Chapter IX

The late Herman Merivale, in a very brilliant study, interrupted by death and left to be completed by Sir Frank Marzials, finds the two key-secrets (as he calls them) of Thackeray’s life to be these--Disappointment and Religion. I propose ten days hence to examine this, and to speak of both. But I may premise, here and at once, that Thackeray was a brave man who took the knocks of life without flinching (even that from young Venables’ fist, which broke his nose but not their friendship), and that to me the melancholy which runs through all his writing--the melancholy of Ecclesiastes, the eternal Mataiotes Mataioteton--Vanity of Vanities, all is Vanity--was drawn by origin from the weary shore of Ganges and brought in the child’s blood to us, over the sea.

“Vanity of vanities,” saith the Preacher--Thackeray was before all else a Preacher: and that is the end of it, whether in a set of Cornhill verses or in his most musical, most solemn, prose--

How spake of old the Royal Seer?
(His text is one I love to treat on.)
This life of ours, he said, is sheer
Mataiotes Mataioteton ..., etc.

And now hear the burden of it on that famous page telling how Harry Esmond walked home after breaking the news of Duke Hamilton’s duel and death:

As Esmond and the Dean walked away from Kensington discoursing of
this tragedy, and how fatal it was to the cause which they both had
at heart, the street-criers were already out with their broadsides,
shouting through the town the full, true, and horrible account of
the death of Lord Mohun and Duke Hamilton in a duel. A fellow had
got to Kensington, and was crying it in the square there at very
early morning, when Mr. Esmond happened to pass by. He drove the
man from under Beatrix’s very window, whereof the casement had
been set open. The sun was shining, though ’twas November: he had
seen the market-carts rolling into London, the guard relieved at
the palace, the labourers trudging to their work in the gardens
between Kensington and the City--the wandering merchants and
hawkers filling the air with their cries. The world was going to
its business again, although dukes lay dead and ladies mourned for
them, and kings, very likely, lost their chances. So night and day
pass away, and to-morrow comes, and our place knows us not. Esmond
thought of the courier now galloping on the North road, to inform
him who was Earl of Arran yesterday that he was Duke of Hamilton
to-day; and of a thousand great schemes, hopes, ambitions, that
were alive in the gallant heart, beating a few hours since, and now
in a little dust quiescent.

A heavy passage, Gentlemen--and commonplace? Ah! as you grow older you will find that most of the loveliest, most of the most sacred passages in literature are commonplaces exquisitely turned and tuned to catch and hold new hearts.

THACKERAY (II)

I

I left off, Gentlemen, upon a saying of Herman Merivale’s that the two key-secrets of Thackeray’s life were Disappointment and Religion, and I proposed, examining this to-day, to speak of both.

Well, for the first, I have already (I think) given full room in the account to that domestic sorrow which drove him, great boon favourite of the nursery, to flee from his grand new house in Kensington Gardens--

Cedes coemptis saltibus et domo
Villaque--

to write his novels anywhere rather than at home. In the words of Barnes’ beautiful lament, which I here make free to divorce from its native dialect--

Since now beside my dinner-board
Your voice does never sound,
I’ll eat the bit I can afford
Afield upon the ground;
Below the darksome bough, my love,
Where you did never dine,
And I don’t grieve to miss you now
As I at home do pine.