Part 9 (1/2)
[61] ”Never could I have believed that Thackeray, great as his abilities are, could have written so n.o.ble a story as _Esmond_.”--WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR, August 1856.
In Thackeray's work, the place of _The History of Henry Esmond, Esq., a Colonel in the Service of Her Majesty Q. Anne. Written by Himself_--lies midway between his four other princ.i.p.al books, _Vanity Fair, Pendennis, The Newcomes_, and _The Virginians_; and its position serves, in a measure, to explain its origin. In 1848, after much tentative and miscellaneous production, of which the value had been but imperfectly appreciated, the author found his fame with the yellow numbers of _Vanity Fair_. Two years later, adopting the same serial form, came _Pendennis_. _Vanity Fair_ had been the condensation of a life's experience; and excellent as _Pendennis_ would have seemed from any inferior hand, its readers could not disguise from themselves that, though showing no falling off in other respects, it drew to some extent upon the old material. No one was readier than Thackeray to listen to a whisper of this kind, or more willing to believe that--as he afterwards told his friend Elwin concerning _The Newcomes_--”he had exhausted all the types of character with which he was familiar.” Accordingly he began, for the time, to turn his thoughts in fresh directions; and in the year that followed the publication of _Pendennis_, prepared and delivered in England and Scotland a series of _Lectures upon the English Humourists of the Eighteenth Century_. With the success of these came the prompting for a new work of fiction,--not to be contemporary, and not to be issued in parts. His studies for the _Humourists_ had saturated him with the spirit of a time to which--witness his novelette of _Barry Lyndon_--he had always been attracted; and when Mr. George Smith called on him with a proposal that he should write a new story for 1000, he was already well in hand with _Esmond_,--an effort in which, if it were not possible to invent new puppets, it was at least possible to provide fresh costumes and a change of background. Begun in 1851, _Esmond_ progressed rapidly, and by the end of May 1852 it was completed. Owing to the limited stock of old-cut type in which it was set up, its three volumes pa.s.sed but slowly through the press; and it was eventually issued at the end of the following October, upon the eve of the author's departure to lecture in America. In fact, he was waiting on the pier for the tender which was to convey him to the steamer, when he received his bound copies from the publisher.
Mr. Eyre Crowe, A.R.A., who accompanied Thackeray to the United States, and had for some time previously been acting as his ”factotum and amanuensis,” has recorded several interesting details with regard to the writing of _Esmond_, To most readers it will be matter of surprise, and it is certainly a noteworthy testimony to the author's powers, that this attempt to revive the language and atmosphere of a vanished era was in great part dictated. It has even been said that, like _Pendennis_, it was _all_ dictated; but this it seems is a mistake, for, as we shall see presently, part of the ma.n.u.script was prepared by the author himself. As he warmed to his work, however, he often reverted to the method of oral composition which had always been most congenial to him, and which explains the easy colloquialism of his style. Much of the ”copy” was taken down by Mr. Crowe in a first-floor bedroom of No. 16 Young Street, Kensington, the still-existent house where Vanity Fair had been written; at the Bedford Hotel in Covent Garden; at the round table in the Athenasum library, and elsewhere. ”I write better anywhere than at home,”--Thackeray told Elwin,--”and I write less at home than anywhere.”
Sometimes author and scribe would betake themselves to the British Museum, to look up points in connection with Marlborough's battles, or to rummage Jacob Tonson's Gazettes for the official accounts of Wynendael and Oudenarde. The British Museum, indeed, was another of _Esmond's_ birthplaces. By favour of Sir Antonio Panizzi, Thackeray and his a.s.sistant, surrounded by their authorities, were accommodated in one of the secluded galleries. ”I sat down,”--says Mr. Crowe--”and wrote to dictation the scathing sentences about the great Marlborough, the denouncing of Cadogan, etc., etc. As a curious instance of literary contagion, it may be here stated that I got quite bitten, with the expressed anger at their misdeeds against General Webb, Thackeray's kinsman and ancestor; and that I then looked upon Secretary Cardonnel's conduct with perfect loathing. I was quite delighted to find his meannesses justly pilloried in _Esmond's_ pages.” What rendered the situation more piquant,--Mr. Crowe adds,--all this took place on the site of old Montague House, where, as Steele's ”Prue” says to St. John in the novel,” you wretches go and fight duels.”[62]
Note:
[62] _With Thackeray in America_, 1893, p. 4.
Those who are willing to make a pilgrimage to Cambridge, may, if they please, inspect the very pa.s.sages which aroused the enthusiam of Thackeray's secretary. In a special case in the Library of Trinity College, not far from those which enclose the ma.n.u.scripts of Tennyson and Milton, is the original and only ma.n.u.script of _Esmond_, being in fact the identical ”copy” which was despatched to the press of Messrs.
Bradbury and Evans at Whitefriars. It makes two large quarto volumes, and was presented to the College (Esmond's College!) in 1888 by the author's son-in-law, the late Sir Leslie Stephen. It still bears in pencil the names of the different compositors who set up the type. Much of it is in Thackeray's own small, slightly-slanted, but oftener upright hand, and many pages have hardly any corrections.[63] His custom was to write on half-sheets of a rather large notepaper, and some idea may be gathered of the neat, minute, and regular script, when it is added that the lines usually contain twelve to fifteen words, and that there are frequently as many as thirty-three of these lines to a page. Some of the rest of the ”copy” is in the handwriting of the author's daughter, now Lady Ritchie; but a considerable portion was penned by Mr. Eyre Crowe.
The oft-quoted pa.s.sage in book ii. chap. vi. about ”bringing your sheaves with you,” was written by Thackeray himself almost as it stands; so was the sham _Spectator_, hereafter mentioned, and most of the chapter headed ”General Webb wins the Battle of Wynendael.” But the splendid closing scene,--”August 1st, 1714,”--is almost wholly in the hand of Mr. Crowe. It is certainly a remarkable fact that work at this level should have been thus improvised, and that nothing, as we are credibly informed, should have been before committed to paper.[64]
When _Esmond_ first made its appearance in October 1852, it was not without distinguished and even formidable compet.i.tors. _Bleak House_ had reached its eighth number; and Bulwer was running _My Novel in Blackwood_. In _Fraser_, Kingsley was bringing out _Hypatia_; and Whyte Melville was preluding with _Digby Grand_. Charlotte Bronte must have been getting ready _Villette_ for the press; and Tennyson--undeterred by the fact that his hero had already been ”dirged” by the indefatigable Tupper--was busy with his _Ode on the Death of the Duke of Wellington_.[65] The critics of the time were possibly embarra.s.sed with this wealth of talent, for they were not, at the outset, immoderately enthusiastic over the new arrival. The _Athenaeum_ was by no means laudatory. _Esmond_ ”harped upon the same string”; ”wanted vital heat”; ”touched no fresh fount of thought”; ”introduced no novel forms of life”; and so forth. But the _Spectator_, in a charming greeting from George Brimley (since included in his _Essays_), placed the book, as a work of art, even above _Vanity Fair_ and _Pendennis_; the ”serious and orthodox” _Examiner_, then under John Forster, was politely judicial; the _Daily News_ friendly; and the _Morning Advertiser_ enraptured. The book, this last declared, was the ”beau-ideal of historical romance.” On December 4 a second edition was announced. Then, on the 22nd, came the _Times_. Whether the _Times_ remembered and resented a certain delightfully contemptuous ”Essay on Thunder and Small Beer,” with which Thackeray retorted to its notice of _The Kickkburys on the Rhine_ (a thing hard to believe!) or whether it did not,--its report of _Esmond_ was distinctly hostile. In three columns, it commended little but the character of Marlborough, and the writer's ”incomparably easy and unforced style.” Thackeray thought that it had ”absolutely stopped” the sale. But this seems inconsistent with the fact that the publisher sent him a supplementary cheque for 250 on account of _Esmond's_ success.
Notes:
[63] One is reminded of the accounts of Scott's ”copy.” ”Page after page the writing runs on exactly as you read it in print”--says Mr. Mowbray Morris. ”I was looking not long ago at the ma.n.u.script of _Kenilworth_ in the British Museum, and examined the end with particular care, thinking that the wonderful scene of Amy Robsart's death must surely have cost him some labour. They were the cleanest pages in the volume: I do not think there was a sentence altered or added in the whole chapter” (Lecture at Eton, _Macmillan's Magazine_ (1889), lx.
pp. 158-9).
[64] ”The sentences”--Mr. Crowe told a member of the Athenaeum, when speaking of his task--”came out glibly as he [Thackeray] paced the room.” This is the more singular when contrasted with the slow elaboration of the Balzac and Flaubert school. No doubt Thackeray must often have arranged in his mind precisely much that he meant to say.
Such seems indeed to have been his habit. The late Mr. Lockcer-Lampson informed the writer of this paper that once, when he met the author of Esmond in the Green Park, Thackeray gently begged to be allowed to walk alone, as he had some verses In his head which he was finis.h.i.+ng. They were those which afterwards appeared in the _Cornhill_ for January 1867, under the t.i.tle of _Mrs. Katherine's Lantern_.
[65] The Duke died 14th Sept. 1852.
Another reason which may have tended to slacken--not to stop--the sale, is also suggested by the author himself. This was the growing popularity of _My Novel_ and _Villette_. And Miss Bronte's book calls to mind the fact that she was among the earliest readers of _Esmond_, the first two volumes of which were sent to her in ma.n.u.script by George Smith, She read it, she tells him, with ”as much ire and sorrow as grat.i.tude and admiration,” marvelling at its mastery of reconstruction,--hating its satire,--its injustice to women. How could Lady Castlewood peep through a keyhole, listen at a door, and be jealous of a boy and a milkmaid!
There was too much political and religious intrigue--she thought.
Nevertheless she said (this was in February 1852, speaking of vol. i.) the author might ”yet make it the best he had ever written.” In March she had seen the second volume. The character of Marlborough (here she antic.i.p.ated the _Times_) was a ”masterly piece of writing.” But there was ”too little story.” The final volume, by her own request, she received in print. It possessed, in her opinion, the ”most sparkle, impetus, and interest.” ”I hold,” she wrote to Mr. Smith, ”that a work of fiction ought to be a work of creation: that the _real_ should be sparingly introduced in pages dedicated to the _ideal_” In a later letter she gives high praise to the complex conception of Beatrix, traversing incidentally the absurd accusation of one of the papers that she resembled. Blanche Amory [the _Athenaeum_ and _Examiner_, it may be noted, regarded her as ”another Becky”]. ”To me,” Miss Bronte exclaims, ”they are about as identical as a weasel and a royal tigress of Bengal; both the latter are quadrupeds, both the former women.” These frank comments of a fervent but thoroughly honest admirer, are of genuine interest. When the book was published, Thackeray himself sent her a copy with his ”grateful regards,” and it must have been of this that she wrote to Mr. Smith on November 3,--”Colonel Henry Esmond is just arrived. He looks very antique and distinguished in his Queen Anne's garb; the periwig, sword, lace, and ruffles are very well represented by the old _Spectator_ type.”[66]
Note:
[66] Mr. Clement Shorter's _Charlotte Bronte and her Circle_, 1896, p. 403; and Gaskell's _Life of Charlotte Bronte_, 1900, pp. 561 et seq.
One of the points on which Miss Bronte does not touch,--at all events does not touch in those portions of her correspondence which have been printed,--is the marriage with which _Esmond_ closes. Upon this event it would have been highly instructive to have had her views, especially as it appears to have greatly exercised her contemporaries, the first reviewers. It was the gravamen of the _Times_ indictment; to the critic of _Fraser_ it was highly objectionable; and the _Examiner_ regarded it as ”incredible.” Why it was ”incredible” that a man should marry a woman seven years older than himself, to whom he had already proposed once in vol. ii., and of whose youthful appearance we are continually reminded (”she looks the sister of her daughter” says the old Dowager at Chelsea), is certainly not superficially obvious. Nor was it obvious to Lady Castlewood's children, ”Mother's in love with you,--yes, I think mother's in love with you,” says downright Frank Esmond; the only impediment in his eyes being the bar sinister, as yet unremoved. And Miss Beatrix herself, in vol. iii., is even more roundly explicit. ”As for you,” she tells Esmond, ”you want a woman to bring your slippers and cap, and to sit at your feet, and cry 'O caro! O bravo!' whilst you read your Shakespeares, and Miltons, and stuff” [which shows that she herself had read Swift's _Grand Question Debated_]. ”Mamma would have been the wife for you, had you been a little older, though you look ten years older than she does,” ”You do, you glum-faced, blue-bearded, little old man!” adds this very imperious and free-spoken young lady. The situation is, no doubt, at times extremely difficult, and naturally requires consummate skill in the treatment. But if these things and others signify anything to an intelligent reader, they signify that the author, if he had not his end steadily in view, knew perfectly well that his story was tending in one direction. There will probably always be some diversity of opinion in the matter; but the majority of us have accepted Thackeray's solution, and have dropped out of sight that hint of undesirable rivalry, which so troubled the precisians of the early Victorian age. To those who read _Esmond_ now, noting carefully the almost imperceptible transformation of the motives on either side, as developed by the evolution of the story, the union of the hero and heroine at the end must appear not only credible but preordained. And that the gradual progress towards this foregone conclusion is handled with unfailing tact and skill, there can surely be no question.[67]
Note:
[67} Thackeray's own explanation was more characteristic than convincing. ”Why did you”--said once to him impetuous Mrs. John Brown of Edinburgh--”Why did you make Esmond marry that old woman?” ”My dear lady,” he replied, ”it was not I who married them. They married themselves.” (Dr. _John Brmon_, by the late John Taylor Brown, 1903, pp. 96-7.)
Of the historical portraits in the book, the interest has, perhaps, at this date, a little paled. Not that they are one whit less vigorously alive than when the author first put them in motion; but they have suffered from the very attention which _Esmond_ and _The Humourists_ have directed to the study of the originals. The picture of Marlborough is still as effective as when it was first proclaimed to be good enough for the brush of Saint-Simon. But Thackeray himself confessed to a family prejudice against the hero of Blenheim, and later artists have considerably readjusted the likeness. Nor in all probability would the latest biographer of Bolingbroke endorse _that_ presentment. In the purely literary figures, Thackeray naturally followed the _Lectures_, and is consequently open to the same criticisms as have been offered on those performances. The Swift of _The Humourists_, modelled on Macaulay, was never accepted from the first; and it has not been accepted in the novel, or by subsequent writers from Forster onwards.[68] Addison has been less studied; and his likeness has consequently been less questioned. Concerning Steele there has been rather more discussion.
That Thackeray's sketch is very vivid, very human, and in most essentials, hard to disprove, must be granted. But it is obviously conceived under the domination of the ”poor d.i.c.k” of Addison, and dwells far too persistently upon Steele's frailer and more fallible aspect. No one would believe that the flushed personage in the full-bottomed periwig, who hiccups Addison's _Campaign_ in the Haymarket garret, or the fuddled victim of ”Prue's” curtain lecture at Hampton, ranked, at the date of the story, far higher than Addison as a writer, and that he was, in spite of his faults, not only a kindly gentleman and scholar, but a philanthropist, a staunch patriot, and a consistent politician.