18 July: Boreham on William Thackeray

Genius and Generosity
This is Thackeray's birthday. A burly giant three inches over six feet, with a soul to match his massive body, the great man looms engagingly, if a trifle ponderously, against our literary skyline.

Born in India in 1811, his infancy was dominated by the excitements of Waterloo, and when, on his way to England in 1817, the ship called at St. Helena, the impressionable young six-year-old wondered if it would be possible to catch a glimpse of Napoleon. "Well," exclaimed a coloured servant, "he eats a sheep a day and as many children as he can catch; but if young master wants to see him, we'll manage it!" Is it any wonder that, after this, Waterloo and Napoleon figure so conspicuously in the Thackeray novels?

It took Thackeray many years to realise that literature was his life work. Able at a moment's notice to sing a good song or limn a clever cartoon, he started uncertainly upon his career, groping his way blindly among the intricate byways of London life.

Dickens and Thackeray were born within six months of each other. It was a case of the hare and the tortoise. Dickens shot away to a lightning start. Thackeray sought the privilege of designing the illustrations for "Pickwick Papers," but was rejected. Dickens had published "Pickwick," "Nicholas Nickleby," "The Old Curiosity Shop," "Barnaby Rudge," "Martin Chuzzlewit," and the "Christmas Stories" before, in giving "Vanity Fair" to the world, Thackeray, announced the advent of another first-class English novelist.

Making Up For Lost Time
Thackeray was 41 when, in 1852 he published "Henry Esmond." Dickens followed his earlier triumphs with "Bleak House." As soon as the public had devoured the two books, the star of Dickens was pronounced to be waning, whilst that of Thackeray was in the ascendant.

In "Bleak House," Dickens gave the first signs of fatigue. In "Henry Esmond," on the other hand, Thackeray rose to his full stature. He surpassed himself. It is easily his best work, and has rightly taken its place as one of the greatest novels in the language.

Although Thackeray lacks that elusive and magnetic quality possessed by Johnson, Lamb, Burns, Byron, and Stevenson, a quality that infects us with an insatiable hunger for every trivial detail in our author's life, he was, nevertheless, an attractive and lovable figure. Generous to a fault, and capable of the most splendid self-sacrifice, he had an uncanny knack of seeing the right thing to say or to do, and of saying and doing it with a bluff but delightful chivalry.

Nothing pleased him more than the sheepish gratitude of a schoolboy to whom he had given a sovereign, or the light in the eyes of a girl to whom he had handed a pair of gloves. Or being met in the street and told by a mutual friend of a struggling scribbler who was in desperate straits far the lack of £2,000, Thackeray promised half that sum on the spot. Everybody who knew him was intensely fond of him, and, to the last, little children revelled in his society. It was said at the time that his death, on December 24, 1863, cast a dark shadow over every Christmas party in England.

Enriched By Grief He Radiate
His masculine and masterful spirit was softened and sweetened by sorrow. On attaining his majority he had inherited a handsome fortune and lost it all. It was the best thing that could have happened to him, he used to say with a smile, for, if he had retained the money, he would never have done a stroke of work. Later on, his young wife lost her reason and was for 50 years under guard. But he bore this heavier grief as bravely as he had borne the earlier one. "My marriage is a wreck," he wrote, "but if life were repeated, I would do the same again, for love is the completion and the crown of all earthly good." Amidst the bludgeoning of circumstance, his head was bloody but unbowed.

He was only 52 when, very suddenly, he died in his sleep. "Poor Thackeray!" wrote Carlyle, with the Christmas bells ringing in his ears, "I saw him not 10 days ago. I was riding, heavy of heart, when some human brother, from a chariot with a young lady in it threw me a shower of salutations. I looked up; it was Thackeray with his daughter; the last time I was to see him in this world. A monstrous giant of a man, he was huge of soul, incapable of guile or malice, with a beautiful vein of genius struggling within him."

Thackeray admired Dickens and loved him. "Why don't you write books like those of Mr. Dickens," his daughter asked him. "I only wish I could!" replied her father, with a shrug of his huge shoulders. The two men met on the steps of the Athenaeum Club a day or two before that fatal Christmas. They passed each other with a nod. After they had each gone a few yards, Thackeray hurried back, overtook his friend and greeted him with heartfelt cordiality. A few days later Dickens recalled the incident with moist eyes.

Trollope thought Thackeray the greatest of the Victorian novelists. That, of course, is a matter of taste, but he certainly stands as one of the really Homeric figures of that singularly wealthy age.

F W Boreham

Image: William Thackeray