Chapter II

_No man can walk abroad save on his own shadow._ That is the sentence, of truly Johnsonian common-sense, which bears most intimately on our subject this morning. The story runs that Thackeray, one day tapping impatiently upon the cover of some adulatory memoir of somebody, warm from the press, enjoined upon his family, “None of this nonsense about me, after my death”: and the injunction was construed by his daughter, Lady Ritchie, most piously beyond a doubt, perhaps too strictly, for certain not with the happiest results. For this denial of any authoritative biography--of a writer and a clean-living English gentleman who might, if any human being can or could, have walked up to the Recording Angel and claimed his _dossier_ without a blush--has not only let in a flood of spurious reminiscences, anecdotes, sayings he most likely never uttered or at least never uttered with meaning or accent to give pain that, as reported, they convey. It has led to a number of editions with gossipy prefaces and filial chat (I fear I must say it) none the more helpful for being tinctured by affection and qualified by reserve.

This happens to be the more unfortunate of Thackeray since, as I suppose, no writer of the Victorian age walked abroad more sturdily on his own tall shadow, or trusted more on it. It was a shadow, too: dark enough for any man’s footstep. I do not wish--nor is it necessary--to break in upon any reticence. But you probably know the main outline of the story--of a Cambridge youth, of Trinity, who living moderately beyond his means (as undergraduates will) lost his affluence, lost the remains of it when, bolting to London, he dared to run a newspaper--two newspapers. _The National Standard_ had soon (in his own phrase) to be hauled down, and _The Constitutional_ belied its title by a rapid decline and decease. Thus he lost a moderate patrimony, and we find him next as a roving journalist in Paris, divided between pen and pencil, with an almost empty pocket. There, in August, 1836, at the British Embassy, he made a most imprudent but happy marriage--most happy, that is for a while. Years afterwards he wrote to a young friend:

I married at your age with £400 paid by a newspaper which failed
six months afterwards, and always love to hear of a young man
testing his fortune in that way. Though my marriage was a wreck,
as you know, I would do it over again, for behold Love is the
crown and completion of all earthly good.... The very best and
pleasantest house I ever knew in my life had but £300 to keep it.

Here, then, comes in the tragedy of Thackeray’s life. Daughters were born to him amid those pleasures and anxieties which only they can taste fully who earn their daily bread in mutual love on the future’s chance. As he beautifully wrote, long after, in _Philip_:

I hope, friend, you and I are not too proud to ask for our daily
bread, and to be grateful for getting it? Mr. Philip had to work
for his, in care and trouble, like other children of men:--to
work for it, and I hope to pray for it too. It is a thought to me
awful and beautiful, that of the daily prayer, and of the myriads
of fellow-men uttering it, in care and in sickness, in doubt and
in poverty, in health and in wealth. _Panem nostrum da nobis
hodie._ Philip whispers it by the bedside where wife and child lie
sleeping, and goes to his early labour with a stouter heart: as he
creeps to his rest when the day’s labour is over, and the quotidian
bread is earned, and breathes his hushed thanks to the bountiful
Giver of the meal. All over this world what an endless chorus is
singing of love, and thanks, and prayer. Day tells to day the
wondrous story, and night recounts it unto night. How do I come to
think of a sunrise which I saw near twenty years ago on the Nile
when the river and sky flushed with the dawning light and, as the
luminary appeared, the boatmen knelt on the rosey deck and adored
Allah? So, as thy sun rises, friend, over the humble housetops
round about your home, shall you wake many and many a day to duty
and labour. May the task have been honestly done when the night
comes; and the steward deal kindly with the labourer.

Always this refrain in Thackeray--the text which Dr. Johnson once had inscribed on his watch, _ΝΥΞ ΓΑΡ ΕΡΧΕΤΑΙ_, “For the night cometh.”

With the birth of her third child, however, Mrs. Thackeray fell under a mental disease not violent at first, but deepening until it imperatively required removal and restraint.