Masterpieces of the masters of fiction

by William Dudley Foulke

“Perhaps these are rarer personages than some of us think for. Which of us can point out many such in his circle, men whose aims are generous, whose truth is constant, and not only constant in its kind but elevated in its degree; whose want of meanness makes them simple; who can look the world honestly in the face with an equal manly sympathy for the great and small? We all know a hundred whose coats are very well made, and a score who have excellent manners, and one or two happy beings who are what they call in the inner circles, and have shot into the very centre and bull’s eye of the fashion; but of gentlemen how many? Let us take a little scrap of paper and each make out his list.”

The diction of Thackeray is exquisite beyond all comparison with that of any other author. There are some repetitions, and many marks of carelessness, but Thackeray does not suffer because he is careless, he seems rather to gain by it. Henry Esmond is full of digressions; for example, the historical accounts of the campaigns in Flanders have little to do with the main purpose of the story. But where else can we find history written with such a charm? You seem to be in the midst of the events it chronicles, beholding its great scenes and listening to contemporary gossip and criticism. Where else is any such description of a hero like that of Marlborough:

“Our chief, whom England and all Europe, saving only the Frenchmen, worshiped almost, had this of the godlike in him, that he was impassible before victory, before danger, before defeat. Before the greatest obstacle or the most trivial ceremony; before a hundred thousand men drawn in battalia, or a peasant slaughtered at the door of his burning hovel; before a carouse of drunken German lords, or a monarch’s court, a cottage-table, where his plans were laid, or an enemy’s battery, vomiting flame and death, and strewing corpses round about him—he was always cold, calm, resolute, like fate. He performed a treason or a court-bow, he told a falsehood as black as Styx, as easily as he paid a compliment or spoke about the weather. He took a mistress and left her, he betrayed his benefactor and supported him, or would have murdered him, with the same calmness always, and having no more remorse than Clotho when she weaves the thread, or Lachesis when she cuts it....

“His qualities were pretty well known in the army, where there were parties of all politics, and of plenty of shrewdness and wit; but there existed such a perfect confidence in him, as the first captain in the world, and such a faith and admiration in his prodigious genius and fortune, that the very men whom he notoriously cheated of their pay, the chiefs whom he used and injured (for he used all men, great and small, that came near him, as his instruments alike), and took something of theirs, either some quality or some property—the blood of a soldier it might be, or a jeweled hat, or a hundred thousand crowns from a king, or a portion out of a starving sentinel’s three farthings; or (when he was young) a kiss from a woman and the gold chain off her neck, taking all he could from woman or man, and having, as I said, this of the godlike in him, that he could see a hero perish or a sparrow fall with the same amount of sympathy for either. Not that he had no tears; he could always order up this reserve at the proper moment to battle; he could draw upon tears or smiles alike, and whenever need was for using this cheap coin. He would cringe to a shoe-black, as he would flatter a minister or a monarch; be haughty, be humble, threaten, repent, weep, grasp your hand, or stab you, whenever he saw occasion—but yet those of the army who knew him best, and had suffered most from him, admired him most of all; and as he rode along the lines of battle, or galloped up in the nick of time to a battalion reeling from before the enemy’s charge or shot, the fainting men and officers got new courage as they saw the splendid calm of his face and felt that his will made them irresistible.”

What a description of the destruction of the French army after Ramillies:

“At first it was a retreat orderly enough; but presently the retreat became a rout, and a frightful slaughter of the French ensued on this panic; so that an army of sixty thousand men was utterly crushed and destroyed in the course of a couple of hours. It was as if a hurricane had seized a compact numerous fleet, flung it all to the winds, shattered, sunk, and annihilated it: Afflavit Deus et dissipati sunt.”

The author is not so successful in the introduction of his literary characters, one of whom, Joseph Addison, not only has no relation to the story, but adds little to the merit of the work.

A peculiarity of Thackeray is the subtle manner in which the motives and passions of his various personages sometimes reveal themselves. For instance, Lady Castlewood’s intense love for Esmond in the early part of the book is altogether a matter of inference from her strange conduct, and might very easily be overlooked or misunderstood by persons who lack insight and keen perception. Indeed, in some places the indications of the motive as drawn from the words and actions of his heroines are so delicate and shadowy, that we can not always quite tell what the author would have us infer, or perhaps we even come to the conclusion that there is no accounting for a woman. And yet, even when we are thus at fault, how entirely natural it all seems!

Thackeray never wanders into unknown territory. He writes about the people he knows and describes the things with which he is in close contact. In the development of the story there is a blending of experience and imagination, which mutually aid each other in the creation of characters that are marvelously ideal and true to nature at the same time.

Dickens’s men and women are frequently types. You can predict with great confidence what each will do under given circumstances. Thackeray’s characters are more uncertain and elusive. But is not this the way of the world? Those of us who have been mistaken in the conduct of our friends or enemies (and who has not?) must acknowledge the essential truthfulness of many a portrait which at first blush appears inconsistent.