All our friends took their share, and fought like men in the great field. All day long, while the women were praying ten miles away, the lines of the dauntless English infantry were receiving and repelling the furious charges of the French horsemen. Guns which were heard in Brussels were ploughing up their ranks, and comrades falling, and the resolute survivors closing in. Towards evening, the attack of the French, repeated and resisted so bravely, slackened in its fury. They had other foes besides the British to engage, or were preparing for a final onset. It came at last; the columns of the Imperial Guard marched up the hill of Saint Jean, at length and at once to sweep the English from the height which they had maintained all day and spite of all; unscared by the thunder of the artillery, which hurled death from the English line,—the dark rolling column pressed on and up the hill. It seemed almost to crest the eminence, when it began to wave and falter. Then it stopped, still facing the shot. Then, at last, the English troops rushed from the post from which no enemy had been able to dislodge them, and the Guard turned and fled.
No more firing was heard at Brussels,—the pursuit rolled miles away.
Darkness came down on the field and city; and Amelia was praying for
George, who was lying on his face, dead, with a bullet through his heart.”
Who before ever began the description of a great victory by praising the enemy! And yet when we consider it, there is no more artistically powerful method than this, of showing how very great the enemy was, and then saying simply, “The English defeated them.”
But Thackeray wished to do more than this. He was preparing the reader for the awful presence of death in a private affliction, Amelia's loss of her husband George. To do this he lets his heart go out in sympathy for the French, and by that sympathy he seems to rise above all race, to a supreme height where exist the griefs of the human heart and God alone.
With all this careful preparation, the short, simple closing paragraph— the barest possible statement of the facts—produces an effect unsurpassed in literature. The whole situation seems to cry out for superlatives; yet Thackeray uses none, but remains dignified, calm, and therefore grand.
The following selection serves as a sort of preface to the novel “Vanity Fair.” It is quite as remarkable for the things it leaves unsaid as for the things it says. Of course its object is to whet the reader's appetite for the story that is to follow; but throughout the author seems to be laughing at himself. In the last paragraph we see one of the few superlatives to be found In Thackeray—he says the show has been “most favorably noticed” by the “conductors of the Public Press, and by the Nobility and Gentry.” Those capital letters prove the humorous intent of the superlative, which seems to be a burlesque on other authors who praise themselves. One of the criticisms had been that Amelia was no better than a doll; and Thackeray takes the critics at their word and refers to the “Amelia Doll,” merely hinting gently that even a doll may find friends.
BEFORE THE CURTAIN.
(Preface to “Vanity Fair.”)
By W. M. Thackeray.
As the Manager of the Performance sits before the curtain on the boards, and looks into the Fair, a feeling of profound melancholy comes over him in his survey of the bustling place. There is a great quantity of eating and drinking, making love and jilting, laughing and the contrary, smoking, cheating, fighting, dancing, and fiddling: there are bullies pushing about, bucks ogling the women, knaves picking pockets, policemen on the lookout, quacks (other quacks, plague take them!) bawling in front of their booths, and yokels looking up at the tinselled dancers and poor old rouged tumblers, while the light-fingered folk are operating upon their pockets behind. Yes, this is Vanity Fair; not a moral place certainly; nor a merry one, though very noisy. Look at the faces of the actors and buffoons when they come off from their business; and Tom Fool washing the paint off his cheeks before he sits down to dinner with his wife and the little Jack Puddings behind the canvas. The curtain will be up presently, and he will be turning over head and heels, and crying, “How are you?”