THACKERAY 



5778 



THACKERAY 



ta, where his father was in the employ of the 

 East India Company. He was sent, while still 

 very young, to England to be educated. He 

 spent several years at the Charterhouse School, 

 which he afterward described in The Newcomes, 

 and passed a year 

 at Cambridge, 

 where Tennyson 

 was at the same 

 time. His well- 

 known humorous 

 verses on Tim- 

 buctoo were writ- 

 ten on the topic 

 assigned for the 

 year's prize poem, 

 but were not in- 

 tended as a bur- 

 lesque of Tenny- 



i , WILLIAM MAKEPEACE 



son s poem, which THACKERAY 



won the prize. Of himself he said, "I have 



An interval of no brains above my eves ; I 



1 describe what I see." He gave 



travel on the con- the world a true picture of 



tinent followed, the society of his day " 

 and then he settled down for a short time to 

 study law a subject, however, which failed to 

 interest him. 



From Art to Literature. In 1832 he came 

 into possession of a considerable fortune, which 

 was soon greatly lessened by the failure of an 

 Indian bank and by an unfortunate investment. 

 From his boyhood days he had been fond of 

 drawing, like his own Clive in The Newcomes, 

 and he went to Paris to study art; but he was 

 soon convinced that he would never be success- 

 ful enough at it to earn his living, which he 

 now found himself obliged to do. He began, 

 therefore, to write humorous tales and sketches, 

 which were contributed largely to Fraser's 

 Magazine and to Punch. Among the collec- 

 tions of these writings are The Yellowplush 

 Papers, The Irish Sketch-Book, Jeames's Diary 

 and the Snob Papers. 



Fame Came with "Vanity Fair." In 1836 

 Thackeray married Miss Isabella Shawe, who 

 bore him three daughters, of whom one died 

 in infancy. In 1840, however, Mrs. Thackeray's 

 mind failed, and her husband was finally forced 

 to, abandon hope of her recovery. Meanwhile, 

 his work had been growing in popularity, and 

 with the appearance, in 1846-1848, of the seri- 

 ally published Vanity Fair, he became famous. 

 In this novel his intense hatred of sham and 

 pretense is expressed in a satirical and wonder- 

 fully realistic picture of the life of the English 

 upper class a picture in which sordid desire for 



rank and wealth and snobbish deference to the 

 possessors of these prizes are held up to ridi- 

 cule and rebuke. 



Not only casual readers, but those as well 

 who should see more deeply, have often called 

 Thackeray cynical, but that he never was he 

 was too clear-sighted and too kindly. Indeed, 

 his very ridicule of insincerity and vain show is 

 praise for the opposite virtues. Vanity Fair 

 was followed by Pendennis, which is in a meas- 

 ure autobiographical; Henry Esmond, a most 

 faithful representation of English life in the 

 early eighteenth century, by many reckoned 

 his masterpiece and by some the greatest of 

 English novels; and The Newcomes, which by 

 its pathos proves once and for all that Thack- 

 eray was no cynic. Colonel Newcome is one 

 of the finest characters in all fiction. 



In the year that Henry Esmond was pub- 

 lished (1852), Thackeray gave further evidence 

 of his keen insight into eighteenth century life 

 in his lectures on The English Humorists of the 

 Eighteenth Century, delivered in the United 

 States. In 1855 he made a second tour lectur- 

 ing on The Four Georges. These two series of 

 lectures were published later, and are among 

 the most delightful essays of the age. From 1860 

 to 1862 he was editor of the Cornhill Magazine, 

 in which appeared his Lovel the Widower, The 

 Adventures of Philip, The Roundabout Papers 

 (a series of charming essays), and the first part 

 of Denis Duval, left unfinished at the author's 

 death. The Virginians, a sequel to Henry Es- 

 mond, published in 1857, is his only other really 

 important novel. 



His Place in Literature. It is the natural 

 thing to compare Dickens and Thackeray, the 

 two great humorous novelists of the age. 

 Thackeray was a year older, but Dickens was 

 the first to become popular, largely because of 

 his energy and his self-confidence. Thackeray, 

 on the other hand, was shy and sensitive all his 

 life, and had always to drive himself to his 

 work. The two were friends, without thought 

 of jealousy; and by their pictures of English 

 life, high and low, did an infinite service in 

 making the England of their days live in the 

 future. 



Thackeray's style is remarkable for its ease 

 and simplicity. As he says himself, he likes 

 "occasionally to step down from the platform 

 and talk about" his characters, and this fa- 

 miliar, colloquial manner is one of the chief 

 charms of his writings. A.MC c. 



Consult Crowe's Homes and Haunts of Thack- 

 eray ; Benjamin's Some Aspects of Thackeray. 



