see page 29
The posthumous portrait of Thackeray painted by Sir John Gilbert, R.A., was amongst those presented to the Garrick Club. It represents the novelist with long white hair and spectacles seated at a small table on which tea-things are displayed. In the background appears Stanfield’s picture of a Dutch vessel, which may still be seen in one of the Club apartments.
Thackeray, from a drawing by Richard Doyle
see page 28
The pencil drawing taken from the life by Richard Doyle, which is now in the British Museum, is an interesting and very characteristic sketch of the novelist.
He was a cynic; you might read it writ
In that broad brow, crowned with its silver hair;
In those blue eyes, with childlike candour lit,
In the sweet smile his lips were wont to wear.
A cynic? Yes—if ’tis the cynic’s part
To track the serpent’s trail, with saddened eye,
To mark how good and ill divide the heart,
How lives in chequered shade and sunshine lie.
—Commemorative verses from Punch.
The portrait of Thackeray by Sir John E. Millais, P.R.A., which appears on page 23, is in the possession of Mrs. Richmond Ritchie, and is reproduced by her kind permission.