FOOTNOTES:[63]To some this may appear to be a mere truism. In reality it is far from being so. If two globes of equal mass were each of the same exact temperature throughout, they might yet have very unequal total quantities of heat. If one were of water, for instance, and the other of iron or any other metal, the former would have far the larger supply of heat; for more heat is required to raise a given weight of water one degree in temperature, than to raise an equal weight of iron one degree; and water in cooling one degree, or any number of degrees, would give out more heat than an equal weight of iron cooling to the same extent.
[63]To some this may appear to be a mere truism. In reality it is far from being so. If two globes of equal mass were each of the same exact temperature throughout, they might yet have very unequal total quantities of heat. If one were of water, for instance, and the other of iron or any other metal, the former would have far the larger supply of heat; for more heat is required to raise a given weight of water one degree in temperature, than to raise an equal weight of iron one degree; and water in cooling one degree, or any number of degrees, would give out more heat than an equal weight of iron cooling to the same extent.
[63]To some this may appear to be a mere truism. In reality it is far from being so. If two globes of equal mass were each of the same exact temperature throughout, they might yet have very unequal total quantities of heat. If one were of water, for instance, and the other of iron or any other metal, the former would have far the larger supply of heat; for more heat is required to raise a given weight of water one degree in temperature, than to raise an equal weight of iron one degree; and water in cooling one degree, or any number of degrees, would give out more heat than an equal weight of iron cooling to the same extent.
In the absence of any complete biography of the late William Makepeace Thackeray, every anecdote regarding him has a certain value, in so far as it throws a light on his personal character and methods of work. Read in this light and this spirit, all the tributes to his memory are valuable and interesting. Glancing over some memoranda connected with the life of the novelist, contained in a book which has come under our notice, entitled "Anecdote Biographies," we gain a ready insight into his character. And from the materials thus supplied, we now offer a few anecdotes treasured up in these too brief memorials of his life.
Thackeray was born at Calcutta in 1811. While still very young, he was sent to England; on the homeward voyage he had a peep at the great Napoleon in his exile-home at St. Helena. He received his education at the Charterhouse School and at Cambridge, leaving the latter without a degree. His fortune at this time amounted to twenty thousand pounds; this he afterwards lost through unfortunate speculations, but not before he had travelled a good deal on the continent, and acquainted himself with French and German everyday life and literature. His first inclination was to follow the profession of an artist; and curious to relate, he made overtures to Charles Dickens to illustrate his earliest book. Thackeray was well equipped both in body and mind when his career as an author began; but over ten years of hard toil at newspaper and magazine writing were undergone before he became known as the author of "Vanity Fair," and one of the first of living novelists. He lectured with fair if not with extraordinary success both in England and America, when the sunshine of public favour had been secured. His career of successful novel-writing terminated suddenly on 24th December 1863, and like Dickens, he had an unfinished novel on hand.
One morning Thackeray knocked at the door of Horace Mayhew's chambers in Regent Street, crying from without: 'It's no use, Horry Mayhew; open the door.' On entering, he said cheerfully: 'Well, young gentleman, you'll admit an old fogy.' When leaving, with his hat in his hand, he remarked: 'By-the-by, how stupid! I was going away without doing part of the business of my visit. You spoke the other day of poor George. Somebody—most unaccountably—has returned me a five-pound note I lent him a long time ago. I didn't expect it. So just hand to George; and tell him, when his pocket will bear it, to pass it on to some poor fellow of his acquaintance. By-bye.' He was gone! This was one of Thackeray's delicate methods of doing a favour; the recipient was asked topass it on.
One of his last acts on leaving America after a lecturing tour, was to return twenty-five per cent. of the proceeds of one of his lectures to a young speculator who had been a loser by the bargain. While known to hand a gold piece to a waiter with the remark: 'My friend, will you do me the favour to accept a sovereign?' he has also been known to say to a visitor who had proffered a card: 'Don't leave this bit of paper; it has cost you two cents, and will be just as good for your next call.' Evidently aware that money when properly used is a wonderful health-restorer, he was found by a friend who had entered his bedroom in Paris, gravely placing some napoleons in a pill-box, on the lid of which was written: 'One to be taken occasionally.' When asked to explain, it came out that these strange pills were for an old person who said she was very ill, and in distress; and so he had concluded that this was the medicine wanted. 'Dr. Thackeray,' he remarked, 'intends to leave it with her himself. Let us walk out together.' To a young literary man afterwards his amanuensis, he wrote thus, on hearing that a loss had befallen him: 'I am sincerely sorry to hear of your position, and send the little contribution which came so opportunely from another friend whom I was enabled once to help. When you are well-to-do again, I know you will pay it back; and I daresay somebody else will want the money, which is meanwhile most heartily at your service.'
When enjoying an American repast at Boston in 1852, his friends there, determined to surprise him with the size of their oysters, had placed six of the largest bivalves they could find, on his plate. After swallowing number one with some little difficulty, his friend asked him how he felt. 'Profoundly grateful,' he gasped; 'and as if I had swallowed a little baby.' Previous to a farewell dinner given by hisAmerican intimates and admirers, he remarked that it was very kind of his friends to give him a dinner, but that such things always set him trembling. 'Besides,' he remarked to his secretary, 'I have to make a speech, and what am I to say? Here, take a pen in your hand and sit down, and I'll see if I can hammer out something. It's hammering now, I'm afraid it will be stammering by-and-by.' His short speeches, when delivered, were as characteristic and unmistakable as anything he ever wrote. All the distinct features of his written style were present.
It is interesting to remark the sentiments he entertained towards his great rival Charles Dickens. Although the latter was more popular as a novelist, than he could ever expect to become, he expressed himself in unmistakable terms regarding him. When the conversation turned that way, we would remark: 'Dickens is making ten thousand a year. He is very angry at me for saying so; but I will say it, for it is true. He doesn't like me. He knows that my books are a protest against his—that if the one set are true, the other must be false. But "Pickwick" is an exception; it is a capital book. It is like a glass of good English ale.' When "Dombey and Son" appeared in the familiar paper cover, number five contained the episode of the death of little Paul. Thackeray appeared much moved in reading it over, and putting number five in his pocket, hastened with it to the editor's room in "Punch" office. Dashing it down on the table in the presence of Mark Lemon, he exclaimed! 'There's no writing against such power as this; one has no chance! Read that chapter describing young Paul's death; it is unsurpassed—it is stupendous!'
In a conversation with his secretary previous to his American trip, he intimated his intention of starting a magazine or journal on his return, to be issued in his own name. This scheme eventually took shape, and the result was the now well known "Cornhill Magazine." This magazine proved a great success, the sale of the first number being one hundred and ten thousand copies. Under the excitement of this great success, Thackeray left London for Paris. To Mr. Fields, the American publisher, who met him by appointment at his hotel in the Rue de la Paix, he remarked: 'London is not big enough to contain me now, and I am obliged to add Paris to my residence. Good gracious!' said he, throwing up his long arms, 'where will this tremendous circulation stop? Who knows but that I shall have to add Vienna and Rome to my whereabouts? If the worst come to the worst, New York also may fall into my clutches, and only the Rocky Mountains may be able to stop my progress.' His spirits continued high during this visit to Paris, his friend adding that some restraint was necessary to keep him from entering the jewellers' shops and ordering a pocketful of diamonds and 'other trifles; for,' said he, 'how can I spend the princely income which Smith[64]allows me for editing "Cornhill," unless I begin instantly somewhere!' He complained too that he could not sleep at nights 'for counting up his subscribers.' On reading a contribution by his young daughter to the "Cornhill," he felt much moved, remarking to a friend; 'When I read it, I blubbered like a child; it is so good, so simple, and so honest; and my little girl wrote it, every word of it.'
Dickens in the tender memorial which he penned for the "Cornhill Magazine," remarks on his appearance when they dined together. 'No one,' he says, 'can ever have seen him more genial, natural, cordial, fresh, and honestly impulsive than I have seen him at those times. No one can be surer than I of the greatness and goodness of the heart that had then disclosed itself.'
Beneath his 'modestly grand' manner, his seeming cynicism and bitterness, he bore a very tender and loving heart. In a letter written in 1854, and quoted in James Hannay's sketch, he expresses himself thus. 'I hate Juvenal,' he says. 'I mean I think him a truculent fellow; and I love Horace better than you do, and rate Churchill much lower; and as for Swift, you haven't made me alter my opinion. I admire, or rather admit, his power as much as you do; but I don't admire that kind or power so much as I did fifteen years ago, or twenty shall we say. Love is a higher intellectual exercise than hatred; and when you get one or two more of those young ones you write so pleasantly about, you'll come over to the side of the kind wags, I think, rather than the cruel ones.' The pathetic sadness visible in much that he wrote sprung partly from temperament and partly from his own private calamities. Lossof fortune was not the only cause. When a young man in Paris, he married; and after enjoying domestic happiness for several years, his wife caught a fever from which she never afterwards sufficiently recovered to be able to be with her husband and children. She was henceforth intrusted to the care of a kind family, where every comfort and attention was secured for her. The lines in the ballad of the "Bouillabaisse" are supposed to refer to this early time of domestic felicity:
Ah me! how quick the days are flitting!I mind me of a time that's gone,When here I'd sit as now I'm sitting,In this place—but not alone.A fair young form was nestled near me,A dear, dear face looked fondly up,And sweetly spoke and smiled to cheer me—There's no one now to share my cup.
Ah me! how quick the days are flitting!I mind me of a time that's gone,When here I'd sit as now I'm sitting,In this place—but not alone.A fair young form was nestled near me,A dear, dear face looked fondly up,And sweetly spoke and smiled to cheer me—There's no one now to share my cup.
In dictating to his amanuensis during the composition of the lectures on the "Four Georges," he would light a cigar, pace the room for a few minutes, and then resume his work with increased cheerfulness, changing his position very frequently, so that he was sometimes sitting, standing, walking, or lying about. His enunciation was always clear and distinct, and his words and thoughts were so well weighed that the progress of writing was but seldom checked. He dictated with calm deliberation, and shewed no risible feeling even when he had made a humorous point. His whole literary career was one of unremitting industry; he wrote slowly, and like 'George Eliot,' gave forth his thoughts in such perfect form, that he rarely required to retouch his work. His handwriting was neat and plain, often very minute; which led to the remark, that if all trades failed, he would earn sixpences by writing the Lord's Prayer and the Creed in the size of one. Unlike many men of less talent, he looked upon caligraphy as one of the fine arts. When at the height of his fame he was satisfied when he wrote six pages a day, generally working during the day, seldom at night. An idea which would only be slightly developed in some of his shorter stories, he treasured up and expanded in some of his larger works.
While Alfred Tennyson the future Laureate received the gold medal at Cambridge given by the Chancellor of the university for the best English poem, the subject being "Timbuctoo," we find Thackeray satirising the subject in a humorous paper called "The Snob." Here are a few lines from his clever skit on the prize poem:
There stalks the tiger—there the lion roars,Who sometimes eats the luckless blackamoors;All that he leaves of them the monster throwsTo jackals, vultures, dogs, cats, kites and crows;His hunger thus the forest monster gluts,And then lies down 'neath trees called cocoa-nuts.
There stalks the tiger—there the lion roars,Who sometimes eats the luckless blackamoors;All that he leaves of them the monster throwsTo jackals, vultures, dogs, cats, kites and crows;His hunger thus the forest monster gluts,And then lies down 'neath trees called cocoa-nuts.
The personal appearance of Thackeray has been frequently described. His nose through an early accident, was misshapen; it was broad at the bridge, and stubby at the end. He was near-sighted: and his hair at forty was already gray, but massy and abundant—his keen and kindly eyes twinkled sometimes through and sometimes over his spectacles. A friend remarked that what he 'should call the predominant expression of the countenance was courage—a readiness to face the world on its own terms.' Unlike Dickens, he took no regular walking exercise, and being regardless of the laws of health, suffered in consequence. In reply to one who asked him if he had ever received the best medical advice, his reply was: 'What is the use of advice if you don't follow it? They tell me not to drink, and Idodrink. They tell menotto smoke, and I do smoke. They tell me not to eat, and I do eat. In short, I do everything that I am desirednotto do—and therefore, what am I to expect?' And so one morning he was found lying, like Dr. Chalmers, in the sleep of death with his arms beneath his head, after one of his violent attacks of illness—to be mourned by his mother and daughters, who formed his household, and by a wider public beyond, which, had learned to love him through his admirable works.—Chambers's Journal.
FOOTNOTES:[64]Of Smith, Elder, & Co., the well known publishers.
[64]Of Smith, Elder, & Co., the well known publishers.
[64]Of Smith, Elder, & Co., the well known publishers.