Thackeray’s Obituary.

New Zealand Graphic, Volume XLVI, Issue 8, 23 August 1911, Page 61

Thackeray’s Obituary.

And it so happened, Miat sad Christh ' tide of 1863, when Tliackeray lay dea'l and all lhe London papers were »u»y with his name, my father received 8 hurried little note from Mr Edward Levy—after Mr Levy Lawson, the pre*nt Lord Burnham—asking him to Write the article for the ‘‘Daily TeleP Ta i'h" on Thackeray’s death. I found the note, not long ago, among some phP« r »- It was dated “Dec. 25, 1863,” and my father to “do for us to-day a

leader on the present condition of English Literature apropos of the Death of Thackeray.” And there was a postscript: ‘ The bearer will walk about the country till you tell him to return for copy.’' The story of that little Printer’s Devil, and how he spent his Christmas Day in our house in Finchley-road, has been handed down in the family annals. He may—in obedience to his employer—have taken a little walk about the wintry Hampstead or Kilburn fields; but he most certainly and sensibly came back to eat his Christmas dinner—l believe he was with us all day. It must have been quite late at night when the parlourmaid—so the story goes—looked into the study, with a rather scared face, and whispered to my mother. "Please, ma’am, the Devil has been sitting by the kitchen fire the whole evening: and cook says, hadn’t she better give him a hot supper now?”— From ‘‘The Two Novelists,” in the ’‘Cornhill Magazine” for Jun *.