Studies in Early Victorian Literature

by Frederic Harrison

And the scene after George's marriage, when old Osborne burns his will and erases his son's name from the family Bible—and the scene when Osborne receives his son's last letter—"Osborne trembled long before the letter from his dead son"—"His father could not see the kiss George had placed on the superscription of his letter. Mr. Osborne dropped it with the bitterest, deadliest pang of balked affection and revenge. His son was still beloved and unforgiven." And the scene of "the widow and mother," when young Georgy is born, and the wonderful scene when Sir Pitt proposes marriage to the little green-eyed governess and she is scared into confessing her great secret, and the most famous scene of all, when Rawdon Crawley is released from the sponging-house and finds Lord Steyne with Rebecca alone. It is but a single page. The words spoken are short, brief, plain—not five sentences pass—"I am innocent," said she—"Make way, let me pass," cried My Lord—"You lie, you coward and villain!" said Rawdon. There is in all fiction no single scene more vivid, more true, more burnt into the memory, more tragic. And with what noble simplicity, with what incisive reticence, with what subtle anatomy of the human heart, is it recorded.

Vanity Fair was written, it is true, under the strain of serial publication, haste, and anxiety, but it is perhaps, even in style, the most truly complete. The wonderful variety, elasticity, and freshness of the dialogue, the wit of the common scenes, the terrible power of the tragic scenes, the perfection of the mise-en-scène—the rattle, the fun, the glitter of the Fair, are sustained from end to end, from the first words of the ineffable Miss Pinkerton to the Vanitas Vanitatum when the showman shuts up his puppets in their box. There is not in all Vanity Fair a single dull page that we skip, not a bit of padding, no rigmarole of explanation whilst the action stands still. Of what other fiction can this be said? Richardson and even Fielding have their longueurs. Miss Austen is too prone to linger over the tea-table beyond all human patience. And even Scott's descriptions of his loved hills grow sometimes unreadable, especially when they are told in a flaccid and slovenly style. But Vanity Fair is kept up with inexhaustible life and invention, with a style which, for purity and polish, was beyond the reach of Fielding, Richardson, or Scott.

Esmond was composed with even greater care than Vanity Fair, and in the matter of style is usually taken to be Thackeray's greatest masterpiece. Its language is a miracle of art. But it is avowedly a tour de force—an effort to reproduce an entire book in the form and speech of a century and a half preceding. As a tour de force it is wonderful; but in so long a book the effort becomes at last too visible, and undoubtedly it somewhat cramps the freedom of the author's genius. Thackeray was not a born historical romancist, as were Scott and Dumas; nor was he a born historian at all. And when he undertook to produce an elaborate romance in the form and with the colouring of a past age, like George Eliot, he becomes rather too learned, too conscientious, too rigidly full of his authorities; and if as an historian he enters into rivalry with Macaulay, he somewhat loses his cunning as a novelist. Thackeray's force lay in the comedy of manners. In the comedy of manners we have nothing but Tom Jones to compare with Vanity Fair. And though Thackeray is not equal to the "prose Homer of human nature," he wrote an English even finer and more racy.

In Esmond we are constantly pausing to admire the wonderful ingenuity and exquisite grace of the style, studying the language quite apart from the story; and we feel, as we do when we read Milton's Latin poems or Swinburne's French sonnets, that it is a surprising imitation of the original. But at the same time Esmond contains some of the noblest passages that Thackeray ever wrote, scenes and chapters which in form have no superior in English literature. That sixth chapter of the second book, in the cathedral, when Henry Esmond returns to his mistress on the 29th of December, on his birthday. "Here she was weeping and happy. She took his hand in both hers; he felt her tears. It was a rapture of reconciliation"—"so for a few moments Esmond's beloved mistress came to him and blessed him." To my mind, there is nothing in English fiction which has been set forth in language of such exquisite purity and pathos.

Esmond, too, which may be said to be one prolonged parody of the great Queen-Anne essayists, contains that most perfect of all parodies in the English language—"The paper out of the Spectator"—in chapter third of the third book. It is of course not a "parody" in the proper sense, for it has no element of satire or burlesque, and imitates not the foibles but the merits of the original, with an absolute illusion. The 341st number of the Spectator, dated Tuesday, April 1, 1712, is so absolutely like Dick Steele at his best, that Addison himself would have been deceived by it. Steele hardly ever wrote anything so bright and amusing. It is not a "parody": it is a forgery; but a forgery which required for its execution the most consummate mastery over all the subtleties and mysteries of style.

In parody of every kind, from the most admiring imitation down to the most boisterous burlesque, Thackeray stands at the head of all other imitators. The Rejected Addresses of James and Horace Smith (1812) is usually regarded as the masterpiece in this art; and Scott good-humouredly said that he could have mistaken the death of Higginbottom for his own verses. But Thackeray's Novels by Eminent Hands are superior even to the Rejected Addresses. Codlingsby, the parody of Disraeli's Coningsby, may be taken as the most effective parody in our language: intensely droll in itself, it reproduces the absurdities, the affectations, the oriental imagination of Disraeli with inimitable wit. Those ten pages of irrepressible fooling are enough to destroy Disraeli's reputation as a serious romancer. No doubt they have unfairly reacted so as to dim our sense of Disraeli's real genius as a writer. When we know Codlingsby by heart, as every one with a sense of humour must do, it is impossible for us to keep our countenance when we take up the palaver about Sidonia and the Chosen Race. The Novels by Eminent Hands are all good: they are much more than parodies; they are real criticism, sound, wise, genial, and instructive. Nor are they in the least unfair. If the balderdash and cheap erudition of Bulwer and Disraeli are covered with inextinguishable mirth, no one is offended by the pleasant imitations of Lever, James, and Fenimore Cooper.

All the burlesques are good, and will bear continual re-reading; but the masterpiece of all is Rebecca and Rowena, the continuation in burlesque of Ivanhoe. It is one of the mysteries of literature that we can enjoy both, that the warmest admirers of Scott's glorious genius, and even those who delight in Ivanhoe, can find the keenest relish in Rebecca and Rowena, which is simply the great romance of chivalry turned inside out. But Thackeray's immortal burlesque has something of the quality of Cervantes' Don Quixote—that we love the knight whilst we laugh, and feel the deep pathos of human nature and the beauty of goodness and love even in the midst of the wildest fun. And this fine quality runs through all the comic pieces, ballads, burlesques, pantomimes, and sketches. What genial fun in the Rose and the Ring, in Little Billee, in Mrs. Perkins' Ball, in the Sketch Book, in Yellowplush. It is only the very greatest masters who can produce extravaganzas, puerile tomfooleries, drolleries to delight children, and catchpenny songs, of such a kind that mature and cultivated students can laugh over them for the fiftieth time and read them till they are household words. This is the supreme merit of Don Quixote, of Scapin, of Gulliver, of Robinson Crusoe. And this quality of immortal truth and wit we find in Rebecca and Rowena, in the Rose and the Ring, in Little Billee, in Codlingsby, and Yellowplush. The burlesques have that Aristophanic touch of beauty, pathos, and wisdom mingled with the wildest pantomime.

A striking example of Thackeray's unrivalled powers of imitation may be seen in the letters which are freely scattered about his works. No one before or since ever wrote such wonderfully happy illustrations of the epistolary style of boy or girl, old maid or illiterate man. There never were such letters as those of George Osborne in Vanity Fair—that letter from school describing the fight between Cuff and Figs is a masterpiece—the letters of Becky, of Rawdon, of Amelia—all are perfect reproductions of the writer, as are scores of letters scattered up and down the twenty-six volumes. Nor must we omit, as part of the style, the author's own illustrations. They are really part of the book; they assist us to understand the characters; they are a very important portion of the writer's method. None of our great writers ever had this double instrument: and Thackeray has used it with consummate effect. The sketches in Vanity Fair and in Punch, especially the minor thumb-nail drolleries, are delightful—true caricatures—real portraits of character. It is true they are ill drawn, often impossible, crude, and almost childish in their incorrectness and artlessness. But they have in them the soul of a great caricaturist. They have the Hogarthian touch of a great comic artist.

One is tempted to enlarge at length on the merits of Thackeray's style, because it is in his mastery over all the resources of the English language that he surpasses contemporary prose writers. And it is a mastery which is equally shown in every form of composition. There is a famous bit of Byron's about Sheridan to the effect that he had written the best comedy, made the finest speech, and invented the drollest farce in the English language. And it is hardly extravagant to say of Thackeray that, of all the Englishmen of this century, he has written the best comedy of manners, the best extravaganza, the best burlesque, the best parody, and the best comic song. And to this some of his admirers would add—the best lectures, and the best critical essays. It is of course true that he has never reached or attempted to reach the gorgeous rhapsodies of De Quincey or the dithyrambic melodies of Ruskin. But these heaven-born Pegasi cannot be harnessed to the working vehicles of our streets. The marvel of Thackeray's command over language is this—that it is unfailing in prose or in verse, in pathos or in terror, in tragedy or in burlesque, in narrative, in repartee, or in drollery: and that it never waxes or flags in force and precision throughout twenty-six full volumes.

Of Thackeray's style—a style that has every quality in perfection: simplicity, clearness, ease, force, elasticity, and grace—it is difficult to speak but in terms of unstinted admiration. When we deal with the substance and effective value of his great books we see that, although Thackeray holds his own with the best writers of this century, he cannot be said to hold the same manifest crown of supremacy. One of his strongest claims is the vast quantity and variety of his best work, and the singularly small proportion of inferior work. Fielding himself wrote pitiful trash when he became, as he said, a mere "hackney writer"; Richardson's Grandison overcomes most readers; Scott at last broke down; Carlyle, Disraeli, Dickens, and Ruskin have written many things which "we do not turn over by day and turn over by night," to put it as gently as one can. But Thackeray is hardly ever below himself in form, and rarely is he below himself in substance. Pendennis is certainly much inferior to Vanity Fair, and Philip is much inferior to Pendennis. The Virginians is far behind Esmond. But of the more important books not one can be called in any sense a failure unless it be Lovel the Widower, and The Adventures of Philip.