Studies in Literature and History
between tragedy and farce, between ridiculous meanness and pathetic
unselfishness, is to be found in all his novels, though in his later
and finer work it is controlled and tempered to more artistic
proportions. But in the productions of his youth the darker tints so
predominate as to disconcert the judgment of a generation which has
become habituated, at the present day, to a less energetic and
uncompromising style of exposing fools and gibbeting knaves. And after
making due allowance for those indescribable differences of taste
which separate us from our fathers in every region of art--and even
admitting, what is by no means sure, that sixty years ago rascality,
snobbery, and humbug were more rampant in society than nowadays--we
are still disposed to regret that a writer whose best work is
superlatively good should have dwelt so persistently in his earlier
stories upon the dreary and ignoble side of English life. From some
passages in them it might be inferred by foreigners that the better
born Englishmen habitually indulged in rudeness toward their social
inferiors, and that English domestics in good houses broke out into
vulgar insolence whenever they could do so with impunity.
Take, for an example, in the scene from _The Great Hoggarty Diamond_,
the behaviour of Mr. Preston, 'one of her Majesty's Secretaries of
State,' to an underbred but good-tempered little city clerk, whom Lady
Drum takes in her carriage for a drive in Hyde Park, and whom she
hints he might ask to dinner. Mr. Preston acts on the hint, but with
savage sarcasm, and Titmarsh, the clerk, accepts in order to plague
the minister for his astounding rudeness:
'"I did not," he says, "intend to dine with the man, but only to
give him a lesson in manners."'
And so, when the carriage drove up to Mr. Preston's door, he says to
him:
'"When you came up and asked who the devil I was, I thought you
might have put the question in a more polite manner, but it wasn't
my business to speak. When, by way of a joke, you invited me to
dinner, I answered in a joke too, and here I am. But don't be
frightened, I'm not agoing to dine with you."...
'"Is that all, sir?" says Mr. Preston, still in a rage. "If you
have done, will you leave the house, or shall my servants turn you
out? Turn out this fellow; do you hear me?"'
Assuming that sixty years ago a Secretary of State was much the same
sort of man that he is to-day, what are we to think of this spirited
colloquy? and what kind of impression will it, and others no less
forcible, produce upon the future student of manners who turns to
light literature as the mirror of contemporary society?
With regard, again, to the _Yellowplush Papers_, is it from
unpardonable fastidiousness, the affectation of an over-refined
literary taste, that we are inclined to question whether they have
been wisely preserved in standard editions of so great a novelist? The
use of ludicrously distorted spelling intensifies the impression of
ignorant vulgarity, and there is a moral lesson in the story of Mr.
Deuceace that atones in some degree for the very low company whom we
meet in it. But the labour of deciphering the ugly words, and the
cheerless atmosphere of sordid vice and servility which they are most
appropriately used to describe, are so unfamiliar to contemporary
novel-readers that we think few will master two hundred pages of this
dialect in the present edition. On the whole, after renewing our old
acquaintance with Mr. Jeames, with Captain Rook and Mr. Pigeon, with
Mr. Stubbs of the Fatal Boots, and others of the same kidney, we doubt
whether these immature character sketches, which all belong to the
author's first and most Hogarthian manner, do not range below the
legitimate boundaries of literature as a fine art, and whether they do
not much rather harm than heighten his permanent reputation when they
are placed on a line with his masterpieces by formal reproduction. It
is impossible to take much interest in personages with an unbroken
record of profligacy and baseness; and we are reminded of the
Aristotelian maxim that pure wickedness is no subject for dramatic
treatment.
Yet we are aware that it may be practically impossible to publish
incomplete editions of a very popular writer; and in the extravagances
of his youth one may discern the promise of much higher things. Very
rapidly, in fact, in the work which comes next, Thackeray rises at
once to a far superior level of artistic performance. We are not
indisposed to endorse the opinion, pronounced more than once by good
judges, that the high-water mark of his peculiar genius was touched by
_Barry Lyndon_, which first exhibits the rare and distinctive
qualities that were completely developed in his later and larger
novels. It may be affirmed, as a general rule, that most of our
eminent writers of fiction have leapt, as Scott did, into the arena
with some work of first-class merit, which has immediately caught
public attention and established their position in literature. Their
fugitive pieces, their crudities and imperfect essays, have been
either judiciously suppressed or consigned to oblivion. They have
followed, one may say, the goodly custom prescribed by the governor
of the Cana marriage feast; they put forth in the beginning their good
wine, and they fall back upon inferior brands only when the public,
having well drunk of the potent vintage, will swallow anything from a
favourite author. We may regret that Thackeray's start as a man of
letters should have furnished an exception to this salutary rule; and
in surveying, after the lapse of many years, his collected works, we
are disposed to observe that no first-class writer has suffered more
from the enduring popularity which has encouraged the republication of
everything that is his, from the finished _chefs-d'oeuvres_ down to
the ephemeral and unripe products of an exuberant youth. He would have
given the world a notable confirmation of the rule that a great author
usually leads off on a high note, if he had opened his munificent
literary entertainment with _Barry Lyndon_. We quote here from Mrs.
Ritchie's introduction:
'My father once said to me when I was a girl, "You needn't read
_Barry Lyndon_; you won't like it." Indeed it is scarcely a book to
_like_, but one to admire and to wonder at for its consummate power
and mastery.... Barry Lyndon tells his own story, so as to enlist
every sympathy against himself, and yet all flows so plausibly, so
glibly, that one can hardly explain how the effect was produced.
From the very first sentence, almost, one receives the impression
of a lawless adventurer, brutal, heartless, with low instincts and
rapid perceptions. Together with his own autobiography, he gives a
picture of the world in which he lives and brags, a picture so
vivid ... that as one reads one almost seems to hear the tread of
remorseless fate sounding through all the din and merriment. Take
those descriptions of the Prussian army during the Seven Years'
War, and of that hand of man which weighs so heavily upon man--what
a haunting page in history!'
These remarks are very justly appreciative, for the book stamps
Thackeray as a fine impressionist, as an artist who skilfully mixes
the colours of reality and imagination into a composition of striking
scenes and the effective portrayal of character. With extraordinary
ability and consistency to the type he works out the gradual evolution
of a wild Irish boy, hot-headed in love and fighting, full of daring
impetuosity and ignorant vanity, into the ruffianly soldier, the
intrepid professional gambler, and finally into the selfish
profligate, who marries a great heiress and sets up as a county
magnate. Instead of the mere unadulterated villainy and meanness which
were impersonated in his previous stories, we have here the complex
strength and weakness of real human nature; we have the whole action
lifted above the platform of city swindlers, insignificant scoundrels,
and needy cardsharpers, up to a stage exhibiting historic personages
and scenes, courts and battlefields; and we breathe freely in the
wider air of immorality on a grand scale. As a sample of spirited
freehand drawing, the sketches of Continental society, 'before that
vulgar Corsican upset the gentry of the world,' are admirable for
their force and originality; and what can be better as a touch of
character than the following defence of his profession by a prince of
gamblers?
'I speak of the good old days of Europe, before the cowardice of
the French aristocracy (in the shameful Revolution, which served
them right) brought ruin on our order.... You call a doctor an
honourable man--a swindling quack, who does not believe in the
nostrums which he prescribes, and takes your guinea for whispering
in your ear that it's a fine morning; and yet, forsooth, a gallant
man who sits him down before the baize and challenges all comers,
his money against theirs, his fortune against theirs, is proscribed
by your modern moral world. It is a conspiracy of the middle
classes against gentlemen; it is only the shopkeeper cant which is
to go down nowadays. I say that play was an institution of
chivalry; it has been wrecked along with other privileges of men of
birth.'
Here we have the romance of the gaming-table; and in the same chapter
Barry Lyndon recounts the evil chance that befell him at cards with
two young students, who had never played before:
'As ill luck would have it, they were tipsy, and against tipsiness
I have often found the best calculations of play fail entirely. A
few officers joined; they played in the most perfectly insane way,
and won always.... And in this ignoble way, in a tavern room thick
with tobacco smoke, across a deal table besmeared with beer and
liquor, and to a parcel of hungry subalterns and beardless
students, three of the most skilful and renowned players in Europe
lost seventeen hundred louis. It was like Charles xii. or Richard
Coeur de Lion falling before a petty fortress and an unknown
hand.'
The picture of gamblers in a grimy tavern, the unconscious humour of
Lyndon's heroic lament, the comparison between the cardsharpers'
discomfiture and the fall of mighty warriors, make up a fine example
of Thackeray's eye for graphic detail, and prove the force and temper
of his incisive irony.
Yet, in spite of its great excellence, the book still labours under
the artistic disadvantage of having a rogue for its hero. Thackeray
was too good an artist to be unconscious of this defect, and in a
footnote to page 215 he defends his choice characteristically. After
admitting that Mr. Lyndon maltreated his lady in every possible way,
bullied her, robbed her to spend the money in gambling and taverns,
kept mistresses in her house, and so on, he argues:
'The world contains scores of such amiable people, and, indeed, it
is because justice has not been done them that we have edited this
autobiography. Had it been that of a mere hero of romance--one of
those heroic youths who figure in the novels of Scott or James,
there would have been no call to introduce the reader to a
personage already so often and so charmingly depicted. Mr. Barry is
not, we repeat, a hero of the common pattern; but let the reader
look round and ask himself, "Do not as many rogues succeed in life
as honest men, more fools than men of talent?" And is it not just
that the lives of this class should be described by the students of
human nature as well as the actions of those fairy-tale princes,