The Real Thackeray

By Prof. P. R. Krishnaswami, M.A.

AMIDST the orgy of uncritical adulation occasioned by the publication of Mr. Gordon N. Ray’s book on Thackeray, it must look ungracious to strike a note of disapproval. More than twelve years ago I felt the need to attempt a re-valuation of Thackeray’s personal character and literary work, and I believe it is necessary now more than ever before to do it.

It is now many years since a new edition of Melville’s Life of Thackeray was brought out, and reviewing the book in a London weekly, Edwin Muir remarked that an impartial biography of the novelist which offered an adequate account of the dark and adventurous parts of Thackeray’s career was yet to be presented to the world. The verdict passed on Thackeray was not in absolute terms and always left room for doubt and controversy. The careful student will perceive that the assured and unquestionable position fiction accorded to Sir Walter Scott, Jane Austen, Dickens, George Eliot, Meredith, or Trollope has never belonged to Thackeray. Critics who have spoken in passionate praise of Thackeray have always betrayed that they armed themselves with the special passion only to overthrow, if they could, the hostile criticism which they had heard distinctly. Mr. Gordon N. Ray has betrayed this weakness even in the note on the flap of the jacket by making unwarranted attacks on Thackeray’s successful contemporaries. The sentence occurs in Saintsbury: “During his lifetime some foolish persons called him cynical: since his death, others not more wise have called him a sentimentalist.” It is not impossible that modern investigation must lead to justifying the contemporary charge of cynicism and the later one of sentimentalism. As against the numerous critics who have praised Thackeray lavishly, a few courageous men have left on record their condemnation of the vicious tendencies in the literary work and personal character of Thackeray. In a letter to Arthur Hugh Clough, Matthew Arnold stated his judgment that Thackeray was certainly a first-rate journeyman, though he was not definitely a great artist. He also contrasted the work of Scott with that of Thackeray, calling the former heaven-born, and the latter un-heaven-born. Herbert Paul mentioned Arnold having said that Thackeray was not a great writer, but unfortunately for us, he does not furnish fuller details of Arnold’s attitude to Thackeray. Herbert Paul seems to lose all his loyalty to the subject of his biography when he characterises Arnold’s judgment as sagrenu and states that if Thackeray were not a great writer nobody else in English literature was. To a diligent seeker the reasons must be easily evident on which Arnold based his condemnation. Again, Russell, the editor of Arnold’s letters, has unluckily thought fit to omit the relevant words in a letter written by Arnold, about Thackeray. Years after Thackeray had died, Beaconsfield the great Victorian statesman, chose to draw a portrait of Thackeray in his novel, “Endymion” in the character of St. Barbe. St. Barbe is a mean and envious person who yet wields the power of creating vast amusement for the people of his time. Beaconsfield is known to have transcribed numerous real persons in his fictitious books, but we have not heard it suggested that personal malice rendered these portraits unfair to their originals. But the English conspiracy to protect Thackeray is once again in operation. Mr. Buckle, the biographer of Beaconsfield, dismisses the creation of St. Barbe as a cruel portrait. Mr. Buckle thinks that though Thackeray had offended Beaconsfield by his parody of “Coningsby,” he made amends by paying handsome compliments later. Thackeray spoke in praise of Beaconsfield on a public occasion and took care to communicate the praise to Beaconsfield’s wife, pointing out that some authors can praise other authors behind their . Mr. Buckle does not pause to consider whether this praising was kept quite behind the .

In the late evening of his life Saintsbury collected his Introductory essays to the Oxford Thackeray in a book entitled “A Consideration of Thackeray.” It was reasonable to expect that a note here and a note there would be inserted by the author to recognise new facts revealed in the course of passing years. Saintsbury however stuck resolutely and unrepentingly to his earlier pronouncements. He did not mean to do more than putting together in bookform the essays he had written for separate books. But it was surprising that Mr. Malcolm Elwin was able to produce a biography in 1932 without the least evidence of any advance from the traditional uncritical attitude towards the novelist. Mr. Elwin called the book “Thackeray–A Personality.” He claimed to supply the deficiency in previous books. Yet it may be confessed that Trollope, Merivale and Marzials, and Whibley, help us better to form an impartial estimate of the novelist than Mr. Elwin who indulges in the adulatory style of the Boswellean type.

I have yet another reason to justify a fresh appraisement of Thackeray. It is possible to pursue a new line of analysis which helps us to gain an intimate view of the methods employed by the novelist in constructing his characters. My own investigations have revealed the secret of the composition of four significant characters in the “New-comes,” and the facts derived by me joined to others previously known, help us to pass judgment confidently on Thackeray.

Before attempting a brief review of his principal novels I must remark on the important lessons in novel-writing which Thackeray learnt of his great guru, Sir Walter Scott. We recognise easily that Thackeray’s facility in writing is both his strength and his weakness. The mass of non-descript and shapeless productions of his, before the publication of “Vanity Fair” was amazing. He would perhaps never have found his way out of that welter of writing but for the gleams of the novelist’s art which he caught from Sir Walter Scott. He derived enlightenment from Scott about the historical novel though he never practised Scott’s high ideals of historical truth. A more important lesson was the basing of every novel on a definite historical period, bringing it within the novelist’s own time. From Scott again, Thackeray learnt to introduce the Indian nabob in his novels, though the foolish Joseph Sedley, the mean Colonel Altamont, or even Colonel Newcome is nothing like the dignified Colonel Mannering or the adorable Peregrine Touchwood.

With “Vanity Fair” Thackeray came into his own. But what was the story of this work? It concerned the career of a self-seeking and unscrupulous governess, in other words, the novel portrays English life from the point of view of a governess. In the first instance we learn about the family of a baronet, Sir Pitt Crawley. It has been said that Sir Pitt was copied from real life, and are we to infer a picture of the English aristocracy form that of Sir Pitt? Of other important character, we first note Joseph Sedley, the Collector of Boggley Wallah, than whom we cannot imagine a vainer or more gullible person. Then there is the pair of friends, Osborne and Dobbin. Osborne was a snob and fool and Dobbin, wholly virtuous, is yet made ridiculous. Some of the comments on the Marquis of Steyne seem to suggest that Thackeray could have recorded no higher type of Victorian political life. Whibley has discussed this character and pointed out how Beaconsfield’s treatment of the man is real and Thackeray’s unreal. In Thackeray the good man is ridiculous and the good woman weak. “He had declared with some rashness that he was creating in “Vanity Fair” a set of people without God. Saintsbury presumes gratuitously that Thackeray has made an effective picture of life and for that reason it cannot have left out God. Harriet Martineau wrote in her Autobiography: “I confess to being unable to read “Vanity Fair” from the disgust it occasions.”

Turning to “Pendeanis” we note that the story of Colonel Altamont, the Claverings, and Miss Amory, is the record of disgusting happenings in Anglo-India. Major Pendennis seems to represent the height of virtue possible in Thackeray’s novels. “Esmond” has been held up as the great example of the English historical novel. Once again Thackeray’s sheer facility in writing has carried the day. He imitated the style of the eighteenth century and created an illusion on the reader that he is taken to the earlier century. Critics like Saintsbury have expressed a theatrical passion for the heroine, Beatrix. The particular scandalous life on which Thackeray based that character is well known. The Duchess of Kingston who was tried for bigamy is known to have furnished the original. Several historical figures come into “Esmond.” Whibley has pointed out how perverted the picture of Marlborough is. Swift is portrayed with the meanest human qualities. “The Newcomes” is painted on larger canvas than the other books. Colonel Newcome is a noble creation and the pathos of his sufferings has been regarded as unsurpassed elsewhere. But we cannot forget that he is so foolish that he cannot protect himself against the impositions of the world. Barnes Newcome is a type of monstrous villainy, treated with a cruelty found nowhere else. Like his generation Thackeray held the absurd belief that young men must sow their wild oats, and after a time all will be well–a belief attacked effectively in Meredith’s novel, “Ordeal of Richard Feverel.” But what is peculiar to Thackeray is the difference with which he applies this tolerant theory of wild oats to the different characters in his novels. He has no word of reproach to Lord Kew or Arthur Pendennis, but on Barnes Newcome and Charles Honeyman he pours unmitigated wrath.

Reference has so far been made to the material of the four principal novels. It may be contended that no literary work is to be judged by its matter. But no formal beauty is possible without organic connection with worthy matter.

We must demand of critics that they adhere to a constant standard in judging the work of different authors. About Scott for instance, Saintsbury writes: “He left the novel the equal of any literary department in repute, profit, possibility, and (which must be said, though it is travelling out of our usual record) he infused into it, as Fielding had begun to do before him, a tradition of moral and intellectual health, of manliness, of truth and honour, freedom and courtesy, which has distinguished the best days of the English novel, as it distinguishes those of hardly any other literary kind.” When considering Thackeray however, Saintsbury does not apply the test of wholesomeness, but dwells on his style, and states towards the end that he was the recorder of the higher English life in the middle nineteenth century. One must form a very poor opinion of the higher English life if it has been faithfully reflected in Thackeray’s novels.

The charge of cynicism against Thackeray cannot be dismissed. The author betrays an incurable envy in the creation of his characters. Either he could brook no one being spoken of with entire admiration or he was incapable of realising that perfect balance and restraint in human character which shape the better types of human beings in the world. Anthony Trollope concedes Thackeray’s cynical quality but thinks that every other artist also has to be called a cynic, instancing Swift, Pope and Juvenal. It must be however easy to differentiate the satire of impersonal indignation from that of personal malice.

Thackeray’s personal snobbery is apparent in the pages of his writing. The novelist stands for the gentlemanly class not in the sense of the word expounded by Newman, but in the vulgar sense of the tradesman who values men according to their buying capacity. There is indeed in his novels no sense of the great democracy of the common and poor people. Gentlemen may of course joke about their servants in waiting, but viewing the world from the poor man’s point of view would have shocked the gentlemanly sense of Thackeray. It is not for nothing that Dickens is held higher than Thackeray in the estimate of the majority of readers. The heart of Humanity lay close to Dickens, while Thackeray consumed his heart in the restless ambition of rising to eminence in the world.

As a literary critic or rambling essayist Thackeray’s powers are insignificant. The lectures on the humourists of the eighteenth century are attractive only for their chatty style. Thackeray could no more analyse the subject of humour than he could interpret the philosophy of life. Nor is his characterisation of the great writers always true to facts or fair in judgment. The most notorious portrait is that of Swift, who, in the words of Whibley, never put pen to paper save in scorn of stupidity, or with a fixed desire to reform abuses.” Whibley comments on Thackeray’s antipathy to Swift thus: “And the easy-going man about town not unnaturally saddled his with all the sins and all the absurdities that he castigated in others.” Whibley remarks again that Thuckeray begins his discourse on Swift with an irrelevant question, “Would we have liked to live with him?” Whibley answers the question “.... it is indubitably true that the best of Swift’s contemporaries did like to live with him and felt honoured in his acquaintance.” We may further suggest that if the same question were asked in reference to Thackeray, the answer would have to be: “Decidedly not, unless we were of his family or had some claim on his homage.” Yet another vice of Thackeray’s manner has been pointed out in the needless condescension and pity bestowed by him on the writers who formed the theme of his lectures, in expressions like “poor Dick Steele”, “poor Henry Fielding” and “poor Congreve,” The whirlgig of time must point to “poor Thackeray.”

The qualities which render Thackeray’s writing attractive are obvious. The matchless fluency of his style and the wealth of creation in his novels are remarkable. The characters are life-like, because the novelist seems to make them act and speak as if on their own initiative. The incidental observations on human nature are sufficiently penetrating, though not profound. Most readers are so charmed by these features that they do not stop to judge the whole scheme of his writings. Human nature is often tickled by the extravagant account of the lower nature of man, and to all who have the instinct for scandal Thackeray becomes the patron-saint. But the defective understanding of human nature which renders his writing unwholesome is obvious. This lack of spiritual health is also betrayed in his imperfect art.

Literary writers are but men, with imperfections like any other set of men in the world, but the world is apt to regard a prominent writer or artist as an adorable man. Yet some very good writers have been terrible sinners themselves, but it is not the sinning part 0f their composition that produces the literary work. It also happens sometimes that by sinning the writers have been led to repentance, and the unpractised purity of their imagination has produced some of the best literature. But the imperfections of Thackeray as a man show themselves clearly in the imperfections of his literary work.

The study of the material on which Thackeray based his fictitious characters helps to throw light on his personality. It has become a fashion among some literary critics to condemn the attempt to trace fictitious characters to their originals in life as a vulgar occupation bereft of all critical value. But this attitude is born usually of laziness. The tracing of originals may be done both rightly and wrongly, and we are not concerned with the wrong way. Where we may, by a perfectly logical method, derive certain results calculated to be useful to us in the appraisement of the literary worth of the author, it will amount to perversity to reject it. After all we may remember with what assiduity scholars have studied the sources of Shakespeare’s plays as an indispensable part of their critical work.

In his Introduction to “Vanity Fair” Saintsbury writes: “Of the famous studies, or supposed studies, of real life in public or private characters one must say a little more. Of late the tendency has been to exaggerate their coincidence with their originals.” Saintsbury does not however omit to mention as many of the originals as have been known, in his Introductions to the novels. He quotes Sir Leslie Stephen’s caution against emphasising too much the coincidences between real persons and the characters of novels. Saintsbury also refers, with obvious like, to a German monograph in which the life of the novelist is laboriously inferred from his work. The book is not before us, but the idea of the German writer must be unexceptionable, provided the reasoning is carried on soundly. Saintsbury is always apt to presume a little too much in favour of the famous names of literature and in reference to constructing novels on real characters, says that though a large number of traits, incidents, individual details, are taken from actuality, they are “all passed through the alembic or the loom of art–redistilled or rewoven into original and independent composition.” It often happens that this alembic or loom proves defective in its functioning, and the critic then sees more of the raw material than the writer could have wished.

Twenty years ago, from December 1927 to March 1928, I contributed to the pages of the Cornhill Magazine a study of four characters in the “Newcomes”, tracing them to the originals on which I showed them to be obviously based. By my pointing to remarkable details of the Colonel’s likeness to Sir Thomas Munro, all previous suggestions about the Colonel’s original became less important. James Binnie was shown to be a composite picture of Lord Macaulay and Mountstuart Elphinstone. Rummon Loll was an unimaginably perverted account of Raja Rammohun Roy who was much more than an ambassador from India in the political sense. Lastly, Charles Honeyman, the hypocritical priest, was seen to reflect no other than the Rev. W. H. Brookfield, one of Thackeray’s intimate friends. Munro and Elphinstone are obviously dwarfed in the re-creation in the novel. The perverse transformation of Rammohun Roy retains a lasting bitterness. The presence of an Indian in London society was a rare phenomenon in the thirties of the last certury, and one Indian of high attainments appeared there to rouse the warmest plaudits of all classes. Yet poor Thackeray who could spare room for only one Indian character chose to immortalise an Indian cheat in his novel, who yet succeeded in receiving the warmest favours of English society. It was not a thoughtless accident which led Thackeray to give a preverted reflexion of Rammohun Roy in Rummun Loll. It was revealed in the pages of the “Modern Review” (Calcutta) a few years ago that the uncle of the novelist who was Secretary of the Bengal Government at the time was filled with such unreasonable antipathy to Rammohun Roy as to threaten to visit his wrath on the British official Digby for recommending his Indian subordinate, Rammohun Roy, unceasingly for promotion. The novelist was adopting a family prejudice in presenting the malicious picture of the Indian gentleman.

Even if the unscrupulous portrayal of an Indian did not disturb the complacency of the English critic, the secret of Charles Honeyman, when revealed, has not left them undisturbed. When I first built up the hypothesis of Honeyman being a reflexion of Brookfield, I was asked to give it up, by a kinsman of the novelist. But my proposition has since become an accepted fact. Mr. Elwin has stated that Thackeray launched a gibe against his friend, who was now a fashionable preacher at Berkley Chapel, in the satirical picture of Charles Honeyman as the rhetorical prophet of Lady Whittlesea’s Chapel. Mr. Elwin has not however chosen to acknowledge the discovery having been made by me. Mr. Robert Lynd has stated in his review of Mr. Elwin’s book that Thackeray did scarcely forgivable things as when he put Brookfield into Honeyman.

Though it is easy to infer the peculiar manner of Thackeray’s translation of real characters into his novels from my own investigations, the inference gains added importance by other examples of the novelist’s practice having been previously known. H. G. Keene has pointed out how unfair to the memory of Col. James Gardner the story of Major Gahagan is, while Gahagan is still a copy of Garner. Thackeray cast an unwarranted slur on Marlborough in “Esmond.” Whibley remarks: “It is unnecessary to say that the portrait is inconsistent with history as with itself. The Duke, indeed, as Thackeray paints him, is no man but a monster, a mere epitome of the vices...” Thackeray’s rancour is usually betrayed by his artistic failure. I have pointed out that Charles Honeyman is not a convincing character. His attractiveness and success as a preacher are ill harmonised with the humiliation to which he is reduced, as a consequence of pecuniary difficulties, though taking perhaps his cue from Dickens’s management of Micawber, the author redeems Honeyman at the end of the story by making him return gratefully the money advanced for his benefit by Colonel Newcome. Thackeray’s rancour is evident also in the creation of Barnes Newcome which I have explained, in a separate study, is unreal. Barnes is a combination of vices too many and too incompatible with one another for one human being to possess. It is known that Thackeray copied his friend Arcedecne of the Garrick Club in his Harry Foker. Mr. Elwin tries to justify Thackeray by referring to the offending acts of Arcedecne against the novelist. The only proves that the novelist used his fictitious characters to vent his personal spleen, a pitiful motive for a literary artist.

English readers had long been led to believe that the Rev. W. H. Brookfield had been of the very few and very select friends of the novelist. Many proofs of this attachment have been quoted. But a breach between the two has left its lasting reflexion in the picture of Honeyman, Mr. Elwin took upon himself to make a statement of the Thackeray-Brookfield case. Briefly, Thackeray’s personal life was rendered miserable by his wife turning mad and he sought elsewhere womanly companionship and friendship, which he found in the beautiful wife of his friend Brookfield. Not unwilling to be side-tracked into extravagant description, Mr. Elwin gives us a detailed account of the lady’s charms, to justify the attraction exercised on Thackeray. Men of achievement do not observe the scruples of convention. It is part of their character to create conditions for their comfortable living. That Thackeray went about explaining elaborately in his letters the blamelessness of his relations with Mrs. Brookfield is less important to us than that it was necessary at all for him to offer explanations. Having obviously benefited immensely by the affectionate womanly friendship of Mrs. Brookfield, Thackeray might have shown a generous feeling to Mr. Brookfield, the husband, and not nurtured a secret malice such as is reflected in the picture of Honeyman. The irony of this act lies in the haughty contempt with which Thackeray treated Edmund Yates, who, he alleged, violated the sacredness of club confidences by commenting on his own personal characteristics.

In presenting the Edmund Yates story, Mr. Elwin is very distrustful of the reader making his own inferences from the evidence available on the subject, for otherwise he would not lavish such scurrilous language on Yates, as he has. He refers to “one of those enterprising scavenging scribblers, who have festered in every age, since Edmund Curll fostered his own breed mistaking impertinence for wit, and slander for criticism.” Mr. Elwin’s brilliant logic lies in his implying that the offence of Yates was accentuated by the fact that the great novelist had sometimes smiled on him in kindly courtesy. If every condescending smile should disarm criticism, we do not know what the world will come to. Mr. Elwin is childish enough to suggest that Thackeray showed too much consideration by merely communicating to Yates his resentment of the latter’s remarks and not suing him in court and making certain of a heavy sum in damages. The novelist was of course wiser than Mr. Elwin. Yet Mr. Elwin had the goodness to place before the reader the better parts of the offending writer’s comment. Edmund may not have developed eminence in the literary world, but the shrewd and penetrating character of his criticism is evident. If we should construct the personality of the novelist by a process of inference from his writings the picture will confirm exactly the description by Yates: “...his bearing is cold and uninviting, his style of conversation either openly cynical or affectedly good-natured and benevolent, his bonhomie forced, his wit biting, his pride easily touched–but his appearance is invariably that of the cool, sauve, well-bred gentleman, who, whatever may be rankling within, suffers no surface display of emotion.” We must be grateful to Yates for bearing testimony to the personal qualities of the writer which are only too well reflected in the writings. After all, the world is interested in the personal qualities of Thackeray only as the author of a number of novels, essays, and sketches. These convey certain distinct impressions to the reader. Details of personal testimony which confirm the impressions derived from the writings are of value to us.

The constant repetition in his writings of a certain type of character and experience, is obvious. Young men sowing wild oats appear frequently. Among other vices gambling attracts the chief characters, and this propensity, Thackeray will make it appear to us, is not expressive of the innate evil in the young men, but is produced by an external tempter who haunts the author’s imagination as a definite ogre. The novelist is thoroughly at home in creating the type of Rawdon Crawley.

The novels bear out fully that to Thackeray the material pleasures of the world are of the greatest account. Descriptions of food occur endlessly. Drink and revelry and gaming and the theatre are the other exciting topics. His attachment to the pleasures of the table was so intense that he would give up a social engagement in favour of eating a delicious dish at the club. His excessive devotion to the pleasures is mentioned in the biography of his friends. Writing on Fitzgerald, A. C. Benson compares the two friends: There was a radical difference between the two men. Thackeray had a full-blooded love of life and living and an inveterate sociability of disposition. Fitzgerald had far less vitality and animal spirits, and found the kind of life in which Thackeray revelled a decided strain.” Benson also mentions that there was a certain cynicism in Thackeray which was unpalatable to Fitzgerald. Thackeray grew so haughty in the days of his success that Fitzgerald made a complaint  of it.

The assumption of the moralist’s role by a man who is enslaved by the pleasures of the world leads to absurdity. He alternates between extremes of being too severe and too lenient. The leniency with which he treats the relations of Pendennis with women is as noteworthy as the severity with which Honeyman’s weaknesses are commented on. In dwelling on the worse side of human nature, Thackeray, unlike Swift who was of a mournful and stoic cast of mind, shows himself guilty of heartless railing. It is amusing to note the tenderness with which some critics seek to explain away recorded instances of Thackeray’s rude behaviour to others. “Poor Thackeray was unhappy, and what sins may not be forgiven in one sick at heart!” The humour lies in the reversal of the functions appropriate to the author and to the reader. The creative artist is one who grasps the inner secrets of the world and offers a satisfactory interpretation thereof. Should not the man of such exceptional gifts know how to conduct himself so as to be above the compassionate indulgence of friendly critics? Men who are guilty of even the worst offence against the world may yet be heroes claiming the deepest love of their own families. A successful man in life makes a large circle of friends who in their partisanship for him are like members of his own family. The purpose of criticism is ill served by the testimony of such friends. Again, generosity in making gifts to others is a doubtful measure of a man’s large-heartedness. The most pleasure-loving and selfish men are known to scatter their gifts with recklessness. Such giving is part of a man’s over-bearing haughtiness which is farthest removed from the spirit of goodness. The charges of pride, haughtiness and overbearing conduct against Thackeray have not been disproved.

Such then was Thackeray. His birth and breeding in India till the sixth year, when he must have been surrounded by an array of black servants had evidently left a lasting injury on his character. Haughty and ambitious by nature, he had brains and talents to aspire to literary distinction which should, before all, bring him ample means of comfortable and luxurious living. The facility of style and quickness of invention, in his writing, dazzled the readers and he succeeded. Success is an almost impenetrable veil through which to assess the real worth on which it is based. Thoughtful men had not however been deceived–Carlyle had a poor opinion of his work, and if he seemed to be converted, it is like the old story of Johnson and Wilkes. As Arnold put it, Thackeray was a first-rate journeyman, one who studied the successful ways of capturing the clients and obtained unheard of wages for his work. But he did not attain real art and could not know the happiness of supreme artistic creation.