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Richardson, Fielding, Goldsmith, and Scott put into the mouths of their heroes and heroines elaborate speeches, poetry, eloquence, and epigrams which are no more like real speech than the allocutions of kings and queens in Shakespeare are like natural talk. That has long been discarded. Jane Austen and Thackeray make their men and women discourse as men and women do.
Every author, sometime or other, reaches the point where he knows perfectly well he has done all the real work he can ever do, that he has written himself out. That's what's the matter with me I'm written out." Jim snorted. "For Heaven's sake, Kent Knowles," he demanded, "how old are you?" "I'm thirty-eight, according to the almanac, but " "Thirty-eight! Why, Thackeray wrote " "Drop it!
The Philistines must be met and routed, we know that of old this was their usual fate, it seems to have been the chief reason for their existence. For my part I think a day ill-spent in which I have not read a few pages of Fielding or Thackeray. I have the most kindly feelings towards Dickens, Jane Austen and George Eliot, and when I am tired I write little things myself."
"But I never wanted to be a comedian," said O'Dowd. "I've always wanted to play the young hero, the fellow who gets the girl, you know." He bestowed a gallant smile upon Miss Thackeray. "You may take my word for it, sir," said Mr. Rushcroft with feeling, "heroism, and nothing less, is necessary to the man who has to play opposite most of the harridans you, in your ignorance, speak of as girls."
And if it were thus drawn into the book it would do double duty; it would authenticate and so enhance the picture; it would add a new and independent interest as well. It seems that there is everything to be said for making a drama of the narrator himself. And so Thackeray evidently felt, for in all his later work he refused to remain the unaccountable seer from without.
There never was yet a man of genius who wrote grammatically and under the scourge of rhetorical rules. Anthony Trollope is a most perfect example of the exact correctness that sterilizes in its own immaculate chastity. Thackeray would knock a qualifying adverb across the street, or thrust it under your nose to make room for the vivid force of an idea.
"Ever since I can remember anything," says his daughter, "I remember him as the good genius of the house, or as its happy, bright and funny genius." As Thackeray had a special handwriting for each daughter, Dickens had a special voice for each child, so that without being named each knew when he or she was spoken to.
She's been doing work for me and others I know for a year past, and I know she's not been out of Richmond in that time." The talk changed now to the books that had come through from Europe in the blockade runners. There was a new novel by Dickens and another by Thackeray, new at least to the South, and the members of the Mosaic Club were soon deep in criticism and defense.
It is the last of these remarkable women whom it is my object to discuss, and who burst upon the literary world as a star whose light has been constantly increasing since she first appeared. She takes rank with Dickens, Thackeray, and Bulwer, and some place her higher even than Sir Walter Scott. Her fame is prodigious, and it is a glory to her sex; indeed, she is an intellectual phenomenon.
Yet, knowing the circumstances in which the Colonel was enmeshed, and knowing also the nature of the people who formed the little circle round about him, Thackeray realized that his last days would of necessity be miserable; and realizing this, the author told the bitter truth, though it cost him many tears.
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