IV
But, to return upon the first of the two “key-secrets”—Disappointment and Religion—and to leave Religion aside for a moment—I cannot find that, save in his domestic affliction, Thackeray can rightly be called a disappointed man. There is of course a sense—there is of course a degree—in which every one of us, if he be worth anything, arrives at being a disappointed man. We all have our knocks to bear, and some the most dreadful irremediable wounds to bind up and hide. But whatever Thackeray spent or owed at Cambridge (to pay in due time), he took away, with his experience, a most gallant heart. He went to London, lost the rest of his money in journalistic adventures, and fared out as a random writer, without (as they say) a penny to put between himself and heaven. What does he write later on in reminiscence to his mother, but that these days of struggle were the jolliest of all his life?—
Ye joys that Time hath swept with him away,
Come to mine eyes, ye dreams of love and fun;
For you I pawned my watch full many a day,
In the brave days when I was twenty-one.
That is good gospel. “Fall in love early, throw your cap over the mill; take an axe, spit on your hands; and, for some one, make the chips fly.”