'Certain it is that he lent—or in plainer English, gave—five hundred pounds to poor old Maginn when he was beaten in the battle of life, and like other beaten soldiers made a prisoner—in the Fleet. With the generation going out—that of Lamb and Coleridge—he had, we believe, no personal acquaintance. Sydney Smith he met at a later time; and he remembered with satisfaction that something which he wrote about Hood gave pleasure to that delicate humorist and poet in his last days.[7] Thackeray's earliest literary friends were certainly found among the brilliant band of Fraserians, of whom Thomas Carlyle, always one of his most appreciative admirers, is probably the solitary survivor. From reminiscences of the wilder lights in the "Fraser" constellation were drawn the pictures of the queer fellows connected with literature in "Pendennis"—Captain Shandon, the ferocious Bludyer, stout old Tom Serjeant, and so forth. Magazines in those days were more brilliant than they are now, when they are haunted by the fear of shocking the Fogy element in their circulation; and the effect of their greater freedom is seen in the buoyant, riant, and unrestrained comedy of Thackeray's own earlier "Fraser" articles. "I suppose we all begin by being too savage," is the phrase of a letter he wrote in 1849; "I know one who did." He was alluding here to the "Yellowplush Papers" in particular, where living men were very freely handled. This old, wild satiric spirit it was which made him interrupt even the early chapters of "Vanity Fair," by introducing a parody which he could not resist of some contemporary novelist.'[8]
But we have a proof of the fact of how fully he was recognised by his brother Fraserians as one of themselves, in Maclise's picture of the contributors, prefixed to the number of 'Frasers Magazine' for January 1835—a picture which must have been drawn at some period in the previous year. This outline cartoon represents a banquet at the house of the publisher, Mr. Fraser, at which, on some of his brief visits to London, Thackeray had doubtless been present, for it is easy to trace in the juvenile features of the tall figure with the double eyeglass—Thackeray was throughout life somewhat near-sighted—a portrait of the future author of 'Vanity Fair.' Mr. Mahony, the well-known 'Father Prout' of the magazine, in his account of this picture, written in 1859, tells us that the banquet was no fiction. In the chair appears Dr. Maginn in the act of making a speech; and around him are a host of contributors, including Bryan Waller Procter (better known then as Barry Cornwall), Robert Southey, William Harrison Ainsworth, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, James Hogg, John Galt, Fraser the publisher, having on his right, Crofton Croker, Lockhart, Theodore Hook, Sir David Brewster, Thomas Carlyle, Sir Egerton Brydges, Rev. G. R. Gleig, Mahony, Edward Irving, and others, numbering twenty-seven in all—of whom, in 1859, eight only were living.
This celebrated cartoon of the Fraserians appears to place Thackeray's connection with the magazine before 1835; but we have not succeeded in tracing any contribution from his hand earlier than November 1837. Certainly, the afterwards well-used noms de plume of Michael Angelo Titmarsh, Fitzboodle, Charles Yellowplush, and Ikey Solomons, are wanting in the earlier volumes.
It is in the number for the month and year referred to that we first find him contributing a paper which is not reprinted in his 'Miscellanies,' and which is interesting as explaining the origin of that assumed character of a footman in which the author of the 'Yellowplush Papers' and 'Jeames's Diary' afterwards took delight. A little volume had been published in 1837, entitled, 'My Book; or, The Anatomy of Conduct, by John Henry Skelton.' The writer of this absurd book had been a woollendraper in the neighbourhood of Regent Street. He had become possessed of the fixed idea that he was destined to become the instructor of mankind in the true art of etiquette. He gave parties to the best company whom he could induce to eat his dinners and assemble at his conversaziones, where his amiable delusion was the frequent subject of the jokes of his friends. Skelton, however, felt them little. He spent what fortune he had, and brought himself to a position in which his fashionable acquaintances no longer troubled him with their attentions; but he did not cease to be, in his own estimation, a model of deportment. He husbanded his small resources, limiting himself to a modest dinner daily at a coffee-house in the neighbourhood of his old home, where his perfectly fitting dress-coat—for in this article he was still enabled to shine—his brown wig and dyed whiskers, his ample white cravat of the style of the Prince Regent's days, and his well-polished boots, were long destined to raise the character of the house on which he bestowed his patronage. In the days of his prosperity Skelton was understood among his acquaintances to be engaged on a work which should hand down to posterity the true code of etiquette—that body of unwritten law which regulated the society of the time of his favourite monarch. In the enforced retirement of his less prosperous days, the ex-woollendraper's literary design had time to develop itself, and in the year 1837 'My Book; or, The Anatomy of Conduct, by John Henry Skelton,' was finally given to the world.
Inspector of Anatomy
It was this little volume which fell in the way of Thackeray, who undertook to review it for 'Fraser's Magazine.' In order to do full justice to the work, nothing seemed more proper than to present the reviewer in the assumed character of a fashionable footman. The review, therefore, took the form of a letter from Charles Yellowplush, Esq., containing 'Fashionable fax and polite Anny-goats,' dated from 'No. ——, Grosvenor Square (N.B.—Hairy Bell),' and addressed to Oliver Yorke, the well-known pseudonym of the editor of 'Fraser.' To this accident may be attributed those extraordinary efforts of cacography which had their germ in the Cambridge 'Snob,' but which attained their full development in the Miscellanies, the Ballads, the 'Jeames's Diary,' and other short works, and also in some portions of the latest of the author's novels. The precepts and opinions of 'Skelton,' or 'Skeleton,' as the reviewer insisted on calling the author of the 'Anatomy,' were fully developed and illustrated by Mr. Yellowplush. The footman who reviewed the 'fashionable world' achieved a decided success. Charles Yellowplush was requested by the editor to extend his comments upon society and books, and in January 1838 the 'Yellowplush Papers' were commenced, with those vigorous though crude illustrations by the author, which appear at first to have been suggested by the light-spirited style of Maclise's portraits in the same magazine, a manner which afterwards became habitual to him.
