Part 79 (1/2)

In these few sentences we have a sketch of William Makepeace Thackeray's life, from the time he finished his education up to the age of twenty-six, when Carlyle met him. He was the son of Richmond Thackeray, a collector in the service of the East India Company, and was born in Calcutta in 1811.

Little Billy-man, as his mother called him, in after years could remember very little of India. He remembered seeing crocodiles and a very tall, lean father. When Billy was quite a tiny chap, his father died. Soon after, the little boy was sent home, as Indian children always are, but his mother remained out in India, and a year or two later married Major Henry Carmichael Smyth.

Major Smyth was a simple, kindly gentleman, and proved a good stepfather to his wife's little boy, who, when he grew up and became famous drew his stepfather's portrait in the character of Colonel Newcome.

Meanwhile Billy-man was separated from both father and mother, and sailed home under the care of a black servant. His s.h.i.+p called at St. Helena, and there the black servant took the little boy on a long walk over rocks and hills until they came to a garden. In the garden a man was walking. ”That is he,” said the black man, ”that is Bonaparte. He eats three sheep every day, and all the little children he can lay hands on.” Ugh! We think that the little boy did not want to stay there long.

William reached home safely and was very happy with kind aunts and grandmother until he went to school. And school he did not like at all. Long afterwards in one of his books he wrote, ”It was governed by a horrible little tyrant, who made our young lives so miserable, that I remember kneeling by my little bed of a night and saying, 'Pray G.o.d, I may dream of my mother.'”*

*Roundabout Papers.

But he left this school and when he was about eleven went to Charterhouse. Here Thackeray was not much happier. He was a pretty, gentle boy, and not particularly clever, either at games or at lessons. The boys were rough and even brutal to each other, and Thackeray had to take his share of the blows, and got a broken nose which disfigured his good-looking face ever after.

And when he left school he took away with him a painful remembrance of all he had had to suffer. But by degrees the suffering faded out of his memory and he looked upon his old school with kindly eyes, and called it no longer Slaughterhouse, but Grey Friars, in his books.

Before Thackeray went to Charterhouse his mother and stepfather had come home to England and made a home for the little boy where he spent happy holidays. Thackeray was not very diligent, but in his last term at school he writes to his mother, ”I really think I am becoming terribly industrious, though I can't get Dr.

Russell (the headmaster) to think so. . . . There are but three hundred and seventy in the school. I wish there were only three hundred and sixty-nine.”

Soon he had his wish, and leaving Charterhouse he went to Trinity College, Cambridge. He liked Cambridge better than Charterhouse, but did not learn much more. In little more than a year he left because he felt that he was wasting his time, and went abroad to finish his education. After spending a happy year in Germany he came home to study at the bar, but soon finding he had no taste for law, he gave that up.

Thackeray was now of age and had come into a little fortuned of about 500 pounds a year, left to him by his father. So he decided to try his hand at literature, and bought a paper called the National Standard, and became editor of it. He could not, however, make his paper pay, and in that and other ways he had soon lost all his money.

It was now necessary that he should do something to earn a living, and he determined to be an artist, and went to Paris to study. But although he was fond of drawing, and was able afterwards to ill.u.s.trate some of his own books, he never became a real artist.

Meanwhile in Paris he met a young Irish lady with whom he fell in love, and being offered the post of Paris correspondent on another paper, he married. But very soon after he married the paper failed and Thackeray and his young wife returned to London, very poor indeed, and there he remained, as Carlyle said, ”writing for his life.”

It was a struggle, doubtless, but not a bitter one, and Thackeray was happy in his home with his wife and two little daughters.

Long afterwards one of these daughters wrote, ”Almost the first time I can remember my parents was at home in Great Coram Street on one occasion, when my mother took me upon her back, as she had a way of doing, and after hesitating for a moment at the door, carried me into a little ground floor room where some one sat bending over a desk. This some one lifted up his head and looked round at the people leaning over his chair. He seemed pleased, smiled at us, but remonstrated. Nowadays I know by experience that authors don't get on best, as a rule, when they are interrupted in their work--not even by their own particular families--but at that time it was all wondering, as I looked over my mother's shoulder.”

But these happy days did not last long. The young mother became ill; gradually she became worse, until at last the light of reason died out of her brain, and although she lived on for many years, it was a living death, for she knew no one and took no notice of anything that went on around her.

The happy home was broken up. The children went to live with their great-grandmother, who found them ”inconveniently young,”

while Thackeray remained alone in London. But though he was heart-broken and lonely, he kept a loving memory of the happy days gone by. Long after he wrote to a friend who was going to be married, ”Although my own marriage was a wreck, as you know, I would do it over again, for behold, Love is the crown and completion of all earthly good. The man who is afraid of his future never deserved one.”

Thackeray was already making a way with his pen, and now he found a new opening. Most of you know Punch. He and his dog Toby are old friends. And Mr. Punch with his humped back and big nose ”comes out” every week to make us laugh. He makes us laugh, too, with kindly laughter, for, as Thackeray himself said, ”there never were before published in this world so many volumes that contained so much cause for laughing, so little for blus.h.i.+ng. It is easy to be witty and wicked, so hard to be witty and wise!”

But once upon a time there was no Punch, strange though it may seem. It was just at this time, indeed, that Punch was published and Thackeray became one of the earliest contributors, and continued for ten years both to draw pictures and write papers for it. It was in Punch that his famous ”Sn.o.b Papers” appeared.

What is a Sn.o.b? Thackeray says, ”He who meanly admires mean things.”

It has been said that by reason of writing so much about sn.o.bs that Thackeray came to see sn.o.bbishness where there was none.

But certain it is he laid a smart but kindly finger on many a small-minded prejudice. Several times in this book you have heard of sizars and commoners, stupid distinctions which are happily now done away with. Perhaps you would like to know what Thackeray thought of them. For although it is not a very good ill.u.s.tration of real sn.o.bbishness, it is interesting to read in connection with the lives of many great writer.

”If you consider, dear reader, what profound sn.o.bbishness the University System produced, you will allow that it is time to attack some of those feudal Middle-age superst.i.tions. If you go down for five s.h.i.+llings to look at the 'College Youths,' you may see one sneaking down the court without a ta.s.sel to his cap; another with a gold or silver fringe to his velvet trencher; a third lad with a master's gown and hat, walking at ease over the sacred College gra.s.s-plats, which common men must not tread on.

”He may do it because he is a n.o.bleman. Because a lad is a lord, the University gives him a degree at the end of two years which another is seven in acquiring. Because he is a lord, he has no call to go through an examination. . . .

”The lads with gold and silver lace are sons of rich gentlemen, and called Fellow Commoners; they are privileged to feed better than the pensioners, and to have wine with their victuals, which the latter can only get in their rooms.

”The unlucky boys who have no ta.s.sels to their caps, are called sizars--servitors at Oxford--(a very pretty and gentlemanlike t.i.tle). A distinction is made in their clothes because they are poor; for which reason they wear a badge of poverty, and are not allowed to take their meals with their fellow students.”

But the same pen that wrote sharply and satirically about sn.o.bs, wrote loving letters in big round hand to his dear daughters, who were living far away in Paris. For either child he used a different hand, so that each might know at once to whom the letter was addressed. Here is part of one to his ”dearest Nanny.” ”How glad I am that it is a black puss and not a black nuss you have got! I thought you did not know how to spell nurse, and had spelt it en-you-double-ess; but I see the spelling gets better as the letters grow longer: they cannot be too long for me. Laura must be a very good-natured girl. I hope my dear Nanny is so too, not merely to her school mistress and friends, but to everybody--to her servants and her nurses. I would sooner have you gentle and humble-minded than ever so clever. Who was born on Christmas Day? Somebody Who was so great, that all the world wors.h.i.+ps Him; and so good that all the world loves Him; and so gentle and humble that He never spoke an unkind word. And there is a little sermon and a great deal of love and affection from papa.”*