MR. THACKERAY'S NEW NOVEL.

Lyttelton Times, Volume III, Issue 129, 25 June 1853, Page 8

MR. THACKERAY'S NEW NOVEL.

[Prom the' Times.'] (Concluded from last week.) The History of Henry Esmond, Esq., is not a very striking one. The most remarkable fact connected with it is, that it proves, beyond a doubt, that folks very like our contemporaries lived and prospered in the days of Queen Anne. All our friends that entertained us for so many months in Vanity Fair and Pendennis have their facsimiles in Mr. Esmond's volume. The colonel himself is just such another creature as Dobbin—as kind-hearted, as self-denying, as generous, as devoted, and, must we add ? almost as weak and simple. Captain Crawley, the roue", belongs to the same family as Castlewood, for all the lords of that name indulge in his propensities. Miss Amory is the very embodiment of intrigue and selfishness ; so is Beatrix Castlewood, who sets her cap at great people without caring a straw for them, precisely like the other lady. It must have been generally remarked that Mr. Thackeray is morbidly fond of reproducing his old creations upon the scene. The dramatis personce of Pendennis bore not only a great resemblance to the characters of Vanity Fair, but some of them were actually reproduced in the second production, or referred to by name. In like manner, our old friends the Crawleys are familiarly spoken of in Colonel Esmond's history. It is well to have a natural affection for your off-spring, but there may be occasions when to obtrude them upon the notice of your visitors is to betray want of tact, of breeding, and good ] sense.

Infinite pains are taken to beguile us into the notion that we are reading a book written and printed upwards of a century ago. Mr. Thackeray has done his part in the matter, and the printers and publishers have done theirs ; but perfect contentment, after all, does not dwell upon the mind of the reader. The style is an admirable imitation, and would be charming if it were not tedious ; the type is most delusive, even to the title-page, which acquaints us that the book is printed by " Smith and Elder, over against St. Peter's Church, in Cornhill ;" but the vital part of the work is no more a representation of the spirit and soul of the time than it is of the age that preceded or followed it. The depths of society are not probed, and the merest glimpses of its outward shape are vouchsafed. There are two great faults in the volumes, and this is one of them. Had the bopk really proceeded from the pen of an officer in the service of Queen Anne, he would unquestionably have written in the quaint fashion of this work, but he would have done a great deal more. He would not in the substance of his production have imitated Mr. Thackeray as Mr. Thackeray has imitated him in the form. He must have displayed in a domestic story something like a social picture of his time, and afforded his present readers infinite amusement from the comparison of two widely separated epochs. Even Tom Jones and Pamela are most instructive in this respect, for both reveal a condition of society very different indeed from that in which we play our part. How much more different and interesting the domestic proceedings of the loyal subjects of Queen Anne ! If any one will take the trouble to translate Mr. Esmond's language into modern English, he will be surprised to find how much of the book applies with as much force to men and manner in 1852 as to men and manners m 1702. It is very true that Mr. Esmond tells us that he went to the theatre to witness the performance of Mrs. Bracegirdle; but he might have said that he went to listen to Mrs. Kean for anything that follows from his visit. Mr. Esmond proceeds to Cambridge University, and, to our astonishment, we discover that University life in the days of Queen Anne differed hi no respect whatever from University life iv the happier times of our gracious Queen Victoria. ' We learn, indeed, that Air. Esmond's friends drink, fight, quarrel with their wives, intrigue, and are very selfish and good for untiring," or good for something and very stupid, but precisely this account reached us of the friends of Mr. Pendennis and of Mr. Osborne, so that, indeed, Mr. Esmond is quite as much indebted to the author of Vanity Fair as the author of Vanity Fair is to him. We say again Mr. Thackeray is not to be too harshly dealt with for not accomplishing a feat which a lire-long and exclusive study of one peculiar period of his nation's history would hardly enable him to achieve

with unqualified success. But he is to be remonstrated with for presenting us with a very questionable and cracked specimen of old China when he had it in his power to offer us sound and genuine British porcelain. Our foremost writers must not become the vendors of sham curiosities. The second grave fault in Colonel Esmond's narrative is one for which Mr. Thackeray must be prepared to answer in his own proper person. He has inflicted a stain upon the good taste and feeling of the worthy colonel, of which that gentleman has every reason to complain. Nothing .can be more amiable than Mr. Esmond's character as described in every incident of his story, yet the sentiment with which we take leave of him is one of unaffected disgust. No hero of any age ever finished his career less heroically than Mr. Esmond. When we are first introduced to him, he appears as a dependent in the family of my Lord Castlewood, who with his wife and two children arrives at Castlewood-house to take possession of his estate, and to find the lad Esmond a sort of heirloom with the property. The boy being somewhat older than his Lordship's children, Lady Castlewood attaches herself to the orphan as j he to her. She becomes a mother to him; he is her affectionate and devoted son. Residing in the house of his patrons, it is his misfortune to witness the disagreement of man and wife, the man being dissolute in manners, the wife growing indifferent under her ill-treatment. When the quarrel of the married pair is at its height, and when my Lord Castlewood has finally given open preference to a worthless mistress over his own beautiful and spotless lady, Lord Mohun rouses his jealousy by paying attention to Lady Castlewood ; and the profligate husband, suddenly finding that his marital affection simply slumbers, and is not dead, challenges the intruder to mortal combat. The battle is fought, and Lord Castlewood i» slain. But young Esmond has been my lord's second in the encounter, and his " dear mistress," who is not to be pacified for the loss of her drunken master, refuses to see her protSge, again. Her love has turned into hate, and her door and heart are closed against him. Esmond goes to the wars, carrying with him an absorbing passion for Beatrix, the daughter of the deceased peer. He cares not for life, unless it can be shared with her. He pants for glory, only that she may love him first and partake of his fame. He returns to England, presents himself to his " dear mistress," and the old wound being healed the youth is forgiven. A secret in the meanwhile has been discovered. Esmond is the real Lord Castlewood, and no bastard ; but the prototype of Dobbin prefers the stigma and obscurity to legitimacy and rank at the expense of his friends. Let that pass. Beatrix does not love Esmond, but the resolution of the young soldier to win her is only the more fixed. He pours out his sorrows upon the bosom of his " dear mother," who encourages his suit, and goes so far as to plead with her daughter on his behalf. Years roll on. Esmond is at the wars again ; but his constancy never slackens, and he fights for a good name only, that she may take pride and pleasure in his acquisition. Beatrix is a flirt; yet he is not inconstant. She is engaged to Lord Ashburnham ; but, the match breaking off, he is still humble and solicitous. He is rejected. A more dazzling prize comes within reach of Beatrix, ami she holds forth her ambitious hand to grasp it. The great Duke of Hamilton offers to make her Duchess. She accepts, and the eve of the wedding day is already come, when his Grace, in his turn, is slain in a duel by my Lord Mohuu. Is Esmond defeated? Not he. Once more behold him on his knees before the relentless one, offering his hand and his name.—such as it is— to the woman who scorns him. Nothing can be more laudable, in its way, than this heroic persistence, for it shows at least the purity, the self-devotion, the singleness of purpose, and the perfect love of theindomitable suitor, whatever it may say for his taste, judgment, and good sense. During the whole of this indefatigable suit Esmond and Lady Castlewood stand in the relation of mother and son. When her Ladyship is forty years of age we find the young man urging his cause before Beatrix's mother, and receiving such consolations as the following : — " She will not marry, Harry, as I would have her; the person whom I should like to call my son, and Henry Esmond knows who that is, is

best served by my not pressing his claim. Beatrix loves admiration more than love, and longs, beyond all things, for command. Why should a mother speak so of her child ? You are my son, too, Harry. You should know the truth about your sister. When we read your name in the Gazette I pleaded for you, my poor boy. Poor boy, indeed ! You are growing a grave old gentleman now, and I am an old woman."

And, then, finally " said Harry's fond mistress giving a hand to him, ' I wish she would have you.' He kissed and kept her fair hand, as they talked together." Interview after interview takes place between the widow and the protege" to the same effect—she seldom parting from her son without the maternal kiss, he never tiring of taking the hand and caressing his " dear mistress." So matters go on until the end of the third volume, when—hear it, reader, and believe it.' Beatrix runs after the Pretender to France and becomes his mistress, while Henry Esmond—the importunate and highsouled, the sensitive and delicate-minded—mar-ries his own "dear mother!" Lady Castlewood has been in love with the youth throughout —has been jealous of her daughter—feigned hatred of the boy after her husband was slain when most she doated upon him, and was " making eyes" at him all the while she was hypocritically pretending to advance his suit with his so called " sister"—her own much envied and at length defeated daughter. Yet Lady Castlewood is the heroine of this story, is held up page after page to our admiration and respect, and Colonel Esmond is the immaculate hero! Strange are Mr. Thackeray's notions of human perfection !

We repeat* we will not accept the present novel as an evidence of Mr. Thackeray's powers as a writer of fiction. We desire to see a complete novel from his pen, but he must give himself an unencumbered field and allow the reader as well as himself fair play. That he is capable of greater efforts than any he has hitherto made, we believe; that he has a potent pen for description of character, is manifest from the very striking portraiture of Marlborough that appears in these volumes ; and that he may make a permanent impression upon the literary character of his times, is quite possible if he will only trust to his better impulses and survey mankind in the spirit of trust, affection, and belief, rather than of doubt, incredulity and contempt.

Here is the picture of the Great Duke! What can be stronger, fresher, and more lifelike than the colouring ?—we speak not now of fidelity :—

" Our chief, whom England and all Europe, saving only the Frenchmen, worshipped almost, had this of the godlike in him, that he was im* passable before victory, before danger, before defeat. Before the greatest obstacle or the most trivial ceremony; before a hundred thousand men drawn in battalia, or a peasant slaughtered at the door of his burning hovel; before a carouse of drunken German lords, or a monarch's Court, or a cottage table where his plans were laid; or an enemy's battery, vomiting flame and death, and strewing corpses round about him— he was always cold, calm, resolute, like fate. He performed a treason or a court bow, he told a falsehood as black as Styx, as easily as he paid a compliment or spoke about the weather. He took a mistress, and left her ; he betrayed his benefactor, and supported him, or would have murdered him, with the same calmness always, and having no more remorse than Clotho when she weaves the thread, or Lachesis when she cuts it. In the hour of battle I have heard the Prince of Savoy's officers say, the Prince became possessed with a sort of warlike fury;. his eyes lighted up; he rushed hither and thither, raging; he shrieked curses and encouragement, yelling and hooting his bloody war-dogs on, and himself always at the first of the hunt. Our Duke was as calm at the mouth of the cannon as at the door of a drawing-room. Perhaps he could not have been the great man he was had he had a heart either for love or hatred, or pity or fear, or regret or remorse. He achieved the highest deed of daring, or deepest calculation of thought, as he performed the very meanest action of which a man is capable; told a lie, or cheated a fond woman, or robbed a poor beggar of a halfpenny with a like awful serenity and equal capacity of the highest and lowest acts of our nature.

" His qualities were pretty well known in the army, where there were parties of all politics, and plenty of shrewdness and wit; but there existed such a perfect confidence in him, as the first

captain of the world, and such a faith and admiration in his prodigious genius and fortune, that the very men whom he notoriously cheated of their pay, the chiefs whom he used and injured—for he used all men, great and small, that came near him as his instruments alike, and , took something of theirs, either some quality or : some property—the blood of a soldier it might be, or jewelled hat, or hundred thousand crowns from a king, or a portion out of a starving sentinel's three farthings—or (when he was young) a.kiss from a woman and the gold chain off her neck, taking all he could from woman or man, and having, as I have said, this of the godlike in him that he could see a hero perish or a sparrow fall with the same amount of sympathy for either. Not that he had no tears—he could always order up this reserve at the proper moment to battle; he could draw upon tears or "smiles alike, and whenever need was for using this cheap coin; he would cringe to a shoeblack, as he would flatter a Minister or a Monarch; be haughty, be humble, threaten, repent, weep, grasp your hand, or stab you whenever he saw ocasion—but yet those of the army who knew him best, and had suffered most lrom him, admired him most of all; and as he rode along the lines to battle, or galloped up in the nick of time to a battalion reeling from before the enemy's charge or shot, the fainting men and officers got new courage as they saw the splendid calm of his faee^and felt that his will made them irresistible."