It was at this time, his friend Hannay tells us, that he first had the pleasure of seeing him. '"Vanity Fair,"' he adds, 'was then unfinished, but its success was made; and he spoke frankly and genially of his work and his career. "Vanity Fair" always, we think, ranked in his own mind as best in story of his greater books; and he once pointed out to us the very house in Russell Square where his imaginary Sedleys lived—a curious proof of the reality his creations had for his mind.' The same writer tells us that when he congratulated Thackeray, many years ago, on the touch in 'Vanity Fair' in which Becky admires her husband when he is giving Lord Steyne the chastisement which ruins her for life, the author answered with that fervour as well as heartiness of frankness which distinguished him: 'Well, when I wrote the sentence, I slapped my fist on the table, and said, "That is a touch of genius!"' 'Vanity Fair' soon rose rapidly in public favour, and a new work from the pen of its author was eagerly looked for.
Sensitive to a point
During the time of publication of 'Vanity Fair' he had found time to write and publish the little Christmas book entitled 'Our Street,' which appeared in December 1847, and reached a second edition soon after Christmas. 'Vanity Fair' was followed in 1849 by another long work of fiction, entitled the 'History of Pendennis; his Fortunes and Misfortunes, his Friends and his Greatest Enemy; with Illustrations by the Author;' which was completed in two volumes. In this year, too, he published 'Dr. Birch' and 'Rebecca and Rowena.' It was during the publication of 'Pendennis' that a criticism in the 'Morning Chronicle' and in the 'Examiner' newspapers drew from him a remarkable letter on the 'Dignity of Literature,' addressed to the editor of the former journal.
It was a peculiarity of Thackeray to feel annoyed at adverse criticism, and to show his annoyance in a way which more cautious men generally abstain from. He did not conceal his feeling when an unjust attack was levelled at him in an influential journal. He was not one of those remonstrators who never see anything in the papers, but have their attention called to them by friends. If he had seen, he frankly avowed that he had seen the attack, and did not scruple to reply if he had an opportunity, and the influence of the journal or reviewer made it worth while. With the 'Times' he had had very early a bout of this kind. When the little account of the funeral of Napoleon in 1840 was published, the 'Times,' as he said, rated him, and talked in 'its own great roaring way about the flippancy and conceit of Titmarsh,' to which he had replied by a sharp paragraph or two. In 1850 a very elaborate attack in the chief journal roused his satirical humour more completely. The article which contained the offence was on the subject of his Christmas book, entitled the 'Kickleburys on the Rhine,' published in December 1850, upon which a criticism appeared in that journal, beginning with the following passage:—
A Rhinelander
Over-weighted
'It has been customary, of late years, for the purveyors of amusing literature—the popular authors of the day—to put forth certain opuscles, denominated "Christmas Books," with the ostensible intention of swelling the tide of exhilaration, or other expansive emotions, incident upon the exodus of the old and the inauguration of the new year. We have said that their ostensible intention was such, because there is another motive for these productions, locked up (as the popular author deems) in his own breast, but which betrays itself, in the quality of the work, as his principal incentive. Oh! that any muse should be set upon a high stool to cast up accounts and balance a ledger! Yet so it is; and the popular author finds it convenient to fill up the declared deficit and place himself in a position the more effectually to encounter those liabilities which sternly assert themselves contemporaneously and in contrast with the careless and free-handed tendencies of the season by the emission of Christmas books—a kind of literary assignats, representing to the emitter expunged debts, to the receiver an investment of enigmatical value. For the most part bearing the stamp of their origin in the vacuity of the writer's exchequer rather than in the fulness of his genius, they suggest by their feeble flavour the rinsings of a void brain after the more important concoctions of the expired year. Indeed, we should as little think of taking these compositions as examples of the merits of their authors as we should think of measuring the valuable services of Mr. Walker the postman, or Mr. Bell the dust-collector, by the copy of verses they leave at our doors as a provocative of the expected annual gratuity—effusions with which they may fairly be classed for their intrinsic worth no less than their ultimate purport.'