"There is one thing in this country which astonishes me. You have a capacity for culture which contradicts all my experience. There are ----" (mentioning two or three names well known in New York) "who I know have arisen from nothing, yet they are fit for any society in the world. They would be just as self-possessed and entertaining in the presence of stars and garters as they are here to-night. Now, in England, a man who has made his way up, as they have, doesn't seem able to feel his social dignity. A little bit of the flunky sticks in him somewhere. I am, perhaps, as independent in this respect as any one I know, yet I'm not entirely sure of myself."
"Do you remember," I asked him, "what Goethe says of the boys in Venice? He explains their cleverness, grace, and self-possession as children by the possibility of any one of them becoming Doge."
"That may be the secret, after all," said Thackeray. "There is no country like yours for a young man who is obliged to work for his own place and fortune. If I had sons, I should send them here."
Afterwards, in London, I visited with him the studio of Baron Marochetti, the sculptor, who was then his next-door neighbor in Onslow Square, Brompton. The Baron, it appeared, had promised him an original wood-cut of Albert Dürer's, for whom Thackeray had a special admiration. Soon after our entrance, the sculptor took down a small engraving from the wall, saying,—
"Now you have it, at last."
The subject was St. George and the Dragon.
Thackeray inspected it with great delight for a few minutes: then, suddenly becoming grave, he turned to me and said,—
"I shall hang it near the head of my bed, where I can see it every morning. We all have our dragons to fight. Do you know yours? I know mine: I have not one, but two."
"What are they?" I asked.
"Indolence and Luxury!"