Roadside Sketches
His books carry us where we will at pleasure. We can dot about quaint Flanders with O'Dowd, Dobbin, and the English army, on that famous Waterloo campaign; we can elect as our travelling companion that eminent dandy, Arthur Pendennis, Esq. We can follow Clive Newcome and quiet J. J. to the 'Congress of Baden,' to Italy, and what not, or we can linger with 'Philip' in Paris. We can follow Titmarsh through all sorts of delightful journeyings; we are assured that promising young genius was almost an institution in Paris. He has studied Belgium and sojourned in Holland; in 1843 he will allow us to trot over to Ireland in his company, for a pleasant little jaunt; in 1846 our 'Fat Contributor' will suffer us to make one in a pilgrimage from Cornhill to Cairo; in 1850 we may join the Kickleburys on the Rhine. As to Mr. Roundabout, we may go with him where we list—to America, if we would accept a few grateful souvenirs of the New World; to Scotland, where our author's popularity was, if possible, even stronger; to Switzerland, Italy, Germany, back to Belgium and Holland, and through innumerable pleasant reminiscences of fair and quaint cities.
Little Travels
Would you visit the chief sight of Ghent, who could better act as your kindly guide, philosopher, and friend than Thackeray? for one of the most delightfully fresh and picturesque descriptions of the Béguine College or village at Ghent is due to the pen of Titmarsh. In following his sketches of this miniature city of nuns, which every worthy sightseer has visited in the early stage of his travels, the whole place is set out before one with charms added, the old interest is renewed, and we are trotting around the quiet shady courts, or are again favoured with an interview by the superior in the 'show-parlour,' with its ledger for the names of all the Smiths in the universe, while around are displayed the treasures of the convent. It is not difficult to imagine Thackeray sitting down by the roadside, rapidly making the sketches which we give in this chapter.
In 1852 Thackeray paid his first visit to America. The generous reception accorded him throughout the States is sufficiently notorious. Mr. W. B. Reed, who enjoyed in Philadelphia the intimacy of the great novelist, has recorded how deeply sympathetic was the feeling of our transatlantic cousins for this sterling example of a thorough and honest English gentleman. Among other tender remembrances of the kindly humourist, he writes, hinting with delicate reserve at 'domestic sorrows and anxieties too sacred to be paraded before the world':—