It has been stated by more than one critic that Thackeray could not depict a good woman, and that those that were without blemish were also without any attractive qualities. Yet Helen Pendennis was a good woman, a good wife, and a good mother; and Laura Bell was clever as well as good; and certainly Ethel Newcome was not a fool; nor Theo and Kitty Lambert other than good and true women.
From a Photograph
W. M. THACKERAY
(Reproduced from the Biographical Edition of Thackeray’s Works, by kind permission of Messrs. Smith, Elder & Co.)
It seems strange that while his female readers can forgive him Becky Sharp, greatest of adventuresses, and can tolerate even Blanche Amory of “Mes Larmes,” they cannot pardon him Amelia Sedley. There are many other admirable sketches. Mrs. Peggy O’Dowd, lion-hearted, loyal and wise enough; the Dowager Countess of Southdown, Mrs. Bute Crawley, Miss Briggs, Miss Crawley, the lovable Catherine (the “Little Sister” of “Philip”); Miss Fotheringay and Fanny Bolton, who ensnared the affections of young Pendennis—what man has not met one or both of these?—Madame de Florac, the old lady with the beautiful face; the terrible Campaigner; Mrs. Warrington, who preferred to be known as Madame Esmond; Lady Castlewood, tender, loving, unreasoning, who can rise to the dignity of a great situation: “My daughter may receive presents from the Head of our House; my daughter may thankfully take kindnesses from her father’s, her mother’s, her brother’s dearest friend; and be grateful for one more benefit besides the thousand we owe him”; and, above all, irresistible, wayward Trix—that contradiction in words, an ambitious woman. So alluring is Beatrix that it is absurd to expect any man to think that she was ever all bad. Who knows but that if Harry Esmond had been a little less sensitive of his own demerits, and had let her see him as he was, they might have married and lived as happy as most couples? But her chance of redemption passed, and Beatrix became the Madame de Bernstein of “The Virginians.”
Thackeray’s men are no whit less successful. George Osborne and his purse-proud father; old Mr. Sedley and Jos; Sir Pitt Crawley—that most daring piece of character drawing—and his sons, Pitt and Rawdon; Pendennis and “Bluebeard,” as Lady Rockingham called George Warrington; little Bows; the valet, Morgan; Clive Newcome and his cousin, the little bounder, Sir Barnes; the Virginians, Harry and George; the inimitable Foker and the irrepressible Costigan. Thackeray drew gentlemen in a way that has never been excelled and rarely equalled. “They [the Kickleburys] are travelling with Mr. Bloundell, who was a gentleman once, and still retains about him some faint odour of that time of bloom.” “It is true poor Plantagenet [Gaunt] is only an idiot ... a zany, ... and yet you see he is a gentleman.” And the author makes the reader see it is so. In spite of the debaucheries and his behaviour to his family, the Marquis of Steyne is always grand seigneur. Esmond is a gentleman, and so is the intriguing Major Pendennis, Half-Pay; and Florac and Dobbin, and the little-worldly-wise Colonel Newcome. It has been said that the Colonel is too good for this world, too innocent, too ignorant, too transparently a child of nature, yet surely the noble-hearted man is human and true. Indeed, by this one character alone Thackeray could take his place among the masters. The whole gallery of his creations places him at the head of the
