely grand and savage now ... ," he wrote to FitzGerald in i 848. "I declare it seems like insanity almost his contempt for all ma nkind, and the way in w'1 he shirks from the argument when called upon to preciser his own remedies for the state of things." 34 He accordingly treated Carlyle as a bully; "attack him with persiflage," he told his fri ends, "and he was silenced." 35 And Carlyle in turn came to class Thackeray with the Dead Sea Dwellers, who discovered, "as the valet-species always does in heroes or prophets, no comeliness in Moses; listened with real tedium to Moses, with light grinning, or with splenetic sniffs and sneers, affecting even to yawn; and signified, in short, that they found him a humbug, and even a bore." 36 Regarding his former disciple as a kind of turncoat, Carlyle assured Charles Gavan Duffy in i 849 that "Thackeray ... was essentially a man of grim, silent,

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stern nature, but lately he had circulated among fashionable people, dining out every day, and he covered this native disposition with a varnish of smooth, smiling complacency, not at all pleasant to contemplate." 3 7 Posterity has inclined to side with Carlyle in this conflict, but it may be suggested that reason was with Thackeray. Arnold twenty years later was led by his observation of English society to reflect that "aristocracies with their natural clinging to the established fact, their want of sense for the flux of things, for the inevitable transitoriness of human institutions, are bewildered and helpless." 38 But in Thackeray's time, as we have seen, the real rulers of the nation were still to be found in the ranks of fashionable society. Milnes was sincerely devoted to the London world, for example, because he looked upon "the intimate and independent conversation of important men as the cream of life." 39 Admittedly there is no parallel in Thackeray's work to Proust's tremendous question as he contemplated the fashionable crowd in the dining-room of the luxurious Balbec Hotel, as to whether the glass walls of the aquarium would always protect these wonderful creatures at their feast. But then there was little warrant in the Victorian scheme of things for such a question.

Rogers were the type figures (the former only recently dead, the latter still lingering on in his eighties), paid their tribute through the readiness and point of their conversation. Thackeray was soon identified as a town wit, and he discovered in this class a number of friends of early life, among them Charles Buller, Alexander .William Kinglake, Richard Monckton Milnes, Henry Reeve, and George Venables. But he formed new alliances as well with Abraham Hayward, Matthew James Higgins, Dr. Quin, and Edwin Landseer. Though most of these gentlemen had literary interests, Thackeray was unique among them in being a professional writer, known to be dependent upon his pen for his livelihood, and this status gave h im a peculiar, but in the long run by no means disadvantageous position. That Thackeray thus joined a talented and distinctive group can best be shown by describing four of its most prominent members. Of all the town wits Thackeray found none more congenial than his university friend Kinglake. He was a man of good family, like Thackeray profoundly devoted to his mother, who had been educated at the grammar school of Ottery St. Mary, Eton, and Cambridge. For the rest of his life London was his home and the Chancery Bar his profession. A bachelor in easy circumstances, he did not have to follow the law very assiduously, and he gave much of his time to travel. Eothen, his classic Eastern narrative, at length brought him celebrity in 1844.3 When the London world took Kinglake up, it found him "slight, not tall, sharp featured, with dark hair well tended, always modishly dressed after the fashion of the thirties . .. ; leaving on all who met him an impression of great personal distinction, ye t with an air of youthful abandon which never quite left him." 4 He was a shy, retiring, sensitive man, who "with gentlest aspect and softest speech" used to say bitter things. 5 His friends compared him, indeed, with Byron's Lambro: The mildest mannered man That ever scuttled ship or cut a throat, With such true breeding of a gentleman, You never could divine his real thought.6

I I I Thackeray was welcomed the more warmly by London hostesses because he was that invaluable social resource, an unattached male. Unencumbered "new men" in the London world usually found themselves assigned to one of two groups, the dandies or the town wits,1 though there was an occasional celebrity like Disraeli or Bulwer Lytton who managed to straddle both categories. The dandies, "with their triple waistcoats, their many-folded neckcloths, their wristbands turned back over their tigh t coatsleeves, their brocaded evening waistcoats and embroidered shirt-fronts," 2 made their contribution through the very splendour and sumptuousness of their appearance. The town wits, of whom Sydney Smith and Samuel

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He entered society "with something like radical feelings" on nearly all subjects. At Cambridge he had told Thackeray that he was an atheist, 7 and in later life he described himself as a "Nothingarian," who thought that "important if true" should be inscribed above every church door, and asserted that the English church was the best, because it was "the most harmless going." His attitude towards society was mocking, and he was profoundly sceptical concerning the great figures of public life. He dismissed Disraeli as "a bad specimen of an inferior dandy" and Gladstone as "a good man in the worst sense of the term." He was conservative only about the gentlemanly code, going so far as "to regret the disuse of duelling, as having impaired the higher tone of good breeding current in his younger days." His wit, which was regarded as one of the great charms of Eo then, was of the fantastic and esoteric sort cultivated by FitzGerald and Thackeray at Cambridge. It may be sampled in Kinglake's contention during the "Filioque" controversy that ladies thought the term meant "a clergyman's baby born out of wedlock," or in his repeatedly asserted dislike of Irishmen "in the lump" on the ground that "human nature is the same everywhere except in Ireland." Altogether one readily understands both why Thackeray liked Kinglake and why society in general found him, in Macvey Napier's words, "very clever but very peculiar." 8 Thackeray was also on terms of intimacy with Abraham Hayward, another bachelor lawyer of good family, whom Carlyle once called "the cleverest of our second rate men." 9 When Hayward first came to London in the i82os, he had a considerable professional connection and edited the Law Magazine; but by the middle i84os he was devoting most of his time to writing anonymously for the quarterlies. His prose translation of Faust in i833 had opened to him the doors of the London world, where he had substantial success. A largely self-educated man, unpolished by public school or university, he was "arrogant, overbearing, loud, insistent, full of strange oaths and often unpardonably coarse." 10 Yet being genuinely fond of society, he cultivated it with pertinacity; and this characteristic, in the eyes of most of his entertainers, was sufficient compensa-

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tion for his "independent, even cassant, manner, . .. [and] aggressive self-assertion." Hayward was a feeble, puny figure, Locker-Lampso.n relates, with "curly locks, a neat little foot, a lip vermillion, and an Abra'am nose." 11 But his mind was vigorous and active, and through sheer "masterfulness" 12 he made himself a power in literature, politics, and clubland. He was most at home in the Athenaeum Club, where he pre-empted the corner of the Coffee Room after Theodore Hook's death and was constantly to be seen with such intimates as Kinglake: Venables, and the Duke of Newcastle. 13 His dinners there and at his chambers in the Temple were celebrated, and his Art of Dining, a slim book of i852 based on Quarterly Review articles of i835 and i836, spread his gastronomic fame . If Thackeray occasionally made gentle fun of Hayward, 14 he yet found him congenial company and was indebted to him for many favours . Matthew James Higgins was a gentleman in easy circumstances, educated at Eton and Oxford, who had travelled for several years in Spain and Italy before settling in London. He first came to general notice through a paper 'o n "Jacob Omnium, Merchant Prince" in the New Monthly Magazine for August, i845. The title of the article gave him a familiar nom de plume over which to write, and the article itself won him Thackeray's friendship .15 Higgins, Thackeray discovered, was even larger than himself. Six feet eight inches in height, and big in proportion, he was yet very stately and handsome. H is size was such that even the Life Guards could not offer him a commission.16 And it is related that, when he was travellino- in Italy, "a gentleman of the same name, whose height was about 6 feet 4 inches, used to complain that the overshadowinopres. 0 ence o £ his namesake caused him to be distinguished among his countrymen at Rome as 'little Higgins.' " 17 Once launched in the periodical world, Higgins became a valued contributor to the Tim es and later to the Cornhill Magazine and Pall Mall Gazette. Thackeray's respect for his friend's formidable controversial powers is neatly displayed in a Punch ballad of i 848 called "Jacob Omnium's Hoss," in which he makes Policeman X exclaim, as he describes Higgins's experiences in recovering a stolen horse,

Thacheray: The Age of Wisdom

His name is Jacob Homnium, Exquire; And if I'd committed crimes, Good Lordi I wouldn't ave that mann Attack me in the Times! 18 Thackeray met Higgins often in society, where he was widely popular; he attended the breakfasts, dinners, and Derby-day parties which his friend liked to give, both during his bachelor days and after his marriage in i 850, and relied on Higgins's advice in many practical matters, regarding him as the embodiment of prudent common sense. Richard Monckton Milnes was glad to give Thackeray a helping hand during his period of social probation; yet when he noted that "Thackeray is winning great success" during the season of i 849, his long experience of society led him to add, "I doubt whether he will be much the happier for it, though I think people generally are the better for satisfied vanity." This friend of Thackeray's youth was not altogether the cheerful dilettante whom Thackeray had known in earlier days. Still a bachelor (he married only in i 851) and without settled employment, Milnes said regretfully: "Having no duties to perform, I am obliged to put up with pleasures." He had become conscious of the damage done to his reputation in the eyes of rigidly conventional persons by his unreserved welcome to odd people and ideas and his un-English manners and appearance, traits which had been adroitly underlined by Disraeli in his portrait of Milnes as the Vavasour of Tancred . When Lady Waldegrave told him, "You are a man of large heart," he replied ruefully, "That may be, ... but it is not near so useful as a narrow mind." 19 Yet this "pleasant companionable little man, well fed and fattening, with some small remnant of poetry in his eyes and nowhere else; d elighting in paradoxes, but goodhumoured ones; defending all manner of people and principles," 20 still met the world with effervescing good spirits that made him a model to his fellow town wits. In politics Thackeray was never a Whig; indeed, his dissection of "Whig Snobs" in "The Snobs of England" had constituted perhaps the severest part of that famous Punch series. 21 Yet as he became prominent in the London world, he was par-

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ticularly attracted and welcomed by the Whigs. In his account of Sydney Smith, Walter Bagehot noted that Whiggism or Liberalism during the first half of the nineteenth century was above all "the spirit of the world. It represents its genial enjoyment, its wise sense, its steady judgment, its preference of the near to the far, of the seen to the unseen; it represents, too, its shrinking from difficult dogma, from stern statement, from imperious superstition. What health is to the animal, Liberalism is to the polity. It is a principle of fermenting enjoyment, running over all the nerves, inspiring the frame, happy in the mind, easy in its place in the sun." 22 Thackeray felt at home in such an atmosphere, and for their part the Whigs were happy to establish cordial relations with a congenial gentleman who was coming to be recognized as one of the great writers of the age. We have seen how Thackeray was welcomed at Holland House in i 84 7. During the years that followed he was taken up by the Palmerstons, the Russells, the Mintos, Lord Lansdowne, Lady Granville, Lord Broughton, and half a dozen other Whig notables. He even achieved cordial relations with Lord Brougham. For many years Brougham had been one of Punch's betes noires, and he attributed to Thackeray that magazine's attacks, which he keenly resented. But an incident at Holland House made all well between the two men. "Cominointo Lord H.'s study one morning, and seeing a copy of Punch on the table, [Brougham] remarked angrily, ' Henry! How can you read that fellow Thackeray's trash?' 'Why,' replied Lord H., 'only yesterday when he was here, he spoke of you in the highest terms.' 'Ohl did he,' replied Lord B., 'well, mind, I never said he lacked judgment or discrimination.' " 2a And when Thackeray later came to know Brougham well at the Miss Berrys', he found him "enormously good fun boiling over with humour & mischief the best and wickedest old fellow I've met." 24 With the Whigs' greatest literary light, Thomas Babington Macaulay, Thackeray's relations were cordial from the first. A confirmed novel-reader, Macaulay had delighted in Vanity Fair and much of Thackeray's other work of the i84os, which he

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praised to his friends as better than Dickens's. The two men met at an evening party given by Lord Minto on 5 March 1849. "Glad to know him," Macaulay wrote in his journal. "He told me that he knew how I had spoken of his books, & thanked me quite touchingly." 26 When Thackeray called in June, Macaulay's impressions were not quite so favourable. "Talks too much about his Vanity Fair," Macaulay wrote. "I suspect that success, coming late, has turned his head. 'L 'on voit bien, messieurs, que vous n'etes pas accoutumes a vaincre.' At all events, I am sure that I never, except to a friend of many years' standing, introduced the subject of my own works.'' 27 What Macaulay regarded as Thackeray's want of proper dignity distressed him on other occasions as well. In Paris the following September, when Thackeray proposed that the two exchange identities in order to astonish an American lady who admired the writings of both, Macaulay "said solemnly that he did not approve of practical jokes, & so this sport did not come to pass." 28 Again, one evening at Lord Lansdowne's in 1850, Macaulay felt that Thackeray "has literature as a sort of trade too much in his mind-seems to think he is bound to pun for the company-and so on." 29 But apart from these small reservations, Macaulay remained until his death a loyal friend to Thackeray and a devoted admirer of his books, and Thackeray fully reciprocated Macaulay's affection and esteem. Perhaps Thackeray's closest alliance in the Whig world was with Lady Stanley of Alderley. 30 Herself the daughter of Viscount Dillon, she had joined one of the oldest families in the peerage by marrying Edward James Stanley in 1826. On the whole the marriage was successful. She took pleasure in Sta~­ ley's long and moderately distinguished career as a Whig politician, making herself extremely useful to him, indeed, during its early phases. Another woman might have been distressed by the hard practicality and brutal outspokenness which earned him the nickname of "Ben" (after Sir Benjamin Backbite in The School for Scandal); 31 but Lady Stanley, who had been brought up abroad, had an "outlook ... more continental than English," and was herself "downright, free from prudery, ... a woman of vigorous but not subtle intelligence with a great

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contempt for 'nonsense.' " 82 And despite the neglect with which Stanley sometimes treated her, she remained very much in love with him, bearing him in all twelve children. Lady Stanley found some solace for her husband's inattention in the society of Victorian intellectual leaders. Charles Buller ahd Carlyle were already her intimates when she became friendly with Thackeray in 1849. Soon she was telling Thackeray, only half-jokingly, that she regarded him as her "younger brother," 33 while he found Lady Stanley an absorbing subject for study. A thorough aristocrat of very masterful temperament, she was accustomed to having her own way. Indeed, we find her mother-in-law hoping after the birth of her eighth child in 1843, that she will be content, "especially as she has had as many as anybody in the family now, for I know she does not like to be outdone by any body.'' 34 But her husband treated her with studied remissness. She spoke in after-life of her many years as "a n'e glected young wife eating my heart out with rage & bitterness"; 35 and many are the complaints in her correspondence at being left languishing in Cheshire while her husband enjoyed the pleasures of London. She took to social work with such enthusiasm that she could say in 1848, "the thing I care for most [is] the amelioration of the working classes.'' And she gave a lifetime of devoted service to the cause of women's education, despite her family's disdainful references to her "novelty education mania.'' 36 It is not surprising that Thackeray should have taken a cordial interest in this unusual woman and her children. Thackeray formed an equally warm friendship with Lady Harriet Ashburton, who was socially all ied to the Whigs, though not of their party. 37 A daughter of the Earl of Sandwich, in 182 3 she had married William Bingham Baring, the heir to a princely mercantile fortune. Lord Ashburton, as Baring became when he succeeded to his father's title in 1848, was a quiet, retiring man altogether subservient to his imperious wife.38 The Ashburtons, who had no children, "lived by company; as poor people with 40 or 50 thousand a year are obliged to .do in this country"; 39 and Ashburton acted as a kind of major-domo, supervising his wife's elaborate entertainments at

Thackeray: The Age of Wisdom

Bath House, Piccadilly, and the Grange in Hampshire. It did not disturb him in the least that his wife was an avowed bas bleu, nor did he take offence at her habit of keeping "a philosopher in chains," 40 which led her to cultivate such men as John Stuart Mill, Carlyle, Charles Buller, and Thackeray himself. Lady Ashburton was "tall and commanding in person, but without any pretension to good looks," 41 a belle laide in fact; yet the absence of beauty hardly mattered in a woman so notably endowed with intelligence, taste, and wit. Even Mrs. Carlyle, who felt that, in general, position and wealth had the unfortunate effect of sheltering "people from all the practical difficulties, which might teach them the facts of things, and sympathy with their fellow creatures," 42 had to gran t that Lady Ashburton was a notable exception to this rule. Charles Greville, a discriminating judge, called her "the most conspicuous woman in the society of the present day," 43 and no doubt this very ascendancy explains the one real defect in her character, her love of domination. At any rate, Thackeray "took such umbrage at some of her personal sallies, that for a time he declined her invitations, and said harsh things of her. He gave in, however, when resentment on either side having cooled down with the lapse of months, he received from her a card of invitation to dinner. He returned it with a drawing on the back, 'representing himself kneeling at her feet with his hair all aflame from the hot coals she was energetically pouring on his head out of an ornamental brazier.' " 44 A complete reconciliation followed; and after the death of Charles Buller, through whom Thackeray had first met Lady Ashburton, he became her close friend and confidant and was a frequent visitor to the Grange. Beginning in i 849 Thackeray was often seen also at the salon of Mary and Agnes Berry at 8 Curzon Street. In these ancient ladies, born respectively in 1763 and 1764, he found a living link with his favourite eighteenth century. They continued to wear "the old-fashioned rouge and pearl-powder, and false hair" that had been the mode in their girlhood. Their habits of speech matched their appearance. They garnished their conversation with oaths such as "O! Christ!, My God!" etc., 45 and Mary Berry never gave up, so Milnes relates, " the useful and

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sensible fashion of distinguishing her male friends from her acquaintances by using their surnames." 46 Most interesting of all to Thackeray was Mary Berry's fascinating fund of anecdote: "stories of how she once found on the table, on her retu rn from a ball, a volume of 'Plays on the Passions,' and how she kneeled on a chair at the table to see what the book was like, and was found there-feathers and satin shoes and all-by the servant who came to let in the winter morning light; or of how the world of literature was perplexed and distressed-as a swarm of bees that have lost their queen-when Dr. Johnson died; or of how Charles Fox used to wonder that people should make such a fuss about the dullest of new books-Adam Smith's 'Wealth of Nations.'" 47 The two ladies were of very different character. Agnes was simply "an amiable, cheery, pretty woman." Her role was to join with Charlotte Lindsay-a witty old lady, living with the Miss Berrys, whose features "when she said a good thing ... crumpled into an expression of irresistible humour"-in mitigating the sobriety and "blueness" of her sister's parties. Mary Berry was a femme forte whose character had unexpected depths. Though she seemed a "model of brilliant and blithe old age," she inwardly regretted having always remained a spectator of life. "Every woman should run the risks of marriage who could do so," she used to say, "the dusty highway of life is the right road after all." Yet she found consolation in cultivating good conversation, which she regarded as a sovereign duty of society. Above all she tried to promote an esprit de sociabilite, and since she brought together "not only men illustrious in the different walks of life, but what might be called the men of the day-men who had won and men who were winning, men who wished to learn and men ready to teach," ~ 8 it is easy to understand her success. That Thackeray found it hard to resist the lighted windows at 8 Curzon Street-a standing invitation to habitues to join the Miss Berrys in an evening of tea and talk-his published tribute to her amply testifies.49 There was nothing exclusive in Thackeray's devotion to Lady Stanley, Lady Ashburton, and the Miss Berrys, for during these years he found pleasure in friendships with many

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was quietly cutting all of us, merely because she thinks women tiresome .... She came down to luncheon every day in a pink striped shirt, with the collar turned down over a Belcher handkerchief, a mah's coat made of green plaid, and a black petticoat. Lord Grey always called her the Corsair; but she was my idea of something half-way between a German student and an English waterwoman, that amounts to a debardeur." 56 Thackeray also took an amused interest in the fantastic Lady Morgan, who at an indeterminate age beyond seventy still affected the dress, conversation, and behaviour of a Regency debutante, startling observers by her rouge, powder, and extreme d ecollete.a7 He saw much of Mrs. Caroline Norton, whom Mrs. Carlyle described in 1848 as "a beautiful witty graceful woman-whatever else." 58 Of all such ladies, however, it was perhaps Mrs. Gore who attracted him most. This plump and blooming matron, who had published dozens of novels since she first began to write in 1823, had long been a fixture in London society. She regarded the life around her with an absorbed but disillusioned gaze, and Thackeray found the fashion in which she bowed to fashionable standards in her life, while exposing them in her novels and conversation, a fascinating subject for study. Thackeray was particularly attentive to pretty young ladies. Their situation for a brief hour at the centre of interest in the splendid society of which they had just become a part aroused in Thackeray a concern at once gallant and paternal. He jokingly presented himself as an "elderly admirer," wrote verses in their scrapbooks, and made little drawings for them. He paid these tributes to Harriet Jane Ingilby, who married Charles Austin in 1856; to Blanche Stanley, who became Countess of Airlie in 185 l; to Frances Lucy Wightman, the "Flu" who married Matthew Arnold in the same year; 59 and to the most beautiful of all debutantes of the time, Virginia Pattle, daughter of a prominent Anglo-Indian family with whom the Thackerays had long been friendly. Indeed, until Miss Pattie's marriage in 1850 to Viscount Eastnor, later third Earl Somers, Thackeray remained profoundly devoted to her, even on one occasion celebrating her attractions in Punch .60 These were all young ladies

great ladies in London society. He was fond of Lady Morley, a delightful old person, witty yet altogether free from malice, who enjoyed great favour in society. 51 He was attentive also to Lady WaldegTave, who was to wear out four husbands in the pursuit of celebrities for her parties at Strawberry Hill and elsewhere. He was a frequent guest of Lady Molesworth, who threw all her resourcefulness and her considerable fortune into the competition for social pre-eminence. "I believe if the King of the Cannibal Islands was to come to England," Bishop Wilberforce once remarked, "within twenty-four hours he would be dining with Lady Molesworth." 52 A friendship with the beautiful Lady Louisa de Rothschild gave Thackeray a valued entree to the opulent Jewish society of the day. Nor did he neglect London's femmes savantes. He was frequently seen at the receptions of Lady Davy, widow of the great Sir Humphry, who was "blue to her very bones," 53 and of Mrs. Milner Gibson (or "Mrs. Milliner Gibson, as that somewhat overdressed lady was called"), 54 who gave offence in some quarters by her excessive enterprise in attracting intellectual lions to her salon. In a rather different category may be placed what might be described as London's female " town wits," ladies whose claim on society derived primarily from their liveliness and intelli= gence. Among the long-time friends of Thackeray who belonged in this group were Mrs. Carlyle, Mrs. Proctor, and Mrs. Sartoris. A new intimate was Lucy Duff-Gordon, the witty and unconventional wife of Sir Alexander Duff-Gordon. Kinglake wrote of her: "The classical form of her features, the noble poise of her head and neck, her stately height, her uncoloured yet pure complexion, caused some of the beholders at first to call her beauty statuesque, and others to call it majestic, some pronouncing it to be even imperious. But she was so intellectual, so keen, so autocratic, sometimes even so im passioned in speech, that nobody feeling her powers, could well go on feebly comparing her to a statue or a mere queen or empress." 55 The verdict of Emily Eden was less favourable . Meeting her in a large party at Bowood, the author of Th e Semi-Detached House wrote to Lady Theresa Lewis : "I think her anything but agTeeable, but I strongly suspect that instead of our cutting her, she

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of impe Brookfield first introduced Jane to Thackeray, with whom he had kept up a college friendship over the years, in the early months of 1842 at what Thackeray afterwards called "the dear old twopenny tart dinner." 28 Brookfield had brought him home unexpectedly to dine, Jane relates. "There was, for tunately, a good plain dinner, but I was young and shy enough to feel embarrassed because we had no sweets, and I privately sent my maid to the nearest confectioner's to buy a dish of tartlets, which I thought would give a finish to our simple meal. When they were placed before me, I timidly offered our guest a small one, saying, 'Will you have a tartlet, Mr. Thackeray?' 'I will, but I'll have a two-penny one, if you please,' he answered, so beamingly, that we all laughed, and my shyness disappeared." 29 Thackeray fell into the habit of breakfasting with the Brookfields on Saturdays, 30 and his association with them on these and other occasions gradually came to mean a great deal to him. Recalling the growth of their friendship in some doggerel verses of 1849, he wrote: "A lonely man I am in life, my business is to joke & jeer, a lonely man without a wife God took

Thackeray: The Age of Wisdom

from me a lady dear. A friend I had and at his side, the story dates for seven long year; one day I found a blushing bride a tender lady kind and dear. They took me in they pitied me they gave me kindly words & cheer." 31 Yet, though Jane became Thackeray's "great favourite," 32 he for some years remained much more Brookfield's friend than hers. Becrinnincr with the summer of 1845 the Brookfields' relao 0 tionship drastically changed. During the next two and a half years Jane spent much of her time visiting friends an~ relatio1:s in the country and abroad while Brookfield was tied by his work to London. In 1847 financial pressure, intensified by liability to calls on unwisely purchased railway stock, made it necessary for the Brookfields to give up their Great Pulteney Street rooms. Jane once more went to live with relatives in the the country, while Brookfield retired to the cellars of St. Luke's Church, Soho. Thackeray described these uncomfortable quarters as "l'horrible bouge," noting how Brookfield there had to endure "le voisinage fetide de fourmillans Irlandais"; 33 and Brookfield himself dated his letters from "the Cave," "the sewer of Berwick St.," or "the Kattercome," and addressed his friends as "Unburied Ones." Yet, though he could joke about his dilemma, Brookfield was humiliated by this public revelation of his "embarrassment & straightened means," and became very sharp with Jane when she complained of her "exile" and the petty irritations of country visiting. 84 With Brookfield in effect a grass widower, his intimacy with Thackeray deepened. The two were constantly together. Indeed, Jane complained on one occasion to Henry Hallam: "William is always either dining with Mr. Thackeray at some chop-house, or sitting late smoking cigars with the great author, or else to be found on his way to Kensington to visit him." 35 Close association with Brookfield greatly increased Thackeray's affection and respect for his friend. He was moved when Brookfield in 1846 out of a narrow exchequer brought him £100 to enable him to meet a call on his railway stock. 36 He admired the fortitude and humility displayed by Brookfield early in 1847 when his hopes of being appointed an Inspector of Schools were shattered by a letter from his old Cambridge friend John Allen,

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one of the original Inspectors, urging that Brookfield's "levity & looseness of talk" at the university many years earlier unfitted

I

I

him for a position of trust. 37 He was impressed by the fidelity and self-d enial with which Brookfield carried out his duties as curate of St. Luke's; and in his account of "Frank Whitestock" in "The Curate's Walk," one of the most engaging of his Punch papers, he described later in 184 7 the real kindness with which Brookfield treated his poor, the effectiveness with which he taught their children in Sunday-school, and the trust and affection which he won from parents and children alike.3 8 During this same period, though he saw her only occasionally Thackeray's admiration for Jane grew apace. "Mrs Brookfield is my beau-ideal," he wrote to his mother on 6 March 1846. "I have been in love with her these four years-not so as to endanger peace or appetite but she always seems to me to speak and do and think as a woman should." 39 He sent Jane his books as they appeared. He liked being with her. He was pleased to be ranked as one of her "seven hundred and ninety-nine lovers." 40 Yet there was still no real intimacy between Jane and Thackeray. Indeed, she was disturbed at her husband's close friendship with Thackeray, fearing that it might adversely affect his reputation in the Church. After a cutting description of Francis Mahony as "a Roman Catholic priest who only officiated now as a boon companion," she warned Brookfield, "You seem very hand in glove with Thackeray; don't become a second Father Prout." 4 1 But the winter of 1846-1847 witnessed a period of better understanding between Thackeray and Jane, during the course of wh ich he praised her so warmly to Brookfield that the latter was for a time much offended. In a letter of 3 February 1847, written to apologize for his outburst, Thackeray assured Brookfield: Her innocence, looks, angelical sweetness and kindness charm and ravish me to the highest degree; and every now and then in contemplating them I burst out into uncouth raptures. They are not in the least dangerous-it is a sort of artistical delight (a spiritual sensuality so to speak)-other beautiful objects in Nature so affect me, children, landscapes, harmonies of colour, music, etc.

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Little Minny and the Person most of all. By my soul I think my love for the one is as pure as my love for the other-and believe I never had a bad thought for either. If I had, could I shake you by the hand, or have for you a sincere and generous regard? My dear old fellow, you and God Almighty may know all my thoughts about your wife ;-I'm not ashamed of one of them. 42

imposing than any of her other admirers, yet he spoke to her as if she were' the centre of his world with an understanding and sympathy that no one else could equal. The combination was quite irresistible. 47 By the end of July they were firm friends . While Thackeray was travelling alone on the Continent, he wrote Jane long letters containing so brilliant a running commentary on his experiences that she, in passing along one of these communications to her husband, adjured him, "mind you let me have it back again as it may be intended for ultimate publication for anything we know." Jane longed to answer with equal cordiality, but Brookfield had warned her against excessive demonstrativeness, and she reluctantly agreed to go on addressing her letters to "Mrrrr Thackeray." 48 But as the autumn passed, Thackeray's letters grew more personal and Jane's replies less restrained and formal. When Brookfield grew annoyed upon learning that Thackeray kept the words "Yours affly JOB" with which Jane had ended one of her letters in his purse as a kind of charm, 49 Jane replied with what amounted for her to a declaration of independence: I doubt the fact of "yrs affiy" being an infraction of the laws between intimate friends .... It seems to me very right to caution young women of 18 & 20 not to rush into affecte terms which might lead them on before they were aware, to equally harmless, but more tangibly imprudent demonstrations in personal intercourse,-but I do think at near 30, one may take up a line of one's own, & where one feels affectionately one may venture to say so .... It is not as if Mr Thack: were some young Adonis in the guards, & he has been so very kind to me it w~ go against me now to stiffen into "Sincerely" . ... A friend is a friend & I think when that fact is established a difference ought to be made & that one sh~ be allowed to throw a little more warmth into one's expressions than if one was writing to a mere acquaintance.50

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By June Thackeray was able to tell a friend that if "Mr• Brookfield still keeps possession of this \?, . . . this romantic passion doesn't disturb my sleep or my happytight for wittles," 43 and Brookfield himself could joke easily about the matter. 44 In the early months of 1848 the Brookfields' fortune took a turn for the better. Jane had rejoined her husband in Ebury Street lodgings late in 1847. A month or so afterwards Brookfi eld was at last made an Inspector of Schools. In April, perhaps through the aid of Henry Hallam, they were enabled to take a comfortable house with a maid and a cook at 15 Portman Street. But the household was not a happy one. Jane's health deteriorated further, and she was forced to spend many of her waking hours on the drawing-room sofa as a semi-invalid. "I can't expect ever to feel well," she wrote to her husband, "pain in the back I always have, & that sometimes becoming violent & spasmodic, I h ope to get some remedy for, . . . but in common with many other people I don't suppose actual ease of body is ever to be mine." 45 Nor did she see much more of Brookfield than she had during the previous year, since his duties as Inspector of Schools kept him out of London much of the time. It was under these circumstances that Thackeray gradually transferred his primary allegiance from Brookfield to Jane. Before finding a London home, the Brookfields had offered to set up house with Thackeray. "Loving her as I do-mong Dieu what a temptation it was!" Thackeray wrote to his mother, "but you see the upshot. That would be dangerous, and so I keep off." 46 But once Thackeray could visit Jane at Portman Street nearly every day, spending long hours in delightful conversation, her spell worked on him powerfully. He confided that he was drawing Amelia Sedley in part from her. He sent Mrs. Sartoris to sing to her. He offered her seats to Drury Lane and the opera. For her part J ane received Thackeray's attentions with delight. Thackeray had become a famous man, far more

I I Thackeray's real intimacy with Jane Brookfield began through an episode that he henceforth referred to as "Clevedon in '48." 1 Upon his father's death two years earlier Sir Charles

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Elton had moved to Clevedon Court, where his son and dauo-hter-in-law, Arthur and Rhoda Elton, kept house for him. The Brookfields were frequent visitors to Clevedon Court under this new regime, and Rhoda Elton was particularly anxious that Thackeray should join them during one of their visits. Thackeray declined several of her invitations; but in early October, i848, Jane arrived for a protracted stay, Brookfield turned up later in the month for a few days, and Thackeray appeared for a brief visit on the twenty-fifth. Clevedon Court, on the outskirts of Clevedon, was in origin a fourteenth-century baronial mansion, built of Somerset stone, which, despite alterations in Elizabethan times and later, remained one of the finest examples of the old-time manor-house. Its superb mediaeval hall, musicians' gallery, and handsome fapde made it singularly appealing to anyone whose aesthetic sensibilities were acute. When Thackeray arrived at Clevedon Court, he found that the household routine was commonplace enough. "Day succeeds day each very like the other," Brookfield had written on a previous visit. "At 8 the awakino0 bell clano-s 0 among the gables-at 911:! the up & dressed muster in the old Hall for prayers-after which the breakfast table is pretty sure to attract the two or three stragglers who were too lazy for the altar. Newspapers-letters-& what not occupy people dispersed all over the house with no sort of unity till i. Then lunch brings them together again-which is followed by riding-drivino-strolling- Half past 5 rings the dressing bell & 6 the din~er. The Evening closes with tea, prayers & a cigar & by ii or i 2 everybody has turned in." 2 But for Thackeray the time passed quickly in "sketching out & inside the house," s and he took great pleasure in " looking at trees, landscapes, effects of shine and shadow &c," a gratification, he noted, "w11 made that dear old inspector who walked with me wonder." 4 He enjoyed a children's party on the second day of his stay, and during an "historic tempest" he exhibited a "boyish delight" which surprised Brookfield and pleased the little Eltons. Brookfield returned to London as Sunday approached, but Thackeray and Jane remained over the week-end; and it was during this period that they arrived at an understanding which

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radically altered their relationship. Though their conversation can only be c::onjecturally reconstructed, what was said is clear e1:10ugh. Thackeray was alone one evening when Jane called him to her. 5 She spoke of her constant ill health, of her loneli~ess, of her unhappiness. No doubt her state of mind was very like that set forth m a letter which she wrote to Thackeray two months later: You do !1-ot know hm~ very seriously everything seizes upon me now ~avmg so much time to brood over whatever interests me, & last ~ught from over fatigue I hardly slept at all, so that I was quite unhinged to-day .... [I can] neither do justice to what small amount of character I may have myself, nor to that which has partly been grafted on to my own, & between the two I take refuge in a stolid silence which is only a type of the useless blank of all my life-& I ~annot find anything to do that would take me out of such a pamful state of sensitiveness that it seems as if it wt;! come to a crash and end in insanity some day.6 After Thackeray had shown her how entirely he comprehended and sympath ized with her, he went on to confide his o:vn unhappiness to her. He told her the details of his early history, he spoke of the fate that condemned him to r emain perpetually a grass widower, he told her how little success ~eant to on~ who, lik~ himsel.:, had to return every evening to the old .solitary nothingness. 7 The upshot of this interview was a. tacit agreement that they would henceforth, like brother and sister, rely on each other for solace and support. Thackeray wrote to Jane after leaving Clevedon for Oxford, "I was thinki~g of the last~ or 5 days- I think I've never known any happier ones: and mtend to love that dear old Clevedon for all the r~st of ~Y Me.:· An~. arriving in Oxford, he could not prevent himself, moitie fou as he was, from recounting to his friend Charles ~eate "de souffrances que j'ai- d'horribles peines d e coeur qm sans cesse me poursuivent," conscious all the while that "Elle ne m'aime pas. Elle me plaint." s .Thus was initiated a triangular relationship which persisted without subst~nti~l change until the summer of i85i. When one compares it with other such arrangements durino· the same period, one is struck above all by the restraint displ;yed by all

Thacheray: The Age of Wisdom

persons . co?cerned. Where George Eliot and George Henry Lewes mvited ostracism by elopement, where Mill and the Taylors evolved what amounted to a menage a trois and thereby cut themse:ves off from many of their friends, Thackeray and Jane contrived to conduct their friendship within the iron frame of propriety established by respectable Victorian society. Yet it would be a mistake, as we shall see, to reprove them for indecisiveness and timidity, to regard them as BrowninCT does the hesitant lovers in "The Statue and the Bust," to ~hose "frustrate g~osts". the poet imputes the sin of "the unlit lamp and the ungirt lom." A summary of the Brookfields' situation at the ~nd o.f 1818 and of the terms on which Thackeray came to fit mto it will afford a sounder basis for judgment than Browning's abstract dictum that action is a good in itself. The most ungrateful role in this triangle was inevitably the husband's, yet Brookfield, in the eyes of most observers, seemed a thoroughly admirable person. Eight years in London had made him a polished man of the world. His histrionic gifts had won h im a wide reputation as a preacher, and he was much in demand as a reader during country-house visits. His assigriment as Inspector of Schools enabled him to demonstrate his considerable business talents, while the reports that he wro te on his work displayed through their candid, forceful prose his manly common sense and his shrewd judgment of character.9 More endearing to his friends than these solid qualities, however, was his penchant for "fun, of the most irresistible kind." 10 It is on record that he once kept Carlyle laughing for the whole o f an evening; and W . H. Thompson thought that "When in Society he was by far the most amusing man I ever met, or shall meet. At my age it is not likely that I shall ever again see a whole party lying on the floor for the purposes of unrestrained laughter, while one of their members is pouring forth, with a perfectly grave face, a succession of imaginary dialogues bet ween characters, real and fictitious, one exceeding another in humour and d rollery." 11 Though as Brookfield himself noted, "it is difficult to record things that depend chiefly on their absurdity for their humour," 12 enough examples of his stories and sayings survive to

"LONGING · PASSION UNFULFILLED"

enable us to judge their nature. A characteristic specimen from his repertoire is his account of how his assistant at St. Luke's on one occasion in entering the desk got his robes somehow or other caught in the door. This he did not discover till he had begun reading, when he had not the presence of mind to disentangle them, but proceeded as follows, I being below at the Altar. "Dearly beloved brethren, (Mr. Brookfield, sotto voce). The Scripture moveth us (Mr. Brookfield! (louder)) in sundry places (Mr. Brookfield!!)." I looked round and perceived him literally with a face agonized with terror as if a rat were biting at his heel; I could not see what was the matter and asked if he were ill, but he went on alternately reading three words, then turning round with terrified face ~nd gesture to his entangled hood till the tragedy worked itself to this pitch, "And altho" (a terrified wink at the desk door) "we ought at all times (do assist me) humbly to acknowledge (1'M CONFINED, MR. BROOKFIELD)" (in an audible voice). At this I gave the door a rude pull, released the unlucky vestment, turned round to bury my convulsions in my surplice, and all thenceforward went on smoothly.1a

Brookfield had a particularly keen ear for the praise that typifies the speaker's mental build . So he was amused when an old woman, encountered again after many years, exclaimed, "La, sir, I thought you was in glory long ago!" 14 And elsewhere we find him describing a popular pulpit performer as a vulCTar, familiar man with a big voice, who "congTatulated his audi~ors on having 'A full Christ preached to them' whatever that micrht . . about ohis mean. "15 H e was a d ept at f rammg wry pleasantries own small adventures. When in later life he became an Honorary Canon of Saint Paul's, after having been for some time a Chaplai~ in. Ordina:r t~ the Queen, he reflected: "One good a~ least it will d~-1 t will put a.n end to the racking sleepless m ghts of perplexity through which I have debated within myself whether a R oyal Chaplain or a Canon goes in to dinner first ." 10 Venables was fully justified, then, in urging that Brookfield was "a master of humorous delineation" who "never degenerated into a jester." 17 Unhappily there was another side to the medal. Over the

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years Brookfield had become convinced that life had gone wrong with him; and instead of summoning up his powers for fresh efforts, he lapsed into an attitude, not so much of bitterness as of ironic resignation, in which he equally blamed the world for its inability to see his merits and himself for his own weakness and inadequacy. So during his second campaign for a school inspectorship, we find him writing despondently, "I don't think I shall get it or anything else," 18 while he later excused his relative professional failure to Charles Greville by the observation: "Believe me, that in our church there is a great demand for dulness!" 19 But other unconventional churchmen (Connop Thirlwall, for example) gained substantial preferment in Brookfield's time. If we ask why he was held back, the answer can only be that he was regarded as not quite reliable. His humour was often misunderstood. An old college servant in later life inquired of a friend of Brookfield's whether he had "dried down," and one of his own domestics had to be turned away for imitating him and asserting that he was drunk. 20 His mannered language, which he himself attributed to his "imitative propensities" and "certain fantastic turns of mind," 21 struck many listeners as evidence of a basic insincerity. 22 Even the avidity with which he followed the famous murder trials of the day, 23 sometimes having himself announced in the London drawing-rooms that he visited by the name of a currently notorious murderer, 24 made a doubtful impression on the literalminded. In any event, his inability to get on had an adverse effect on Brookfield's character. Allen's charge of "levity and looseness of talk," reinforced by other criticism, caused him so to regulate his behaviour that by the end of his life he was regarded as a "moral martinet" whose conduct was marked by much "exterior austerity." 25 Though basically a generous man, ready to rejoice in his friends' good fortune, he could not always suppress his resentment at having been so far outstripped in life. And worst of all, as his despondency turned him in upon himself, he became diffident, reserved, self-conscious, even somewhat devious. If he conceived himself to be slighted or offended, he no longer frankly sought a direct explanation, but preferred

instead to brood over his fancied wrongs. By the time that he did bring himself to act, therefore, mole-hills had grown into mountains, at least in his mind, and what would originally have called for first aid, now seemed to require surgery. It will be readily understood that Brookfield was not an easy man to live with. Yet if her marriage had been an equal partnership, warmed by outspoken affection and understanding, Jane might have found it a relatively simple matter to listen sympathetica'lly to his grievances against the world and to give him the renewal of confidence that he needed. Unhappily Brookfield was something of a domestic tyrant and disapproved of uxoriousness on principle. Although after his fashion he loved Jane profoundly, he regarded it as his duty to insist on the essential inferiority of the wife to the husband. When Jane reported to him certain heresies concerning women's rights which she had picked up from her Southampton friend Mrs. Fanshawe, Brookfield made impatient fun of her tempter: "I commission you to give her either a blank stupid stare of unapprehension or a box on the ear as may seem most expedient, from me, every time she utters an incoherent abstraction against the male persuasion." 26 He thought it Jane's chief duty to be an efficient housewife and censured severely any sign of domestic incompetence. He did not allow the demands of home to interfere in any way with his social pleasures, attending bachelor feasts as opportunity offered, and often not returning until early morning. Characteristically, he did not hesitate to report to Jane an ambiguous compliment that Kinglake paid him, "that I had been very happy in my marriage, ... that you appeared to have a perfect temper, and to 'fall in to my batchelor ways.' " 27 Sometimes he suffered twinges of remorse in thinking of the contrast between his pleasures and his wife's ill health and monotonous life. 28 But such pangs rarely found expression, since Brookfield was of a cold temperament and deplored any expression of emotion. This was a subject on which he often lectured his wife in his letters: I have such a constitutional detestation of sentiments-feelings or by whatever name one sM best indicate what I mean & what you

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will at once recognize that perhaps I am not so interested as I ought in reason to be with a discussion of the same-or anythi~g connected with them ... . Nothing is more probable than that m my (perhaps morbid) distaste for such themes I may exaggerate the degree of twaddle which you seem to have permitted yourselfbut there can be no harm & no unkindness in saying that reserve is the great law for women-& that the less confidentially young married women talk about their feelings &c . . . the better. 29

actly what I may really be-would it not be a most incongruous liaison for you & me to be taken up, & (as it w4 probably turn out) introduced & vouched for by Lady Duff with her gt goodnature desiring to give one a lift in Society-which Zif t I should think very undesirable in our circumstances-I think you have been thrown, as it is, quite as much as is in any way prudent for a Clergyman into that literary set from wh: I do not think a wholesome influence proceeds, however pleasant & kind they are,-I say so much with regard to you because I think the case w4 be very different if you were not a Priest, but being one, & being of a social temperament & likely, as it is, to startle weak minds by some of yr free ways, which have no shadow of wrong in them, but which pilling people might easily take umbrage at, w4 not it be very rash to put your head into the very Lion's den as it were, & go, where being such near neighbours you w4 probably end in being far more than you now are mixed up with that se t?-And with regard to me, would it be well for me to be in the same house & so (however unjustly) taking caste as it were from a person of such notorious equivocal MANNERS, however free from a shadow of actual blame her conduct is?-I could never be intimate with Lady Duff because, she appears to have neither a woman's delicacy nor reverence .... Cannot you call up visions of cosy little Sunday dinners with Mrs Norton Mr Thackeray & Mr and Mrs Wigan?-and I w4 not vouch for either yr or my virtuous sense of congruities, restraining our joining in such delassements, as long as there was no real intrinsic wrong in them. 35

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H e was equally trenchant in dealing with emotional displays at home. Indeed, Anny Thackeray long remembered an occasion on which she and Minny saw him mimic one of Jane's sentimental outbursts with such effect that Jane was moved to tears and the girls to uncomprehending laughter. 30 At the end of 1848 Jane was twenty-seven years old, a tall and stately lady, whose dignified and rather formal manners did not in any way inhibit her vivacity or conversational readiness.31 She had a considerable beauty in the Madonna style, and her admirers particularly praised her low, sweet voice and large eyes. Certainly the band of devoted servitors who gathered around her Portman Street sofa testifi ed to the attractive and interesting appearance that she presented. 32 "How foolishly, blindly fond I am of being liked and admired," she told her husband. "If I had not the restraint of very deep affection for you, and some restraint of conscience, I should be, I believe, still on the lookout for conquest." 33 Yet Brookfield had good reason for remaining unperturbed by Jane's popularity, reassured as he was by the profound respect for the proprieties instilled in Jane by her Elton upbringing. "Ohl I defy any man to take a liberty with vou," a female acquaintance once told her, "it w4 be impossible quite." 34 Her response to a proposal of the Duff-Cordons a year before, that they join forces in keeping house, is typical of her usual cautious decorum : What do I think of the Duffgording plan? [she replied to her husband.] I think it exceedingly kind, of course-BUT that it w4 be extremely imprudent on many a/e's to accept the offer .... When you consider you as a Clergyman & me as a quiet sort of person whom few have much real acquaintance with, so as to know ex-

75

Jane's attitude towards her husband had undergone a marked transformation over the years. While she loved him as much as ever, maturity brought with it a new ability to judge, which caused Brookfield to seem to her something of a fallen idol. When Brookfield and Jane first met, she was fifteen and he twenty-seven; she knew only the restricted life of the Elton family circle; he was already an experienced m an of the world. For many years the unquestioned ascendancy that in these circumstances he easily gained over her remained unchallenged. W hen In Memoriam was published in 1850, Jane found in it an exact description of her view of Brookfield during their years of courtship and early married life :

Thackeray: The Age of Wisdom

Her faith is fixt and cannot move, She darkly feels him great and wise, She dwells on him with faithful eyes, 'I cannot understand: I love.' The coldness and neglect with which Brookfield came to treat Jane for a time raised no doubts in her mind. She called Brookfield her "dear Curmudgeon," even when he reproved her "childishness & indecision & confusion." "I shall hope to continue my course as 'Clay in the hands of the Potter,' you being the Potter," she assured him. This phase of her marriage as well she found summed up in In Memoriam: Her life is lone, he sits apart, He loves her yet, she will not weep, Tho' rapt in matters dark and deep He seems to slight her simple heart. 36 But gradually as Jane achieved more knowledge of the world, she was led to compare Brookfield with other men. In the spring of 1848 Thackeray formulated her situation in terms that were no doubt by this time establishing themselves in her own mind: "I know the greater part of her malady well enough -a husband whom she has loved with the most fanatical fondness and who-and who is my friend too-a good fellow upright generous kind to all the world except her." 37 And looking back on this period some years later, Thackeray thus continued his analysis: "You see from the day she fell in love with the Inspector and fell a worshipping him until now She has had no companionship with him. It was all very well while she was adoring him, but now that he is no longer Divine in her eyes, only terrible and her Master, her loneliness is sad to think of." 3s It was under these circumstances that Jane had welcomed Thackeray's circumspect advances at Clevedon. With Thackeray a famous man, she no longer entertained doubts about sharing " little Sunday dinners" with him. Instead she knew that his attentions would present her to the world in the most flattering light. Moreover, she had come to feel a sisterly liking for him as a friend who was in closer harmony with many of

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her thoughts and feelings than was her husband. She was grateful when Thackeray assured her: " It seems to me you keep your house very fairly-you might be a more active housekeeper, but then you wouldn't be such a good lady. It is very good for some people to scold servants, and make pickles and puddings, and a woman may be very good & charming who does the latter, but there's a fitness of things, and I hope you won't be too much of a housewife as yet. Depend on it, if you knew a great deal about meat and poultry you wouldn't know about other things." 39 Jane no doubt saw clearly enough the difficulties to which their new relationship would give rise, but she was confident that she had the self-command and social skill to prevent these difficulties from becoming dangers. And she knew that the channel was clear of the rock on which such a relationship might have been expected to split. Thackeray was at this time hardly a romantic figure. It is true that in April, 1850, Effie Ruskin wrote that "but for a broken nose [he) would be a handsome man"; 40 but if he was tall and imposing, he looked much older than his years and he weighed some sixteen stone. His Irish enemies did not scruple to call him a "Big Blubber man"; and when Lever described him in the person of Elias Howle of Roland Cashel as being "large and heavily built, but neither muscular nor athletic," 4 1 Thackeray ruefully admitted that this was "un portrait assez fidele." 42 He could not reasonably expect that Jane would be physically attracted to him as, d espite all disagreements, she was still attracted to her handsome husband. This factor also helps to explain why Brookfield did not quickly put an end to the understanding that Jane and Thackeray established at Clevedon. He was so sure of his wife's exclusive love that he could not envision Thackeray as a possible rival. He sympathized with his friend, and was happy to see his loneliness somewhat mitigated. Moreover, i:t gratified him to find his wife surrounded by platonic "lovers" of distinction. "A part of Brookfield's pride of possession," Thackeray later observed, "is that we should envy him and admire her." 43 So, being a busy man whose hands were filled with other matters, he elected to follow the line of least resistance, adopting an attitude of friendly

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acquiescence in Jane's intimacy with Thackeray and remonstrating only when one or the other seemed to him to deviate from the razor's edge of strict propriety. Thackeray saw clearly enough how one-sided and unequal his relationship with Jane must be. His love for her rested on a strongly sensual basis. We find him writing to Spedding, for example, early in i850: "My dear Inspectress of schools beautiful as ever is about to become a Mamma. A comic poet once singing of an Irishwoman said 'Children if she bear blest will be their daddy' And indeed I can conceive of few positions more agreeable than his who is called upon to perform the part of husband to so sweet a creature." 44 Yet he knew that anything more than cordial friendship was out of the question. He later told Miss Perry: "Je tremble d 'amour quelquefois devant elle -que de flammes ont passe par mes lunettes! Bon ~

1

VI. "A View o( Y ~ Tursery-Garden at H a tto n in M iddx," from a note to the Poll ocks

~~

l

~ -~ ! s .~-~~~ l

9, Wt1. LINOTON

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lX . .-\ pictorial co mmentar y on the prospectus of a ge n tee! sc hoo l drawn by Thackera y J'or i\f rs. P rocter

Tnna•CE,

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