THACKERAY.

Dominion, Volume 3, Issue 764, 12 March 1910, Page 9

THACKERAY.

-A delightful book is tlio biography of William . Makepeace 1 Thackeray, by Lewis Melville. The following are among extracts given in "The Bodleian/* a Journal of Books .at the ;Bodley Head:— Thackeray, bad some enemies, of course, as. who among the fortunato has not? Has even a successful man gone through life, without stirring up angry feelings or arousiug jealousyi lir. Gordon : Hake, hcrjeant Ballantine, and otliers have said unkind things ol' '.him; but tlie majority of ihu.se who disliked him did so because they did not understand him. "Those who knew him best,". said ■ George Hodder, "loveil him best." Ho was a sick, us well as; an overworked man, often (iiiii'ering pain from an internal disease, and ho could not/always be smiling. One day he passed a l'Hend. with the curtest uod—"\Yhu would | have thought," said tho other, "that we were up till four o'clock this morning together? lie sang his 'Dr. Luther' and was the liveliest of us all." ; Years later he Was to meet Anthony Trollopo fo? the first time at the inaugural dinner givenby Ueorge Smith'to the contributors of .the "Cornhill Magazine." Both he audi Trollopo had looked ionvard to tho occnfeion; but when tho night came, and the publisher introduced Trollopo, Thackeray said abruptly, "How d'ye do?" and turned;on his heel. These are instances of what Maunsell B. Field called the great man's "moods of surly incivility"; but in reality they were merely tho outcome of intense' physical tvony. The real Thackeray was lavish of kindness, and lavish, Hoo, not unlv of words, but of money. To be in trouble, was a sure passport to his heart. His charity was only bounded by his mw!:!S; lie did not wail To be as!;ed to, do a favour; he loved to anticipalo, not merely the request, but even the wish. How,

delicately, too, lie dispensed his "loans," as he called the alms lie bestowed upon (hoso less fortunate than himself. Lady Kitchiu has related how he filled a pillbox wijh i\apoleons, wrote on it "one to be taken" occasionally, when required," and gave it to his mother to send to a distressed gentlewoman. \\o are told by Miss Perry how ho i visited Jin old acquaintance in very reduced circumstances, administered some little rebuke on the thoughtlessness of n °t laying by some of tho easily gained gold ot youth or manhood, and, slipping into a blotting-book v/ hundred-pound iv? hurried away, "i never saw him do it, said'poor* old P . "1 was very angry because he said.J had been a reclc-! less old, goose-and then a hundred 1 pounds tails out of my writing-book." God bless mm! • • > . • ilinckeray, who always found pleasure' in hearing of kind deeds, and telling of them, was always himself doing kind things.

In large gatherings Thackeray, who was an intensely shy man, was inclined to be satirical and severe in his conversation, and Lady Dorothy,Nevill has told us how she uas afraid of him ever after she heard him administer a terrible verbal enstigafaon to someone who had incurred his displeasure.' When, at a dinner party, a dignified man -of letters with a broken nose : discoursed persistently of love, ■What has the world come to?" said riiacKeray aloud, "when two broken-nosed old fogies like you and me sit talking about love to each othef"* and, in more bitter vein, when a group of members of the lveform Club were gossiping"'unkindly ot another, recently deceased, "That's right,' said .-Thackeray. "Kick him. Trample : on him.- He's dead!" He re- - served these onslaughts for those whom he considered' stupid people, and as such he classes; those who "do not know how to laugh,' are always pompous and selfconceited, i.e., bigoted, i.e., cruel, i.e., ungentle, uncharitable,' unchristian." Dean Hole has said that Thackeray was the best talker lie listened/to, and that* when it pleased him to talk, "be said so many good things. . . . that they/trod down and suffocated each other"; and, wrote Mrs. Browning from . Rome in 1854, if anybody wants small talk by liandfuls, of glittering, dust swept out of salons, -here's Mr." Thackeray." He was not.a wit in the sense that-Sydney .Smith and Oscar. Wilde were; but-there can be no doubt that he must have said far more good'things than have boon recorded. Whon he saw in a., window off the Strand the legend, "Mutual Loan Fund Association," and a companion wondered what that meant, "Oh, it means," said the novelist, "that thev have got no money and Ipnd .it to each other." "If that d d irreligious fish had 'been to afternoon church," he remarked to .Sir Mountstuart Grant. Duff,-with whom he was angling one, Sunday,' "we.'should not have caught him." It was on William.Palmer Hale, famous I for tho quantify of" T>eer"ho could drink, he pronounced this epitaph, "Take him for hnli-and-half, we shall not look upon his like again. 'When outside a shop he saw two tubs of oysters side bv- side, labelled respectively a shilliuß anif fifteenpence a dozert. "How these," he nmrmured . looking at tho cheaper variety, must hate. the others." . . . Mere fun, mere farcical' nonsense, he did not, of course, value highly. '