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Updated: April 30, 2025
On the whole, it is the most powerful but not the most wholesome of Thackeray's works. This novel, which the beginner should read after Esmond, is interesting to us for two reasons, because it reflects more of the details of Thackeray's life than all his other writings, and because it contains one powerfully drawn character who is a perpetual reminder of the danger of selfishness.
One curious task which I set myself in Calcutta was to find Rose Aylmer's grave, for it was there that, in 1800, the mortal part of the lady whom Landor immortalised was buried. But I tried in vain. I walked for hours amid the sombre pyramidal tombs beneath which the Calcutta English used to be laid, among them, in 1815, Thackeray's father, but I found no trace of her whom I sought.
Both, it is true, represent a picture that was in the author's mind; but the story passes into Thackeray's book as a picture still, and passes into Maupassant's as something else I call it drama. In Maupassant's drama we are close to the facts, against them and amongst them. He relates his story as though he had caught it in the act and were mentioning the details as they passed.
The literary cobblers who pursued Amelia with the abuse of their poor pens may very well be consigned to the oblivion of their political brother. The comment of one hostile pen cannot however be dismissed as coming from a literary cobbler, and that is the 'sickening' abuse, to use Thackeray's epithet, which Richardson dishonoured himself in flinging at his great contemporary.
If he is unfair in the representation his place among the great should suffer; since the truly great observer of life does general justice to humankind in his harmonious portrayal. We have already spoken of Thackeray's sensitive nature as revealed through all available means: he conveys the impression of a suppressed sentimentalist, even in his satire.
"There's a rest'rant in the next block," replied the clerk, instantly impressed. Here was one who obviously was not "alike." "A two-minutes' walk, Mr. Barnes." "That's good. We will have supper in Miss Thackeray's room. Let me have your pencil, please. Send over and have them fill this order inside of twenty minutes." He handed what he had written to the blinking clerk. "For eight persons.
Thus Englishmen reading the accounts of men who fought at Waterloo are too ready to disbelieve representations of what was taking place in the rear of the army, and to think Thackeray's life-like picture in Vanity Fair of the state of Brussels must be overdrawn.
Thackeray's masterpiece beyond question is Vanity Fair which as a comedy of the manners of contemporary life is quite the greatest achievement in English literature since Tom Jones. It has not the consummate plot of Tom Jones; it has not the breadth, the Shakespearean jollity, the genial humanity of the great "prose Homer"; it has no such beautiful character as Sophia Western.
I suggested that we go up and see the "gent." We did so, and I found the young man very courteous and polite. He told me that he had never heard Thackeray's name in connection with the house.
Amelia declared the other day that she did not remember to have seen her husband out of humour these ten years! Jonathan Wild "Jonathan Wild," published in 1743, is in many respects Fielding's most powerful piece of satire, surpassed only, perhaps, by Thackeray's "Barry Lyndon."
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