Part 1 (1/2)

Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges.

by William Makepeace Thackeray.

INTRODUCTION.

Thackeray In His Study At Onslow Square. From a painting by E. M. Ward

We know exceedingly little of the genesis and progress of _Esmond_. ”It did not seem to be a part of our lives as _Pendennis_ was,” says Lady Ritchie, though she wrote part of it to dictation. She ”only heard _Esmond_ spoken of very rarely”. Perhaps its state was not the less gracious. The Milton girls found _Paradise Lost_ a very considerable part of their lives-and were not the happier.

But its parallels are respectable. The greatest things have a way of coming ”all so still” into the world. We wrangle-that is, those of us who are not content simply not to know-about the composition of Homer, the purpose of the _Divina Commedia_, the probable plan of the _Canterbury Tales_, the _Ur-Hamlet_. n.o.body put preliminary advertis.e.m.e.nts in the papers, you see, about these things: there was a discreditable neglect of the first requirements of the public. So it is with _Esmond_. There is, I thought, a reference to it in the Brookfield letters; but in several searches I cannot find it. To his mother he speaks of the book as ”grand and melancholy”, and to Lady Stanley as of ”cut-throat melancholy”. It is said to have been sold for a thousand pounds-the same sum that Master Shallow lent Falstaff on probably inferior security. Those who knew thought well of it-which is not wholly surprising.

It is still, perhaps, in possession of a success rather of esteem than of affection. A company of young men and maidens to whom it was not long ago submitted p.r.o.nounced it (with one or two exceptions) inferior as a work of humour. The hitting of little Harry in the eye with a potato was, they admitted, humorous, but hardly anything else. As representing another generation and another point of view, the faithful Dr. John Brown did not wholly like it-Esmond's marriage with Rachel, after his love for Beatrix, being apparently ”the fly in the ointment” to him. Even the author could only plead ”there's a deal of pains in it that goes for nothing”, as he says in one of his rare published references to the subject: but he was wrong. Undoubtedly the mere taking of pains will not do; but that is when they are taken in not the right manner, by not the right person, on not the right subject. Here everything was right, and accordingly it ”went for” everything. A greater novel than _Esmond_ I do not know; and I do not know many greater books. It may be ”melancholy”, and none the worse for that: it is ”grand”.

For though there may not be much humour of the potato-throwing sort in _Esmond_, it will, perhaps, be found that in no book of Thackeray's, or of any one else's, is that deeper and higher humour which takes all life for its province-which is the humour of humanity-more absolutely pervading.

And it may be found likewise, at least by some, that in no book is there to be found such a constant intertwist of the pa.s.sion which, in all humanity's higher representatives, goes with humour hand in hand-a loving yet a mutually critical pair. Of the extraordinarily difficult form of autobiography I do not know such another masterly presentment; nor is it very difficult to recognize the means by which this mastery is attained, though Heaven knows it is not easy to understand the skill with which they are applied. The success is, in fact, the result of that curious ”doubleness”-amounting, in fact, here to something like _triplicity_-which distinguishes Thackeray's att.i.tude and handling. Thus Henry Esmond, who is on the whole, I should say, the most like him of all his characters (though of course ”romanced” a little), is himself and ”the other fellow”, and also, as it were, human criticism of both. At times we have a tolerably unsophisticated account of his actions, or it may be even his thoughts; at another his thoughts and actions as they present themselves, or might present themselves, to another mind: and yet at other times a reasoned view of them, as it were that of an impartial historian. The mixed form of narrative and mono-drama lends itself to this as nothing else could: and so does the author's well-known, much discussed, and sometimes heartily abused habit of _parabasis_ or soliloquy to the audience. Of this nothing has yet been directly said, and anything that is said would have to be repeated as to every novel: so that we may as well keep it for the last or a late example, _The Virginians_ or _Philip_. But its efficacy in this peculiar kind of double or treble handling is almost indisputable, even by those who may dispute its legitimacy as a constantly applied method.

One result, however, it has, as regards the hero-spokesman, which is curious. I believe thoroughly in Henry Esmond-he is to me one of the most real of ill.u.s.trious Henrys as well of Thackeray's characters-but his reality is of a rather different kind from that of most of his fellows. It is somewhat more abstract, more typical, more generalized than the reality of English heroes usually is. He is not in the least shadowy or allegoric: but still he is somehow ”Esmondity” as well as Esmond-_the_ melancholy rather than _a_ melancholy, clearsighted, aloofminded man. His heart and his head act to each other as their governing powers, pa.s.sion and humour, have been sketched as acting above. He is a man never likely to be very successful, famous, or fortunate in the world; not what is generally called a happy man; yet enjoying constant glows and glimmers of a cloudy happiness which he would hardly exchange for any other light. The late Professor Ma.s.son-himself no posture-monger or man of megrims, but one of genial temper and steady sense-described Thackeray as ”a man apart”; and so is the Marquis of Esmond. Yet Thackeray was a very real man; and so is the Marquis too.

[Ill.u.s.tration]

No. 36 Onslow Square, Brompton, Where Thackeray Lived From 1853 to 1862.

The element of abstraction disappears, or rather retires into the background, when we pa.s.s to Beatrix. She also has the _Ewigweibliche_ in her-as much of it as any, or almost any, of Shakespeare's women, and therefore more than anybody else's. But she is very much more than a type-she is Beatrix Esmond in flesh and blood, and damask and diamond, born ”for the destruction of mankind” and fortunately for the delight of them, or some of them, as well. Beatrix is beyond eulogy. ”Cease! cease to sing her praise!” is really the only motto, though perhaps something more may be said when we come to the terrible pendant which only Thackeray has had the courage and the skill to draw, with truth and without a disgusting result. If she had died when _Esmond_ closes I doubt whether, in the Wood of Fair Ladies, even Cleopatra would have dared to summon her to her side, lest the comparison should not be favourable enough to herself, and the throne have to be shared.

But, as usual with Thackeray, you must not look to the hero and heroine too exclusively, even when there is such a heroine as this. For is there not here another heroine-cause of the dubieties of the _Doctor Fidelis_ as above cited? As to that it may perhaps be pointed out to the extreme sentimentalists that, after all, Harry had been in love with the mother, as well as with the daughter, all along. If they consider this an aggravation, it cannot be helped: but, except from the extreme point of view of Miss Marianne Dashwood in her earlier stage, it ought rather to be considered a palliative. And if they say further that the thing is made worse still by the fact that Harry was himself Rachel's _second_ love, and that she did not exactly wait to be a widow before she fell in love with him-why, there is, again, nothing for it but to confess that it is very shocking-and excessively human. Indeed, the fact is that Rachel is as human as Beatrix, though in a different way. You may not only _love_ her less, but-in a different sense of contrast from that of the Roman poet-_like_ her a little less. But you cannot, if you have any knowledge of human nature, call her unnatural. And really I do not know that the third lady of the family, Isabel Marchioness of Esmond, though there is less written about her, is not as real and almost as wonderful as the other two. She is not so fairly treated, however, poor thing! for we have her Bernstein period without her Beatrix one.

As for my Lords Castlewood-Thomas, and Francis _pere et fils_-their creator has not taken so much trouble with them; but they are never ”out”.

The least of a piece, I think, is Rachel's too fortunate or too unfortunate husband. The people who regard Ibsen's great triumph in the _Doll's House_ as consisting in the conduct of the husband as to the incriminating doc.u.ments, ought to admire Thackeray's management of the temporary loss of Rachel's beauty. They are certainly both touches of the baser side of human nature ingeniously worked in. But the question is, What, in this wonderful book, is _not_ ingeniously worked in-character or incident, description or speech?

If the champions of ”Unity” were wise, they would take _Esmond_ as a battle-horse, for it is certain that, great as are its parts, the whole is greater than almost any one of them-which is certainly not the case with _Pendennis_. And it is further certain that, of these parts, the personages of the hero and the heroine stand out commandingly, which is certainly not the case with _Pendennis_, again. The unity, however, is of a peculiar kind: and differs from the ordinary non-cla.s.sical ”Unity of Interest” which Thackeray almost invariably exhibits. It is rather a Unity of _Temper_, which is also present (as the all-pervading motto _Vanitas Vanitatum_ almost necessitates) in all the books, but here reaches a transcendence not elsewhere attained. The brooding spirit of _Ecclesiastes_ here covers, as it were, with the shadow of one of its wings the joys and sorrows, the failures and successes of a private family and their friends, with the other the fates of England and Europe; the fortunes of Marlborough and of Swift on their way from dictators.h.i.+p, in each case, to dotage and death; the big wars and the notable literary triumphs as well as the hopeless pa.s.sions or acquiescent losses. It is thus an instance-and the greatest-of that revival of the historical novel which was taking place, and in which the novel of Scott(1)-simpler, though not so very simple as is sometimes thought-is being dashed with a far heavier dose of the novel-element as opposed to the romance, yet without abandonment of the romance-quality proper. Of these novel-romance scenes, as they may be called, the famous mock-duel at the end is of course the greatest. But that where the Duke of Hamilton has to acknowledge the Marquis of Esmond, and where Beatrix gives the kiss of Beatrix, is almost as great: and there are many others. It is possible that this very transcendence accounts to some extent for the somewhat lukewarm admiration which it has received. The usual devotee of the novel of a.n.a.lysis dislikes the historic, and has taught himself to consider it childish; the common lover of romance (not the better kind) feels himself hampered by the character-study, as emile de Girardin's subscribers felt themselves hampered by Gautier's style. All the happier those who can make the best of both dispensations!

Nothing, however, has yet been said of one of the most salient characteristics of _Esmond_-one, perhaps, which has had as much to do with the love of its lovers and the qualified esteem of those who do not quite love it, as anything else. This is, of course, the attempt, certainly a very audacious one, at once to give the very form and pressure of the time of the story-sometimes in actual diction-and yet to suffuse it with a modern thought and colour which most certainly were _not_ of the time. The boldness and the peril of this attempt are both quite indisputable; and the peril itself is, in a way, double. There is the malcontent who will say ”This may be all very fine: but I don't like it. It bothers and teases me. I do not want to be talked to in the language of Addison and Steele”.

And there will be the possibly less ingenuous but more obtrusive malcontent who will say that it ought never to have been done, or that it is not, as it is, done well. With the first, who probably exists ”in squadrons and gross bands”, argument is, of course, impossible. He may be taught better if he is caught young, but that is all: and certainly the last thing that any honest lover of literature would wish would be to make him say that he likes a thing when he does not. That may be left to those who preach and follow the fas.h.i.+ons of the moment. Nor, perhaps, is there very much to do with those who say that the double attempt is not successful-except to disable their judgement. But as for the doctrine that this attempt _deserves_ to fail, and must fail-that it is wrong in itself-there one may take up the cudgels with some confidence.

So far from there being anything illegitimate in this attempt to bring one period before the eyes of another in its habit as it lived, and speaking as it spoke, but to allow those eyes themselves to move as they move and see as they see-it is merely the triumph and the justification of the whole method of prose fiction in general, and of the historical novel in particular. For that historical novel is itself the result of the growth of the historic sense acting upon the demand for fiction. So long as people made no attempt to understand things and thoughts different from those around and within them; so long as, like the men of the Middle Ages, they blandly threw everything into their own image, or, like those of the Renaissance to some extent and the Augustan period still more, regarded other ages at worst with contempt, and at best with indulgence as childish-the historical novel could not come into being, and did not. It only became possible when history began to be seriously studied as something more than a chronicle of external events. When it had thus been made possible, it was a perfectly legitimate experiment to carry the process still further; not merely to discuss or moralize, but to represent the period as it was, without forfeiting the privilege of regarding it from a point of view which it had not itself reached. The process of Thackeray is really only an unfolding, and carrying further into application, of the method of Shakespeare. Partly his date, partly his genius, partly his dramatic necessities, obliged Shakespeare to combine his treatment-to make his G.o.dlike Romans at once Roman and Elizabethan, and men of all time, and men of no time at all. Thackeray, with the conveniences of the novel and the demands of his audience, _dichotomizes_ the presentation while observing a certain unity in the fict.i.tious person, now of Henry Esmond, now of William Makepeace Thackeray himself. If anybody does not like the result, there is nothing to be said. But there are those who regard it as one of the furthest explorations that we yet possess of human genius-one of the most extraordinary achievements of that higher imagination which Coleridge liked to call _esenoplastic_.(2) That a man should have the faculty of reproducing contemporary or general life is wonderful; that he should have the faculty of reproducing past life is wonderful still more. But that he should thus revive the past and preserve the present-command and provide at once theatre and company, audience and performance-this is the highest wizardry of all. And this, as it seems to me, is what Thackeray had attempted, and more, what he has done, in the _History of Henry Esmond_.(3)

He could not have done it without the ”pains” to which he refers in the saying quoted above; but these pains, as usual, bore fruit more than once.

It has been thought desirable to include in the present volume the two main after-crops,(4) _The English Humourists_ and _The Four Georges_.

Exactly _how_ early Thackeray's attention was drawn to the eighteenth century it would, in the necessarily incomplete state of our biographical information about him, be very difficult to say. We have pointed out that the connexion was pretty well established as early as _Catherine_. But it was evidently founded upon that peculiar congeniality, freshened and enlivened with a proper dose of difference, which is the most certain source and the purest maintainer of love in life and literature.

At the same time, the two sets of lectures are differentiated from the novel not so much by their form-for Thackeray as a lecturer had very little that smacked of the platform, and as a novelist he had a great deal that smacked of the satiric conversation-scene-as by their purport.

_Esmond_, though partly critical, is mainly and in far the greater part creative. The Lectures, though partly creative-_resurrective_, at any rate-are professedly and substantially critical. Now, a good deal has been said already of Thackeray's qualities and defects as a critic: and it has been pointed out that, in consequence of his peculiar impulsiveness, his strong likes and dislikes, his satiric-romantic temperament, and perhaps certain deficiencies in all-round literary and historical learning, his critical light was apt to be rather uncertain, and his critical deductions by no means things from which there should be no appeal. But _The English Humourists_ is by far the most important ”place” for this criticism in the literary department; and _The Four Georges_ (with _The Book of Sn.o.bs_ to some extent supplementing it) is the chief place for his criticism of society, personality, and the like. Moreover, both have been, and are, violently attacked by those who do not like him. So that, for more reasons than one or two, both works deserve faithful critical handling themselves.

It is always best to disperse Maleger and his myrmidons before exploring the beauties of the House of Alma: so we may take the objections to the _Humourists_ first. They are chiefly concerned with the handling of Swift and (in a less degree) of Sterne. Now, it is quite certain that we have here, in the first case at any rate, to confess, though by no means to avoid. It is an instance of that excessive ”taking sides” with or against his characters which has been noticed, and will be noticed, again and again. Nor is the reason of this in the least difficult to perceive. It is very doubtful whether Thackeray's own estimate of average humanity was much higher than Swift's: nor is it quite certain that the affection which Swift professed and (from more than one instance) seems to have really felt for d.i.c.k, Tom, and Harry, in particular, as opposed to mankind at large, was very much less sincere than Thackeray's own for individuals.