Schiller dead was considered in Germany a greater man than Goethe living, as if it were an offense to live and a virtue to die. And young William Makepeace wrote home to his mother that Schiller was the greatest man that ever lived and that he was going to translate his books and give them to England.
No doubt there are certain people born with a tendency to infectiousness in regard to certain diseases; so there are those who catch the literary mania on slight exposure.
"I've got it," said Thackeray, and so he had.
He went back to England and made groggy efforts at Blackstone, and Somebody's Digest, and What's-His-Name's Compendium, but all the time he scribbled and sketched.
The young man had come into possession of a goodly fortune from his father's estate—enough to yield him an income of over two thousand dollars a year. But bad investments and signing security for friends took the money the way that money usually goes when held by a man who has not earned it.
"Talk about riches having wings," said Thackeray; "my fortune had pinions like a condor, and flew like a carrier-pigeon."
When Thackeray was thirty he was eking out a meager income writing poems, reviews, criticisms and editorials. His wife was a confirmed invalid, a victim of mental darkness, and his sorrows and anxieties were many.
He was known as a bright writer, yet London is full of clever, unsuccessful men. But in Thackeray's thirty-eighth year "Vanity Fair" came out, and it was a success from the first.
In "Yesterdays With Authors," Mr. Fields says: "I once made a pilgrimage with Thackeray to the various houses where his books had been written; and I remember when we came to Young Street, Kensington, he said, with mock gravity, 'Down on your knees, you rogue, for here "Vanity Fair" was penned; and I will go down with you, for I have a high opinion of that little production myself.'"
Young Street is only a block from the Kensington Metropolitan Railway-Station. It is a little street running off Kensington Road. At Number Sixteen (formerly Number Thirteen), I saw a card in the window, "Rooms to Rent to Single Gentlemen."