The publication of the 'Adventures of Henry Esmond,' which appeared just as its author was starting for America in 1852, marked an important epoch in his career. It was a continuous story, and one worked out with closer attention to the thread of the narrative than he had hitherto produced—a fact due, no doubt, partly to its appearance in three volumes complete, instead of in detached monthly portions. But its most striking feature was its elaborate imitation of the style and even the manner of thought of the time of Queen Anne's reign, in which its scenes were laid. The preparation of his Lectures on the Humourists had no doubt suggested to him the idea of writing a story of this kind, as it afterwards suggested to him the design of writing a history of that period which he had long entertained, but in which he had, we believe, made no progress when he died. But his fondness for the Queen Anne writers was of older date. Affectionate allusions to Sir Richard Steele—like himself a Charterhouse boy—and to Addison, and Pope, and Swift, may be found in his earliest magazine articles. That the style with which the author of 'Vanity Fair' and 'Pendennis' had so often delighted his readers was to some degree formed upon those models so little studied in his boyhood, cannot be doubted by anyone who is familiar with the literature of the 'Augustan age of English authorship.' The writers of that period were fond of French models, as the writers of Elizabeth's time looked to Italy for their literary inspiration; but there was no time when English prose was generally written with more purity and ease; for the translation of the Scriptures, which is generally referred to as an evidence of the perfection of our English speech in Elizabeth's time, owed its strength and simplicity chiefly to the rejection by the pious translators of the scholarly style most in vogue, in favour of the homely English then current among the people. If we except the pamphlet writers of earlier reigns, the Queen Anne writers were the first who systematically wrote for the people in plain Saxon English, not easy to imitate in these days. 'Esmond' was from the first most liked among literary men who can appreciate a style having no resemblance to the fashion of the day; but there was a vein of tenderness and true pathos in the story which, in spite of some objectionable features in the plot, and of a somewhat wearisome genealogical introduction, has by degrees gained for it a high rank among the author's works. 'Esmond' was followed by the 'Newcomes,' in 1855, a work which revealed a deeper pathos than any of his previous novels, and showed that the author could, when he pleased, give us pictures of moral beauty and exquisite tenderness. In this work he returned to the yellow numbers in the old monthly form.
An incident in connection with the publication of the 'Newcomes' may here be mentioned. Thackeray's fondness for irony had frequently brought him into disgrace with people not so ready as himself in understanding that dangerous figure. A passage in one of his chapters of this story alluding to 'Mr. Washington,' in a parody of the style of the 'British Patriot' of the time of the War of Independence, was so far misunderstood in America that the fact was alluded to by the New York correspondent of the 'Times.' Upon which the author felt it worth his while to explain the real sense of the offending paragraph in a letter to that journal, and, in the concluding paragraph, he very explicitly sets forth his own sincere convictions in regard to the hero of American Independence, and his belief in the justice of the cause for which he conquered.[11]
An embarrassing situation
1780
Another journey to the United States, equally successful, and equally profitable in a pecuniary sense, was the chief event in his life in 1856. The lectures delivered were those admirable anecdotal and reflective discourses on the 'Four Georges,' made familiar to readers by their publication in the 'Cornhill Magazine,' and since then in a separate form. The subject was not favourable to the display of the author's more genial qualities. But where in English literature could we find anything more solemn and affecting than his picture of the old king, the third of that name? When 'all light, all reason, all sound of human voices, all the pleasures of this world of God were taken from him'—concluding with the affecting appeal to his American audience—'O brothers! speaking the same dear mother tongue—O comrades! enemies no more, let us take a mournful hand together as we stand by this royal corpse, and call a truce to battle! Low he lies to whom the proudest used to kneel once, and who was cast lower than the poorest—dead whom millions prayed for in vain. Hush, Strife and Quarrels, over the solemn grave! Sound, Trumpets, a mournful march. Fall, Dark Curtain, upon his pageant, his pride, his grief, his awful tragedy!'
These lectures were successfully repeated in England. Thackeray, indeed, was now recognised as one of the most attractive lecturers of the day. His presence, whether in lecturing on the 'Georges' for his own profit, or on 'Week-day Preachers,' or some other topic for the benefit of the families of deceased brother writers, such as he delivered to assist in raising monuments to the memories of Angus B. Reach and Douglas Jerrold, always attracted the most cultivated classes of the various cities in which he appeared; but an attempt to draw together a large audience of the less-educated classes by giving a course of lectures at the great Music Hall was less happy. In Edinburgh his reception was always in the highest degree successful. He was more extensively known and admired among the intellectual portion of the people of Scotland than any living writer, not excepting Thomas Carlyle. There was something in his peculiar genius that commended him to the Northern temperament. Thackeray delivered his essays on the 'Four Georges' in Scotland to larger and more intellectual audiences than have probably flocked to any other lecturer, and he, later on, lectured there for the benefit of Angus B. Reach's widow. Nearly all the men of Edinburgh, with any tincture of literature, had met him personally, and a few knew him well. He was almost the only great author that the majority of the lovers of literature in it had seen and heard, and his form and figure and voice, with its tragic tones and pauses, well entitled him to take his place in any ideal rank of giants. He was much gratified (says James Hannay) by the success of the 'Four Georges' (a series which superseded an earlier scheme for as many discourses on 'Men of the World') in Scotland. 'I have had three per cent. of the whole population here,' he wrote from Edinburgh in November 1856. 'If I could but get three per cent. out of London!'
Most of Thackeray's readers will remember that in 1857 he was invited by some friends to offer himself as a candidate for the representation in Parliament of the city of Oxford.