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.