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Updated: April 30, 2025
In my refined days I remember reading in one of Thackeray's books about a young lord who was much loved by one Henry Esmond: My friend Jack was very like that young man, and you could not get vexed with him, or, at any rate, you could not keep vexed very long. We soon made friends in The Chequers, and before midnight we were confidential.
Olivia had been bristling all day, like a blissful porcupine, with little plans and surprises: first, she had actually saved out of Aunt Madge's Christmas gift enough money to buy Marcus another of Thackeray's novels; last Christmas she had given him The Newcomes, and this year she had fixed on Esmond.
He and his family were close friends of my wife's people, and when after my marriage I met him, a common love of Barnes brought together the ardent worshipper of the new schools of poetry, for such I was, and the old and distinguished lawyer who was Thackeray's contemporary at the Charterhouse.
What is the historic and poetic splendor of love but the very fact, which constantly appears in Thackeray's stories, namely, that it is a glory which dazzles and blinds. Men rarely love the women they ought to love, according to the ideal standards. It is this that makes the plot and mystery of life.
Good art, but not necessarily great art; the distinction between great art and good art depending immediately, as regards literature at all events, not on its form, but on the matter. Thackeray's Esmond, surely, is greater art than Vanity Fair, by the greater dignity of its interests.
Poe knew many horrible situations, but he did not know the way out; and of all our American writers laying claim to place in the first class Poe shows least influence of the Bible, and apparently needs it most. Irving was the first American writer who stood high enough to be seen across the water. Thackeray's most beautiful essay is on Irving and Macaulay, who died just one month apart.
On another occasion she had expressed a desire to read Thackeray's works, the books in the library being for the most part of last century. On entering her room that same evening she found, to her astonishment, a handsomely bound edition of the novels in question standing on the centre of her table.
Howells, in Section XV of his "Criticism and Fiction," comments adversely on Thackeray's tendency "to stand about in his scene, talking it over with his hands in his pockets, interrupting the action, and spoiling the illusion in which alone the truth of art resides"; and in a further sentence he condemns him as "a writer who had so little artistic sensibility, that he never hesitated on any occasion, great or small, to make a foray among his characters, and catch them up to show them to the reader and tell him how beautiful or ugly they were; and cry out over their amazing properties."
What she said, and which part she took, in the dispute about Thackeray's lecture, may be gathered from the following letter, referring to the same subject: "The Lectures arrived safely; I have read them through twice. They must be studied to be appreciated. I thought well of them when I heard them delivered, but now I see their real power; and it is great.
Thackeray's powers had another field he really did succeed in illustrating some of his own writings. Accomplished his style never was. There was a trace of the old school of caricature in the large noses and thin legs which he gave his figures. Nor was his drawing very correct; the thin legs of the heroes of "The Virginians" are often strangely contorted.
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