During a portion of Thackeray's life there seemed to be in the public mind a complete misapprehension of the character of the man. Superficial readers of his books, who knew nothing of him personally, were fond of applying the name of cynic to him; and he was even accused by some of these of being a hater of his kind, a misanthropist, a bitter satirist, a hard, ungenial man.
As no adequate personal memoir of him has ever been written, it being understood by his family that such a publication would have been distasteful to him, it has taken time to correct all the false impressions that have gained credence in regard to the great humorist; but at the present time his character has been practically cleared of the former false charges. As one by one the friends who knew him personally have spoken, it has been discovered that this cynic was one of the tenderest and kindest men that our time has produced; this hater of his kind, a man so soft-hearted and full of sensibility that it was really a serious drawback to him in life; this misanthropist, one of the most genial and kindly companions in the world; this bitter satirist, a man who never made an enemy by his speech; this hard man, one who actually threw money away, as all his friends thought, by bestowing it upon every applicant whether he could afford it or not.
So great a change in the world's estimate of a man has seldom been made after the man's death. It is to be accounted for by the fact that while he was living his friends never told what they knew of him, and that only very gradually did they reveal his virtues, even after he had gone, feeling always that he would have preferred them to be silent; and by the other fact that he often appeared other than he was, to cover up his excessive sensibility, of which he was very much ashamed.
The world will come to a truer knowledge of him still some day; and then it will be found what a great, loving, noble heart was hidden behind his thin crust of cynicism,—what gentleness, what tenderness, what wise kindness he was capable of,—what loyalty to his friends and to his principles, what reverence for sacred things, what infinite depths of pathos, lay beneath that mocking exterior. Let us gather together a few of these personal traits as they have been given us by different hands, and try to make thus a true likeness of the man as he appeared to those who knew him best. The events of his life were few and by no means striking.
He was born in Calcutta in 1811, and brought to England when six years of age. At eleven he was placed in Charter-House School, where he is described as a rosy-faced boy, with dark curling hair, and a quick intelligent eye, ever twinkling with good-humor. For the usual school sports he had no taste, and was only known to enjoy theatricals and caricatures, for which he retained his taste throughout life. He was wonderfully social and vivacious, and the best of good company, even at this early day. Merry, light-hearted, unselfish, not very industrious, but a fair classical scholar, and possessed of a wonderful memory,—so he is remembered by those who knew him at this time. In a great school, where nearly all the boys bullied those who were beneath them, he was noted for his invariable kindness to the smaller boys, and it was remarked of him, even at this age, that for one who had such powers of sarcasm he made very few wounds by his tongue. At eighteen he entered Cambridge University, but left it at nineteen and went to study art in Paris. Here he remained for several years, and began his literary work. Here, too, he was married, when twenty-six years of age, to Miss Isabella Shawe, and here they passed the first happy days of their married life together. He has himself sketched a picture of the time, in these words:—
"The humblest painter, be he ever so poor, may have a friend watching at his easel, or a gentle wife sitting by with her work in her lap, and with fond smiles or silence, or both, cheering his labors."
For a few short years they were very happy together, and three children were born to them. Then the most terrible misfortune of his life fell upon him,—his wife, after a severe illness, became hopelessly insane. For some time Thackeray refused to believe that it was more than an illness from which she would recover, but at last the terrible truth was forced upon him that he had lost her forever, and in a way so much more cruel than death. She was placed in the home of a kind family employed to care for her, and there she remained until death released her. His grief was of the most hopeless kind, and it made a melancholy man of him throughout life. At times and seasons his natural gayety would return to him; but he was a sad man at heart from that dreadful day when the horror of her fate was revealed to him. He never spoke directly of his grief, but once in a while he would speak of it in parable, as when he talked to a friend about somebody's wife whom he had known becoming insane, and that friend says:—
"Never shall I forget the look, the manner, the voice, with which he said to me, 'It is an awful thing for her to continue to live. It is awful for her so to die. But has it ever occurred to you how awful the recovery of her lost reason would be, without the consciousness of the loss of time? She finds the lover of her youth a gray-haired old man, and her infants young men and women. Is it not sad to think of this?'"
His mother came to live with him, and his children grew to maturity beneath his roof, one of them the Miss Thackeray now so well known as a novelist. But tenderly as he was attached to them,—and there could have been no fonder father,—he no doubt felt all the sadness of the thought that
"The many make the household,
But only one the home."