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THACKERAY'S LONDON,
'1 DESCRIPTION OF HIS HAUNTS AND
THE SCENES OF HIS NOVELS,
WILLIAM H. RIDEING
LONDON
J. W. JARVIS & SON,
KING WILLIAM STREET, STRAND, W.C.
BOSTON, U.S.
CUPJ-LES, UPHAM AND CO.
1885.
ISAAC FOOT
LIBRARY
Copyright, 1885. WasJiington^ D. C.
Bv William Henry Rmrtixo.
LONDON :
AMI J. BRAWN, PRINTEKSj 13, (JATE STKEET, LINCOLN'S INN FIELDS
^"^ 2 V OBRAKY
T^HE PORTRAIT is engraved from
-*- the large etching by G. B. Smith
in " ENGLISH ETCHINGS," by kind
permission of the proprietor.
We also have to acknowledge, with
thanks, permission from MESSRS. SMITH,
Elder & Co., to introduce the various
excerpts from Thackeray's Works found
in the following pages.
T//£ PUBLISHERS.
THACKERAY'S LONDON.
THACKERAY does not give the
same opportunities for the identifica-
tion of his scenes as Dickens. The elabo-
ration with which the latter localizes his
characters, and the descriptive minutiae with
which he makes their haunts no less memor-
able than themselves, are not to be found
in the works of the author of Vanity Fair.
No faculty was stronger in Dickens, or of
more service to him, than his power of
word-painting. He reproduces the objects
B
Thackeray's London.
by which the persons he describes are sur-
rounded with a fidehty which would be
tedious, if it were not relieved by the humor
which humanizes bricks, and imparts a
grotesque sort of sensibility to articles of
furniture ; and it is not easy to think of any
of his leading characters without being
reminded of the neighborhoods in which
they played their parts.
Thackeray, on the contrary, is not topo-
graphical. The briefest mention of a street
suffices with him, and it is the character,
not the locality, which has permanence in
the reader's mind. Every feature of Becky
Sharp is remembered with a vividness
which disassociates her with fiction ; but
the situation of the little house in which
the unfortunate Rawdon finally discovers
her duplicity, in the famous scene with the
Marquis of Steyne, escapes the memory.
When the book is no longer fresh to him,
Thackeray s London.
the reader may recollect that after her mar-
riage she went to live in Mayfair, and
may picture to himself a small, fashionable
dwelling in that aristocratic neighbourhood ;
but he cannot remember that the author
places it in Curzon street, nor that the
Sedleys lived in Russell Square, Philip in
Old Parr street, and Colonel Newcome in
Fitzroy Square.
We have one example in Thackeray of
the grotesquely humorous descriptive power
•of which Dickens was a master. It hits at
the absurd nomenclature of modern London
suburbs, where every box of a house has
some high-sounding name of the sort which
ornaments the fiction of the " Chamber-
maid's Companion," and it describes the
neighbourhood into which the Sedleys
moved after their failure — " St. Adelaide
Villa, Anna Maria Road, West, where the
houses look like baby houses ; where the
B 2
Thackeray's London.
people looking out of the first floor windows
must infallibly, as you think, sit with their
feet in the parlors below ; where the
shrubs in the little gardens in front bloom
with a perennial display of little children's
pinafores, little red socks, caps, etc. (polyan-
dria polygenia) ; whence you hear the
sound of jingling spinets and women sing-
ing ; and whither, of an evening, you see
city clerks plodding wearily."
The fanciful supposition that persons in
the upper stories must have their legs on
the lower floor is richly characteristic of
the manner in which Dickens would have
indicated the smallness of the houses. It
is a touch of that kind of humour which
distinguishes all the \\ork of that author,
and which was one of his most serviceable
resources ; it gives facial expression to
inanimate objects, and, as we have said, it
individualizes the haunts of his characters
Thackeray s London.
no less than the characters themselves.
But it is so rare in Thackeray that the
exhibition of it in this fragment strikes
us, as the lurid style of the earlier writings
of Lord Lytton would do if we were to
find a passage from them interpolated
among the confiding garrulities of Vanity
Fair.
It was not that Thackeray lacked the
power of observation in the direction of
externals, — though he certainly did not
possess it in the same degree as Dickens
— nor that his characters were airy visions
to him, requiring no other habitation than
the chambers of his brain ; they were
indeed flesh and blood to him, and Miss
Thackeray has told a friend of the writer's,*
how, in her walks with her father, he would
point out the very houses in which they
lived. The difference was principally one
* Mr. R. R. Bowker.
Jhackeray's London.
of method. Thackeray's was the classic
stage — a dais with a drapery of green baize,
before the time of scenery. Dickens's was
the modern stage, with lime-Hghts, trap-
doors, and elaborate " sets."
11.
THOUGH his other scenes are misty,
no reader of Thackeray who engages
in a search for the places which he describes
is likely, however, to overlook the Charter-
house, the ancient foundation to which he
refers again and again, dwelling on it with
many fond reminiscences. It is the school
in which he himself was educated, and he
has associated three generations of his cha-
racters with it. Thomas Newcome received
instruction here, also his son Clive, with
Pendennis, Osborne, and Philip of the
second generation, after whom came Raw-
don Crawley's little son and young George
8 Thackeray's London.
Osborne ; and, finally, the dear old Colonel,
when broken down and weary, joined the
poor brethren who are pensioners of the
institution, and within its monastic walls
cried Adsiim as he heard a voice summon-
ing him to the everlasting peace. Occa-
sionally it is called Slaughter-house, once
or twice " Smiffle" (after the boys' way of
pronouncing Smithfield, where it is situ-
ated) ; but in Thackeray's later works he
generally speaks of it as Grayfriars or
Whitefriars.
" It had been," he says in Vanity
Fair, "a Cistercian convent in old days
when the Smith field, which is conti-
guous to it, was a tournament ground.
Obstinate heretics used to be brought
thither, convenient for burning hard by.
Henry the Eighth seized upon the monas-
tery and its possessions, and hanged and
tortured some of the monks who would not
Thackeray s London.
accommodate themselves to the pace of his
reform. Finally, a great merchant bought
the house and land adjoining, in which, with
the help of other wealthy endowments of
land and money, he established a famous
foundation hospital for old men and
children. An extra school grew round the
old, almost monastic foundation, which
subsists still with its middle-age costume
and usages ; and all Christians pray that it
may flourish.
" Of this famous house some of the great-
est noblemen, prelates and dignitaries in
England, are governors ; and as the boys
are very comfortably lodged, fed and edu-
cated, and subsequently inducted to good
•scholarships at the University, and livings
in the Church, many little gentlemen are
devoted to the ecclesiastical profession
from their tenderest years, and there is
considerable emulation to procure nomina-
10 Thackeray s London.
tions for the foundation. It was originally-
intended for the sons of poor and deserving
clerics and laics ; but many of the noble
governors of the institution, with an en-
larged and rather capricious benevolence,
selected all sorts of objects for their bounty.
To get an education for nothing, and a
livelihood and profession assured, was so
excellent a scheme, that some of the richest
people did not disdain it ; and not only the
great men's relations, but great men them-
selves, sent their sons to profit by the
chance. Right reverend prelates sent their
own kinsmen as the sons of their clergy,
while on the other hand some great noble-
men did not disdain to patronize the
children of their confidential servants, so
that a lad entering this establishment had
every variety of youthful society where^-
with to mingle."
As a rule, however, the boys belong
Thackerafs London. 1 1
to the upper classes, and an education
obtained at Charterhouse is 'scarcely less
of a social distinction than the much
coveted and costly preparation of Eton,
Harrow, or Winchester. The history of
the school is full of brilliant names, and
among its scholars have been Joseph
Addison, Richard Steele, Isaac Barrow,
General Havelock, Sir William Blackstone,
Lord Chief Justice Ellenborough, Lord
Liverpool, John Wesley and George Grote.
It is possible that one may know London
intimately, and yet be ignorant of the situ-
ation of the Charterhouse. Smithfield is
out of the way of the main lines of traffic :
it is a squalid neighbourhood, north of
Ludgate Hill, and it retains its ancient
characteristics more than almost all other
parts of the great city, — which has been so-
modernized that Cheapside looks like a
slice of Broadway, and once shabby Fleet
12 Thackeray s London.
Street is showing all sorts of ornamental
fronts. It has in it many solemn brick houses
of a blackish purple, with glowing roofs of
red tiles ; smaller buildings of an earlier
period, with high peaked gables and over-
lapping second stories ; sequestred alleys,
and courts bearing queer names, and many
curious little shops.
One of the most direct approaches to
it is through the Old Bailey from Ludgate
Hill. On this route we pass the austere
granite of Newgate Prison and also Pye
Corner, where as the sign-board of a
public house tells us, the great fire of
1666 ended, after burning from the 2nd to
the loth of September ; we also pass
Cock Lane, famous for its ghost, and the
quaintest of old London churches, St. Bar-
tholomew the Great, which is hemmed in
and partly extinguished by the surrounding
houses, that hide all but its smoked and
Thackeray s London. 13
patched tower, and a few square feet of
grass, which is justifiably discouraged in
its want of sunshine and space ; thence our
path is by the extensive buildings of St.
Bartholomew's Hospital, about which there
is a morbid activity in the flow of officials-
and visitors, most of the latter being slat-
ternly and anxious-looking women, with
babies and baskets on their arms, and from
the Hospital we cross the street, and so
through the new cattle market, which fills
the space once occupied by the pens, and
covers the spot whence the souls of many
martyrs have passed in flame from the
stake to heaven.
€%
"^.^j^-^^^
III.
THE buildings form an irregular cluster
spread over a prodigal area, and iso-
lated by a wall of brick and stone which many
London fogs and long days of yellow weather
have reduced to the dismalest of colors.
None of them are lofty ; some of them are
•of granite, and others of brick, upon which
age has cast a smoky mantle. They are
separated by wide courts and winding pas-
sages ; and when I was there in the Easter
vacation these open spaces were vacant, and
the brisk twittering of the sparrows was the
only sound that came from them. The quiet
seemed all the greater, inasmuch as all
Thackeray s London. 15
around the walls is a busy neighbourhood,
full of traffic and voices. The courts are
for the most part paved with small cobble-
stones, and are cleanly swept ; but some
of them are grassy — grassy in the dingy
and feeble way of London vegetation.
These buildings look as sad as they are
old ; to the juvenile imagination the high
walls and the severe architecture must be
sharply distressing, and many a boy has
felt his heart sink with misgiving as, for
the first time, he has been driven through
the old gate-way, to be placed as a scholar
on Thomas Sutton's* famous foundation.
* The school was founded by Thomas Sutton,
a rich merchant, in 161 1. The buildings which
are mostly of the i6th Century, had been used until
the Reformation, as a monastery of Carthusian
monks. " Charterhouse " is a corruption of Char-
treuse, and the scholars still call themselves Car-
thusians.
1 6 Thackeray s London.
At this old gate-way, one day, I saw a
very feeble old gentleman, strangely dressed
in a scarlet waistcoat and bright blue trow-
sers, a brass-buttoned coat, and a high silk
hat. He was very small and very weak,
moving slowly with the help of a stick, and
coughing painfully behind his pocket hand-
kerchief. To my question as to the ad-
mission of strangers, he said, quaveringly :
" If you are a patron, you may see the
buildings, but you had better ask the
janitor ; there he is. I," he added, with
some hesitation, " I am one of the poor
brethren."
The old head bowed dovv'n with years
and sorrow, the white hair, the troublesome
cough, the courteous amiability of manner,
reminded me of Colonel Newcome — Codd
Newcome, as the boys began to call him ;
and, indeed, this old gentleman had been
a captain in the Queen's service, as the
Thackeray s London. 17
janitor afterward told us, though he was
not as stately nor as handsome as the dear
old Colonel was. None of the celebrities of
Charterhouse possesses the same vivid inte-
rest, the same hold upon our sympathies, the
same command of the affections, as the
brave, high-minded, large-hearted old
soldier, who sacrificed all he had in the
world to keep his honour spotless, and to
shield others from misery.
As the janitor took us from hall to hall
in the dark, monastic buildings, Colonel
Newcome was constantly before us, and
his figure, even more than that of Thacke-
ray himself, filled our minds, and made us
feel kindly to the old pensioners who were
sunning themselves at the doors of their
rooms, or were gathered in a quiet
corner of one of the courts, chatting or
reading.
The pensioners, of whom there are eighty,
c
1 8 Thackeray's London.
remain in the old buildings, in which each
of them has a sitting-room and a bed-room,
with a servant to wait upon him. Their
table is a common one, in a grand old
dining-hall, and twice a day they don their
gowns to go to service in the little chapel,
to thank God for his manifold blessings
and mercies. But the boys have been re-
moved since 1870 to a magnificent new
school at Godalming, Surrey, thirty-four
miles away from London fogs and the
crowds of Smithfield, and they have taken
nearly all the relics of Thackeray with
them, including the little bed in which he
slept while a scholar. Their part of the
buildings is now occupied by the Merchant
Taylors' School, which has added a large
new schoolroom to the square. The ground
is immensely valuable, and from an eco-
nomic point of view it seems a waste to
devote it to the obsolete buildings which
Thackeray s London. 1 9
fill the greater part of it. Soon, no doubt,
another home will be found for the poor
brethren, and when commerce takes posses-
sion of Charterhouse Square, one of the most
interesting piles in London town will dis-
appear.*
The cleanliness and orderliness which
leave no scrap of waste or wisp of straw
or ridge of dust visible in the approach
have also swept up every part of the inte-
rior ; and though the smoke and dust have
taken a tenacious hold, the charwoman's
* Several relics of Thackeray are preserved in
the new school at Godalming, including some pen
and ink sketches made by him, and five volumes
containing all the existing MS. of The Newcomes.
The MS. is written partly in his own hand, partly
in the hand of Miss Anne Thackeray (now Mrs.
Ritchie), and partly in another hand. Several
stones on which some of the old scholars, including
Thackeray, carved their names, have also been
removed from the old school in London to the new
one.
C 2
20 Thackeray's London,
besom and scrubbing-brush have been
vigorously apphed. The buildings look
quite as old as they are. The oaken wains-
coting is the deepest brown ; the balusters
and groining are massive and carved ; the
tapestries are indistinct and phantasmal,
like faded pictures, and the walls are like
those of a fortress. It is easy in these
surroundings to conjure up visions of the
middle ages.
The site of the dormitories of the Char-
terhouse boys is now occupied by the new
school-room of the Merchant Taylors ;
but looking upon it is a dusky cloister,
once given to the prayerful meditations
of the friars, which in Thackeray's time
and later was used for games of ball ;
the gloom is everywhere. The ghosts of
the silent brothers seem fitter tenants than
the boys with shining faces and ringing
voices. There are narrow, suspicious-look-
Thackeray* s L 07idoft. 2 1
ing passages, and heavily-barred, irresistible
oaken doors. But these corridors and bar-
riers against the unwelcome lead into seve-
ral apartments of truly magnificent size and
faded splendour. The dining-hall of the
poor brethren has wainscoting from twelve
to twenty feet high, a massively groined
roof, a musicians' gallery with a carved
balustrade, and a large fire-place framed
in ornamental oak, over which the Sutton
arms are emblazoned ; while at the end of
the room is a portrait of the founder,
dressed in a flowing gown and the suffo-
catingly frilled collar of his time. Parallel
to this, and accessible by a low door, is
the dining-hall of the gown boys, a long,
narrow room, with a very low ceiling, high
wainscoting, a knotty floor, insufficient win-
dows, and another large fire-place inclosed
by an elaborate mantel-piece of oak. Here
almost side by side, these boys with life
22 Thackeray's London.
untried before them and the old men well-
nigh at their journey's end, ate the bread
provided for them by their common bene-
factor, and joined voices in thanksgiving ;
here still the old pensioners assemble, and
in trembling voices murmur grace over the
provision made for them. Upstairs there
is a banqueting-hall, which is not inferior
in sombre grandeur to that of the poor
brothers, and was once honoured by the
presence of Queen Elizabeth. It also is
wainscoted and groined, and hung with
tapestries, out of which the pictures have
nearly vanished. The fire-place is the
finest of all, and above it some hazy paint-
ings are lost in the shadow.
Thackeray was one of the foundation
scholars, and lived in the school, and wore
a gown. He was, from all accounts, an
average boy, undistinguished by industry
or precocious ability. He was very much
Thackeray's London. 23
like many of Dr. Birch's little friends : a
simple honest, and sometimes mischievous
lad. Though he was never elected orator
or poet, he wrote parodies, and was clever
with a pencil, which he used with no little
fancy and humour. The margins of books
and scraps of paper of all kinds were
covered with sketches, most of them cari-
catures ; and it is said to have been a
familiar thing to see the artist surrounded
by an admiring crowd of his school-fellows,
while he developed, with grotesque extra-
vagance and never-failing effect, the outlines
of some juvenile hero or some notability of
history. The head master of the school
was severe, and as Thackeray was very
sensitive, it is supposed that his school
days were not of the happiest. But he
bore the old foundation no ill-will ; who,
indeed, shall ever do it more honor than
he has done ?
24 Thackeray's London.
Only a few weeks before his death, Thac-
keray was present on Founder's Day. He
sat in his usual back seat in the old chapel.
He went thence to hear the oration in the
governor's room, and, as he walked up to
the orator with his contribution, was re-
ceived with hearty applause. At the
banquet afterward, he sat at the side of
his old friend and school-mate John
Leech ; and Thackeray it was who, on
that occasion proposed the toast of " The
Charterhouse."
Taking us through the grounds by the
way of Wash-house Court, a quadrangle
of very old and smoky buildings, which were
attached to the original monastery, the jani-
tor conducted us into the cool and quiet
cloister which leads into the chapel. Here
is the handsome memorial of the Carthu-
sians slain in the wars, and on the walls is
a commemorative tablet to Thackeray.
Thackeray's London. 25
Next to Thackeray's is a similar tablet to
the memory of Leech.
The little chapel is much as it was in
their time and long before. The founders'
tomb, with its grotesque carvings, monsters,
heraldries, still darkles and shines with the
most wonderful shadows and lights, as
Thackeray described it. There, in marble
^ffigy> l^^s Fundator Noster in his ruff and
gown, awaiting the. great examination
day. Just in front of this elaborate
monument, Thackeray himself used to
sit when a boy. The children are present
no more ; but yonder, twice a day, sit the
pensioners of the hospital, listening to the
prayers and the psalms, — four-score of the
old reverend black gowns. The custom of
the school was that, on the twelfth of De-
cember, the head gown boy should recite a
Latin oration ; and, though the scholars are
removed to Godalming, the ceremony is
26 Thackeray's London.
perpetuated. Many old Carthusians attend
this oration ; after which they go to chapel
and hear a sermon, which is followed by a
dinner, at which old condisciples meet, old
toasts are given, and speeches are made.
The reader has surely not forgotten how
Pendennis, himself a Grayfriars boy, came
to the festival one day quite unaware of his
friend's presence.
" The pensioners were in their benches,
the boys in their places, with young
fresh faces and shining white collars.
We oldsters, be we ever so old," Pen-
dennis has written, '' become boys again as
we look at that old familiar tomb, and think
how the seats are altered since we were
here, and how our doctor — not the present
doctor, the doctor of our time — used to sit
yonder, and his awful eye used to frighten
us shuddering boys on whom it lighted ;
and how the boy next us would kick our
Thackeray s L ondc n. 27
shins during service time, and how the
monitor would cane us afterwards, because
our shins were kicked. Yonder sit forty
cherry-cheeked boys, thinking about home
and holidays to-morrow. Yonder sit the
pensioners coughing feebly in the twilight.
Is Codd Ajax alive you wonder i^ — the Cis-
tercian lads called these old gentlemen
Codds, I know not wherefore — but is old
Codd Ajax alive I wonder t or Codd
soldier } or kind old Codd gentleman } or
has the grave closed over them }
" A plenty of candles light up this chapel,
and this scene of age and youth, and early
memories, and pompous death. How
solemn the well-remembered prayers are,
here uttered again in the place where in
childhood we used to listen to them. How
beautiful and decorous the rite, how noble
the ancient words of the supplications
which the priest utters, and to which gene-
28 Thackeray' s London.
rations of fresh children, and troops of
by-gone seniors have cried Amen ! under
those arches ! The service for Founder's
Day is a special one ; one of the Psalms
selected being the thirty-seventh, and we
hear : — 23. 'The steps of a good man are
ordered by the LORD ; and He delighteth
in His way. 24. Though he fall, he shall
not be utterly cast down : for the LORD
upholdeth him with his hand, 25. I have
been young, and now am old ; yet have I
not seen the righteous forsaken, nor his
seed begging bread.' As we came to
this verse, I chanced to look up from my
book toward the swarm of black-coated
pensioners, and amongst them — amongst
them — sat Thomas Newcome." The noble
old man had come to end his days here,
and we know of no chapter in English
literature more affecting than that in which
liis light is put out, and he softly murmurs
Adsum,
Thackeray s London. 29
Tears often refuse to flow when man-
hood has blunted the sympathies, and we
are unmoved when we read again the books
which summoned copious floods in youth,
but the pathos of Colonel Newcome's
death, never loses its efl*ect ; it is so deep
and genuine, that the description starts our
grief anew whenever we read it, and it
leaves us with an acute sense of profound
bereavement. We feel a tender interest
in the poor brothers, and a high respect
for them, because the Colonel was one of
them, and because Thackeray, in his im-
perishable prose, has made them represen-
tative of honorable but unfortunate old
aee.*
* One day, while the great novel of The New-
comes was in course of pubHcation, Lowell, who
was then in London, met Thackeray in the street*
The novelist was serious in manner, and his looks
and voice told of weariness and affliction. He saw
30 Thackeray s London.
Charterhouse is the centre of a neigh-
bourhood which Dickens chose for many
of his scenes, as the reader of this knows.
*'Only a wall," says Thackeray, in Mr,
and Mrs. Fra7ik Berry, "separates the
playground, or 'green,' as it was called
in his time, from Wilderness Row and
Goswell street. Many a time have I
seen Mr. Pickwick look out of his
window in that street, though we did not
the kindly inquiry in the poet's eyes, and said,
" Come into Evans's, and I'll tell you all about it.
I have killed the Colonel P^ So they walked in, and
took a table in a remote corner, and then Thacke-
ray, drawing the fresh sheets of MS. from his breast
pocket, read through that exquisitely touching
chapter, which records the death of Colonel New-
come. When he came to the final Adsiun, the
tears which had been swelling his lids for some
time, trickled down his face, and the last word was
almost an inarticulate sob."— F. H. UNDERWOOD,
in Harper's Magazine.
Thackeray's Lo7idon. 31
know him then." Not only of Mr. Pick-
wick, but of many other characters, do we
find reminiscences in Smithfield. The
Sarah Son's Head, as John Browdy called
it, Snow Hill, Saffron Hill, Fleet Lane,
and Kingsgate street are not far away.
The buildings with the ancient fronts, the
idlers at the corners, and the confusing
little alleys, which lead where no one would
expect them to lead, all belong to Dickens's
London. The miserable associations of his
early life, his interest in the poor, and his
relish for the grotesque, drew him into the
shady and disreputable quarters of the
city ; and the student of his works can
track him with greater ease and ampler
results in neighbourhoods like Smithfield
than in the West End. With Thackeray,
the reverse is the case ; and, excepting
Charter-house, the reader who desires to
32 Thackeray's London,
identify his localities finds little to reward
him in a search east of Pall Mall, or south
of Oxford street.
IV.
ON the site of the Imperial Club in
Cursitor street, Chancery Lane,stood a
notorious " sponging house," to which Raw-
don Crawley was taken when arrested for
debt, immediately after leaving the brilliant
entertainment given by the Marquis of
Steyne, and from Vv^hich he wrote an ill-
spelled letter to his wife (who had appeared
triumphantly in some charades, at that
entertainment), begging her to send some
money for his release. The reader re-
members how the faithless little woman
answered, — assuring him of her grief and
anxiety, and telling him that she had not
34 Thackeray s London.
the money, but would get it ; though, as
poor, blundering, soft-hearted Rawdon dis-
covered afterward, she had a very large
sum at the moment she wrote to him, and
did not send him any of it because she
wished to keep him in jail that she might
intrigue with the licentious old marquis ;
and the reader will remember that Rawdon
was released at the instance of his cousin's
wife, and went to the little house in Curzon
street, where he surprised his deceitful
spouse, and nearly murdered her com-
panion, the same old Marquis of Steyne,
knight of the garter, lord of the powder-
box, trustee of the British Museum, etc.
When we come to the end of that pas-
sage, we put the book on our lap and lean
back in the chair, and, while we are still
glowing with the excitement of the scene,
we are filled with admiration of the genius
which produced it. How did Thackeray
Thackeray' s L ondon. 3 5
achieve his effects ? Becky Sharp is a
unique and permanent figure in Hterature,
a subtle embodiment of duplicity, ambition,
and selfishness. She is avaricious, hypo-
critical, specious, and crafty. Though not
malignant nor to a certainty criminal, she
is a conscienceless little malefactor, whose
ill deeds are only limited by the ignoble
dimensions of her passions. She lies with
amazing glibness, is utterly faithless to her
hulking husband, and utterly indifferent to
her child. Her mendacity is superlative,
and double-dealing enters into all her
transactions. But she is so shrewd, so
vivacious, so artful, so immensely clever and
good-humoured, she has so much prettiness
of manner and person, that, while we des-
pise her, and have not the least pity for
her when retribution falls heavily upon her,
our indignation against her is not so great
as we feel that it ought to be, principally
D 2
36 Thackeray's London.
because her sins have a certain feminine
archness and irresponsibility in them, which
keeps them well down to the level of
comedy. When we close the book we
know her through and through, and
thoroughly understand all the complex
workings of her strategic mind. How do
we know her so well ? Thackeray is not
exegetical, and does not depend on elabo-
rate analysis for his effects. The actions
of the characters are themselves fully ex-
pository, and do not call for any outside
comments or enlargement on the part of
the author. This is the case to such an
extent that, when we examine the com-
pleteness with which the characters are
revealed to us, we are inclined to believe
that Thackeray's art is of the very highest
kind, and that, though in form it is
undramatic, intrinsically it is powerfully
dramatic.
Thackeray's London, 37
But we are straying from our purpose,
which is simply to look for ourselves at
the places which he has described. Across
the way from the bottom of Chancery
Lane is the Temple, to the interest of
which he has added many associations. He
was fond of its dark alleys, archways, courts,
and back stairs.
In 1834 he was called to the bar, and for
some time he occupied chambers in the
venerable buildings with the late Tom
Taylor. His rooms, which were at number
10 Crown Office Row, have disappeared
before " improvements " that present a
modern front to the gardens and the river,
Philip had chambers in the Temple, and
there, also, in classic Lamb's Court, Pen-
dennis and Warrington were located.
Warrington smoking his cutty pipe, and
writing his articles — the fine-hearted fellow,
the unfortunate gentleman, the unpedantic
38 Thackeray s London.
scholar, who took Pendennis by the hand
and introduced him to Grub street when
that young unfortunate came to the end of
his means. George Warrington teaches us
a new lesson in manhood, in patience, in
self-abnegation. His lot is full of sorrow,
his cherished ambitions are impossible,
through no fault of his own, but it is not
in him to surrender to " the dull gray life
and apathetic end," — his contentment is the
repose of a generous nature, his cheeriness
with his pipe and his work springs out of
a calmly philosophic mind, a satisfied con-
science, a profound faith, and when we
pass through Lamb's court, not least in our
affections is the shadow of him.
*'The man of letters cannot but love
the place which has been inhabited by
so many of his brethren, and peopled
by their creations as real to us at this
day, as the authors whose children they
Thackeray's London. 39
were," and says Thackeray, "Sir Roger
de Coverley walking in the Temple garden,
and discoursing with Mr. Spectator about the
beauties in hoops and patches who are
sauntering over the grass, is just as lively
a figure to me, as old Samuel Johnson rolling
through the fog with the Scotch gentle-
man at his heels, on their way to Mr. Gold-
smith's chambers in Brick court, or Harry
Fielding, with inked ruffles and a wet towel
round his head, dashing off articles at
midnight for the Covent Garden Joitrnaly
while the printer's boy is asleep in the
passage."
Leaving the Temple, we once more enter
Smithfield, to look for the site of the old
Fleet prison, the scene of many episodes
in the stories of Dickens. It was in this
strange place, that the brilliant, but thrift-
less Captain Shandon lived, "one of the
wisest, wittiest, and most incorrigible of
40 Thackeray's London.
Irishmen ; " here Pendennis found him sit-
ting on a bed, in a torn dressing gown,
with a desk on his knees : here a prisoner
for debt, he indited the prospectus of the
Pall Mall Gazette, which was so called,
he said, because its editor was born in
Dublin, and the sub-editor (excellent Jack
Finucane) at Cork ; because the proprietor
lived in Paternoster Row, and the paper
was published in Catherine Street, Strand.
This imaginary title of Thackeray's was
not the only one afterwards adopted
by a real newspaper. He writes of the
Whitehall Review as an opposing print,
and that is now the name of a successful
London journal.
The Fleet is a thing of the past, and the
attributes of Captain Shandon have no in-
heritors in the press of to-day. A knight
armed cap-a-pie in Cheapside, would not
be a more antiquated figure, than the
Thackeray's L ondon, 4 1
boozy scholar editing a reputable journal
in the cell of a prison. Journalism has
taken off its soft hat and shabby clothes ;
it has mended its erring and improvident
ways, and put on the manners of polite
society. Not in a tap-room, with jorums
of hot whiskey, Welsh rabbits, and devilled
chops does the modern scribe regale him-
self. He has a club somewhere in Adelphi,
or St. James', where he presents himself
in sedate evening dress, he turns pale at
the very mention of supper, and, instead
of singing old English songs, sadly com-
pares notes with his fellow-dyspeptics. A
vulgar public-house, or low music hall stands
on the site of the Haunt and the Back
Kitchen. When Warrington, Pendennis,
Tom Sarjeant, Clive Newcome, and Fred.
Bayham frequented the Haunt, and joined
in the diversions of the literary democracy,
there was a superstition among them, that
42 Thackeray's London.
the place vanished at the approach of day-
break, that when Betsy turned the gas off
at the door lamp, as the company went
away, the whole thing faded into mist —
the door, the house, the bar, Betsy, the
beer-boy, Mrs. Nokes, and all. Whether
this was so or not, it has now vanished, not
for a day, but for ever, like Captain Shan-
don, and the wild Bohemianism of his
time.*
* Mr. Edmund Yates states in his interesting-
Memoirs of a Matt of the Worlds that the Cider
Cellars, next to the stage door of the Adelphi, was
the prototype of the Back Kitchen, immortalized in
Petidennis. The Cave of Harmony, frequently
mentioned by Thackeray, was sketched from
Evans's, in Covent Garden.
IT is only a minutes' walk from the cor-
ner of Fleet Lane, to the street of book-
sellers, Paternoster Row, in which the rival
publishers, Bungay and Bacon lived — Bacon
in an ancient low-browed building, with a
few of his books displayed in the windows
under a bust of my Lord Verulam ; and
Bungay in the house opposite, which was
newly painted, and elaborately decorated
in the style of the seventeenth century,
"so that you might have fancied stately
Mr. Evelyn passing over the threshold, or
curious Mr. Pepys examining the books in
the windows." The Row, so called — as.
-44 Thackeray's London.
financiers arrogantly call Wall Street, the
Street — is not wider than an alley way, and
in this respect it is exactly as it was when
Warrington introduced Pendennis to the
editor of the Parlor Table Annual, wherein
his verses were published. But though its
breadth has not been increased, the old
buildings on both sides of it have given
place in many instances to towering new
ones, five and six stories high, which shut
out the light, and keep the editors, com-
pilers, printers, engravers, and book-binders,
who are the principal laborers of the Row,
in an all-day gloom. Both Bungay and
Bacon had their domestic estabUshments
over their shops, and their wives, who were
sisters, thus had an opportunity to insult
one another by looks and mute signs from
their opposite windows. Bungay and
Bacon, and their belligerent spouses are
now out of the trade, and the annual
Tliackerafs London, 45
Souvenirs and Keepsakes which made a
part of their business, belong to an extinct
form of Hterature. The Row is full of
Grub Street curiosities ; but Lady Fanny
Fantail, Miss Bunion, and the Honorable
Percy Popinjay are seen within its pre-
cincts no more, and if they still exist, they
probably find a new field for their distin-
guished services in the society papers.
Let anyone strike out which way he will
from Fleet Street, he is sure to find him-
self in the presence of something which re-
minds him of Dickens, near some object
which his humor has made famous, or
which answers to one of his luminous des-
criptions.
The slums between the Strand and
Soho, and between Smithfield and Clerken-
well, were fertile to him, and not a gamin
there knew the winding alleys, and criss-
cross streets better than the gentleman
46 Thackeray' s Lojtdon.
with the high complexion, the sparkhng
eye, the iron-gray beard, the well-cut dress,
and the brisk step, who might have been
seen speeding through them at all sorts of
unusual hours. One day, he was heard of
in Ratcliff Highway, or among the river-
side shanties of Poplar, and the next,
among the bird shops of Seven Dials, or
in the courts of Lambeth. When we con-
trast the little we have found of Thackeray
in the neighbourhood through which we
have just been, with the variety and sugges-
tiveness of the reminiscences of Dickens in
the same region, our search seems dis-
appointing.
As we have said Thackeray was not a
novelist of low life. *' Perhaps," he says in
the preface to Pendennis : " the lovers of
excitement may care to know that this
book began with a very precise plan, which
was entirely put aside. Ladies and Gen-
Thackeray's London. 47
tlemen, you Avere to have been treated, and
the writer's and publisher's pocket bene-
fited by the recital of the most active hor-
rors. What more exciting than a ruffian
(with many admirable virtues) in St. Giles,
visited constantly by a young lady from
Belgravia.? What more stirring than the
contrasts of society } The mixture of slang
and fashionable language } The escapes,
the battles, the murders } . , . , The
exciting plan was laid aside (with a very
honorable forbearance on part of the pub-
lishers) because on attempting it, I found
that I failed from want of experience of
my subject ; and never having been inti-
mate with any convict in my life, and the
manners of ruffians and gaol-birds being
quite unfamiliar to me, the idea of entering
into competition with M. Eugene Sue was
abandoned."
VI.
THOUGH in the east end of the town
and in the south, Thackeray has left few
footsteps for us to follow, in ancient and
comfortable Bloomsbury, and the region to
the west of it and north of Oxford street
(called De Ouincey's step-mother), we find
much to remind us of him. It was in Rus-
sell Square that the Sedleys lived in the
time of their prosperity, and thence, on the
evening after the arrival of gentle Amelia
from the boarding school at Chiswick, a
messenger was sent for George Osborne,
whose house was No. 96. Russell Square
is the lars^est and handsomest of the chain
Thackeray s Loftdon. 49
of squares which extend, almost without a
break, from Oxford street to the New Road
— Bloomsbury Square, Woburn Square,
Gordon Square, Tavistock Square, and
Euston Square. The neighbourhood has
seen many strange shifts of fortune, and
some of the finest of its mansions are de-
based to the uses of common boarding-
houses and private hotels. There are streets
and streets of houses with white cards in
the windows announcing "Lodgings to let."
Sombre old houses they are, built of brick,
with flat, uninteresting fronts, the sooty
darkness of which is sometimes relieved by
a yellowish portico, freshly painted, or a
plaster shell of a drab colour reaching from
the basement to the second story. The
cheeriness of the spreading trees in thq
little parks, the flowering shrubs, thq
shining fountains, and the grass, are only
a partial alleviation. Russell Square has
E
50 Thackeray's London.
deteriorated less than some of the other
places in the neighbourhood, however, and
the houses around it would not be beneath
the inclinations of a prosperous merchant
such as old Sedley was. We look in vain
for 96 ; the numbers do not go as high as
that ; but we have no difficulty in singling
out the respectable dwelling on the western
side in which poor Amelia sighed for her
selfish lover, and Becky Sharp set her cap
at the corpulent Mr. Jos.
How sad the story of the Sedleys is ! —
the unrequited love of Amelia— the untime-
ly death of George at Waterloo — the failure
of old Sedley, and the cold-heartedness of
the elder Osborne ! The decayed merchant
musing over all sorts of fatuous schemes
by which he hopes to recover his position,
and sitting in the dark corner of a coffee-
house with his letters spread out before
him — letters relating to a make-believe and
Uiackeray's L ondon. 5 1
visionary business — which he is anxious to
read to every friend, is the most touching
picture, after the death of Colonel New-
come, which Thackeray has drawn.
"What guest at Dives's table can pass
the familiar house without a sigh ? — the
house of which the lights used to shine
so cheerfully at seven o'clock — of which
the hall doors opened so readily — of which
the obsequious servants, as you passed
up the comfortable stairs, sounded your
name from landing to landing, until it
reached the apartment where jolly old
Dives welcomed his friends ! What a
number of them he had ! What a
noble way of entertaining them ! . . .
How changed is the house, though ! The
front is patched over with bills, setting forth
the particulars of the furniture in staring
capitals. They have hung a shred of car-
pet out of the upstairs window — a half
E 2
5 2 T/iackerafs L ondon.
dozen of porters are lounging on the dirty
steps — the hall swarms with dingy guests
of oriental countenance, who thrust printed
cards into your hands, and offer to bid. Old
women and amateurs have invaded the
upper apartments, pinching the bed cur-
tains, poking the feathers, shampooing the
mattresses, and clapping the wardrobe
drawers to and fro. . . O Dives, wha
who would have thought, as we sat round
the broad table sparkling with plate and
spotless linen, to have such a dish at the
head of it as that roaring auctioneer t "^
Among the bidders was a six-foot, shy-
looking military gentleman, who bought a
piano, and sent it without any message to
the little house — St. Adelaide Villa, Anna
Maria Road, West — to which the Sedleys
had retired after their downfall, and there,
as the reader no doubt remembers, Amelia
received it with great gladness, believing
Thackeray s L ondon. 5 3
that it came from her well-beloved George.
It was years before she discovered that it
was not her faithless lover, but simple,
brave, tender-hearted Captain Dobbin, to
whom she should have been grateful.
It was in Hart street, two blocks nearer
Oxford street than Russell Square, that
little George Osborne went to school at the
house of the Rev. Laurence Veal, domestic
chaplain to the Earl of Bareacres, who pre-
pared young noblemen and gentlemen for
the universities, the senate, and the learned
professions, whose system did not embrace
the degrading corporal severities still prac-
ticed at the ancient places of education,
and in whose family the pupils found the
elegancies of refined society, and the confi-
dence and affection of a home. Thither
came poor Amelia, walking all the way
from Brompton to catch a glimpse of her
darling boy, who had been taken away;
from her by his obdurate grandfather.
5 4 Thackeray s Londoii.
Great Russell street is next to Hart
street, and on it fronts the classic portico of
the British Museum, in the splendid read-
ing-room of which Thackeray was often
seen. It was in Great Coram street, ad-
joining the celebrated foundling hospital,
that he lived, when, one evening, he called
on a young man who had chambers in
Furnival's Inn, and offered to illustrate the
works which were beginning to make "Boz"
famous ; and we can see him coming back
to his lodgings in low spirits over the rejec-
tion of his proposal, for at that time
Thackeray was poor, and neither literature
nor art, which he loved the better, w^ould
support him.
About half a mile farther north, across
Tottenham Court Road, is Fitzroy Square ;
and when we look for 120, we find that 40
is the highest number which the Square
includes. Though the little circular garden
Thackeray's L ondon. 5 5
which it incloses is prettily laid out, and is
one of the leafiest of the oases between
Euston and Bloomsbury, Fitzroy has
degenerated more than some of the other
squares in the neighborhood. It was not very
fashionable when Colonel Newcome took
No. 120 with James Binnie, and it is not
fashionable at all now. One side is badly
out of repair. There are two or three
doctors' houses in it, several houses with
announcements of apartments to let, and a
private hotel. The particular house occu-
pied by the Colonel and his old Indian
friend cannot be easily identified by
Thackeray's description. *'The house is
vast, but, it must be owned, melancholy.
Not long since, it was a ladies' school in an
unprosperous condition. The scar left by
Madame Latour's brass plate may still be
seen on the tall black door, cheerfully
ornamented in the style of the end of the
§6 Thackeray's London,
last century, with a funereal urn in the
centre of the entry and garlands, and the
skulls of rams at each corner." We fancy
that it was on the south side of the square,
near the middle of a row of heavy sepul-
chral houses built of stone, which, first
blackened by the London smoke, have
since been unevenly calcined by the at-
mosphere, so that, as in many other
buildings, they look as if a quantity of dirty
whitewash had been allowed to trickle
down them. Some of the ornaments have
been removed, but the urn is still over the
door.
The days spent here were the happiest
in the lives of the good old Colonel and
his son. The Colonel had just returned
from India full of honors and riches, and
with his old chum, James Binnie, he kept
house with lavish hospitality, and much
originality. " The Colonel was great at
Thackeray s L o7tdo?i, 5 7
making hot-pot, curry, and pillau," Penden-
nis tells us. " What cozy pipes did we not
smoke in the dining-room, in the drawing-
room, or where we would ! What pleasant
evenings did we not have with Mr. Binnie's
books and Schiedam ! Then there were
solemn state dinners, at most of which the
writer of this biography had a corner." The
guests at these entertainments were not
selected for their social position or their
worldly prosperity, and it mattered not
whether they were rich or poor, well
dressed or shabby, if they were friends.
Old Indian Officers were among them,
and young artists with unkempt ways
from Newman street and Berners street;
the genial F. B. - waltzed with elderly
houris and paid them compliments ;
Professor Gandish talked about art with
many misplaced h's, and the Rev.
Charles Honeyman sighed and posed
5 8 Thackeray's L ondon,
and meekly received the adulation of the
women.
Despite the failure of the Bundlecomb
Bank, the later part of the history of
the Newcomes would have been less sad
but for that accident to Mr. Binnie, in
which he fell from his horse and was
so much injured that Mrs. Mackenzie —
the ''awful" campaigner — was called in
to nurse him with the aid of poor little
Rosey. Fitzroy Square is so old that its
gloomy houses must have known much
sorrow ; but we doubt if any of them has
seen anything more pitiable than the
humiliation of Colonel Newcome, or any-
thing crueller than the remorseless tyranny
of the " campaigner " and her fierce tem-
per — the "campaigner," who was all smiles,
coquetry, and amiability, until prosperity
fled from those who had been her benefac-
tors, when she suddenly revealed all the
Thackeray's London, 59
pettiness and harshness of her termagant
soul.
Three streets away from the Square is
Rowland street, to which Clive removed with
his weak little wife and his spiteful mother-
in-law when disaster fell upon him; and
every reader of Thackeray will remember
how Pendennis, Clive, and Boy went out to
meet the broken-hearted old man as he
came along Guilford street and Russell
Square, from the Charterhouse to eat his
last Christmas dinner.
When we close the history of Colonel
Newcome we ask ourselves if any man who
moves our hearts as Thackeray does, could
be a cynic t Cynicism is a withering of
the heart, the exhaustion of a shallow moral
nature, the self-consciousness of an ignoble
mind. But what pathos is so spontaneous,
so genuine, so lasting as Thackeray's — so-
free from the literary trickery which may
€o Thackeray's Londmi.
produce tears in youth, but only provokes
a smile when age has dulled the feelings
and opened the eyes to artifice. Among
all English authors the writer of this little
book, at least, does not recognize one who
is more unaffectedly tender than this great
social preacher, who speaks with unflinching
■candour of evil, but glorifies all good, and
reads with unfeigned pity the lessons of
life.
VII.
BEFORE Thackeray died, he had be-
come as famih'ar a figure in the West
End of London as Dr. Johnson was in Fleet
street and its tributary courts and lanes.
Any one who did not know him might have
supposed him to be an indolent man about
town ; and those who could identify him
generally knew where to find him, if they
wished to show the great author to a friend
from the country. He was usually present
in the Park at the fashionable hour ; and
if the Pall Mall of his day is ever painted,
his face and form will be as inseparable from
a truthful picture as the mammoth bulk of
€2 Thackeray* s Londo7i.
the testy lexicographer is from the contem-
poraneous prints of old Temple Bar.
Pall Mall is the street of gentlemen, as
Fleet Street was the street of the ragged
literary mendicants, whose wretched lot has
been drawn in vivid colours by Macauley.
The people one meets in it are daintily
booted, gloved and hatted ; a lady is not
often seen among them. It is, as Thackeray
himself said, '' the social exchange of Lon-
don :" the main artery of Clubland, where
civilized man has set up for himself all the
adjuncts of luxurious celibacy, and congre-
gates to discuss, undisturbed by the imper-
tinencies of feminine lack-logic, the news,
the politics and the scandal of the hour.
It is old and historic, haunted by the
shadows of many odd and famous persons,
who reshape themselves unbidden in the
memory of those who know its annals.
The reminiscences bring out a motley
Thackeray s London. 63
tenancy from the houses — Culloden,
Cumberland and Gainsborough side by-
side, pretty Eleanor Gwynn and Queen
Caroline, Sarah Marlborough and genial
Walter Scott, George Selwyn and Dick
Steele, Sheridan and William Pitt, Walpole
and Joseph Addison, and Fox and the
Prince Regent ! The greensward at the
south end of the Athenaeum Club was a
part of the site of Carlton House, the
residence of the royal scapegrace, and
we see Thackeray, as he has described
himself, a frilled and petticoated urchin
in his nurse's care, peeping through the
colonnade at the guards, as they pace before
the palace, and salute the royal chariots
coming in and out. Before he reached
manhood the palace had disappeared, and
many of the old buildings in Pall Mall had
been pulled down to make room for the
magnificent club houses, which now give
64 Thackeray's London,
the street its distinctive character. Not
one of the new faces that appeared with the
alterations was more familiar to the men of
his time than his, and among all the
princes, dandies, politicians, and scholars
who filed through the street and nodded to
one another from their club windows, there
was not one to whom the reading part of
this generation reverts with greater fondness
than to Thackeray.
Those who appreciate his books — a con-
stantly increasing number — find it difficult
to understand how the author can be so
misinterpreted as to be accused of any
narrowness of view or harshness of judg-
ment. To them every line is testimony of
a fatherly tenderness which grieves at the
necessity of its own rebuke, and though he
is incapable of an apathetic acquiescence
in human weakness, and does not view
mankind with the lazy good nature of a
T/iackerafs London. 65
neutral temper, the pervading spirit of his
criticism springs from a deep-welled chari-
tableness.
One of the few stories told of him which
would dispute his invariable kindliness is
of two friends who were walking in the
West End when they saw Thackeray
approaching them from the opposite direc-
tion. One of them had met him before, and
the other had not. The former made a
demonstrative salutation, which the author
barely acknowledged as he loftily passed
along. " You wouldn't believe that he sat
up with us drinking punch and singing
Dr. Martin Ltither until three o'clock this
morning," said the person.who felt aggrieved
at his chilling reception, to his friend. Now
supposing that the story is authentic — that
two friends did meet him under those cir-
cumstances, and that one of them had been
a sharer of his conviviality in the small
F
66 TJiackeray^s London.
hours, a further claim on his recognition
was not necessarily justified, and he did
not violate any rule of good breeding in
discouraging it. But there are some who
feel emboldened by the smallest politeness
of a great man to consider themselves
intimate with him, and who once having
seen him come down from his pedestal to
smoke a cutty pipe in a miscellaneous
company ever afterwards look upon him as
a comrade.
The loveableness of his character is well
remembered at the Athenseum Club, and
the old servants, especially, speak of his
kindness to them. The club house is at the
corner of Waterloo Place and Pall Mall —
a drab-coloured, sedate, classic building,
with a wide frieze under the cornice — in a
line with the Guards, the Oxford and Cam-
bridge, the Reform, the Traveller's, and
many other clubs. Opposite to it is the
Thackeray's London. 6y
United Service Club, midway is the memo-
rial column to the Duke of York, and only
a few yards away are Carlton Terrace and
the steps leading into St. James's Park.
Marlborough House, the home of the Prince
of Wales, and unpalatial St. James's Palace,
are close by.
Thackeray's name appears on the roll of
the Athenaeum as that of a barrister ; but he
was elected in 185 1 as "author of Vafiity
Fair^ Pejidennis, and other well-known
works of fiction."
He was elected under Rule H., which
IS worth quoting, as it is designed to
preserve the character of the Club. "It
being essential to the maintenance of the
Athenaeum, in conformity with the princi-
ples upon which it was originally founded,
that the annual introduction of a certain
number of persons of distinguished emi-
nence in Science, Literature or the Arts, or
F 2
68 Thackeray's London,
for Public Sendees, should be secured, a
limited number of persons of such qualifi-
cations shall be elected by the Committee.
The number so elected shall not exceed
Nine each year . . . The Club intrust
this privilege to the Committee, in the
entire confidence that they will only elect
persons who have attained to distinguished
eminence in Science, Literature, or the
Arts, or for Public Services."
He used the club both for work and
pleasure, and there are two corners of the
building to which his name has become
attached, on account of his association with
them. The dining-room is on the first
floor, at the left-hand side of the spacious
entrance ; and he usually sat at a table
in the nearest corner, where the sun
shines plenteously through the high win-
dows, and makes rainbows on the white
cloth in striking the glasses. Theodore
Thackeray' s London. 69
Hook had used the same table, and un-
corked his wit with his wine at it ; but it
was in a kindlier strain than the author of
Jack Brag was capable of that Thackeray
enlivened the friends who gathered around
him.
From the Club window he probably saw
many of his own characters going along
Pall Mall : little Barnes Newcome ; Fred
Bayham, with his big whiskers ; cumbrous
Rawdon Crawley ; the sinister Marquis of
Steyne ; stylish little Foker ; neat Major
Pendennis ; homely William Dobbin, and
the dashing Dr. Brand Firmin, as he drove
up or down the Haymarket to or from Old
Parr street. Most of them belonged to the
fashionable or semi-fashionable world, and
the men were sure to be members of some
of the clubs in this neighbourhood. No
doubt he also saw Arthur Pendennis, Clive
Newcome, and Philip Firmin ; but it is
70 Thackeray's London.
likely that they appeared with the greatest
distinctness when the blinds were drawn
and the reflection of his own face was visible
in the darkened windows.
He was a bon vivant : fond of a nice
little dinner, a connoisseur of wines, the
devotee of a good cigar, a willing receiver
of many little pleasures which an ascetic
judgment would pronounce wasteful and
slothful. He was inclined to be indolent
and luxurious. Had he not lost his fortune,
and been urged by necessity to write, it is to
be feared that his splendid gifts would never
have been exercised, and that his genius
would have borne no more fruit than an
unworked store of unformulated and un-
analysed mental impressions, known only
to himself. But his liking for choice little
dinners was not wholly accountable to his
relish of the food or to the satisfaction of
thus gratifying the senses. No reproach of
T/iackerafs Londoji. yi
excess or grossness of any kind attaches to
his character. Though perhaps he was
self-indulgent, he was not a voluptuary.
His pleasure was as innocent as that of
Colonel Newcome when he visited the
smoky depths of Bohemia with young
Clive, and the dinner was but the
means of sociability and hospitality, the
preparation for a more intellectual treat,
a key to the fetters which keep some hearts
and minds in this oddly-constituted and
misgiving world from the openness and
confidence of brotherhood.
It was not a cold or formal honour that
was conferred upon those who sat with
him. When they were taken into his con-
fidence, no friend could be more jovial or
unrestrained than he was. The simplicity
of the man was one of his greatest charms.
He could not endure affectations and man-
nerisms. He talked without effort, with-
72 Thackeray's London,
out hesitation, and without any of the
elaborateness which comes of egotistic
cogitation, and the desire to present oneself
in the most favourable light. He was one
of the most " natural " of men, if the word
is taken as meaning the absence of self-
disguise ; and at these little dinners and in
the smoke-room, figuratively speaking, he
usually had his slippers on, and his feet
stretched out on the hearth-rug *
* "One day, many years ago, I saw him chaffing
on the sidewalk in London, in front of the Athe-
naeum Club, with a monstrous-sized, ' copiously
ebriose' cabman, and I judged from the driver's
ludicrously careful way of landing the coin deep
do\vn in his breeches-pocket, that Thackeray had
given him a very unusual fare. * Who is your fat
friend ? ' I asked, crossing over to shake hands with
him. ' O ! that indomitable youth is an old crony
of mine,' he repHed ; and then, quoting Falstaff, ' a
goodly portly man, i' faith, and a corpulent, of a
cheerful look, a pleasing eye, and a most noble car-
Thackeray's London. 73
The modern smoking-room of the Club
is under the garden, upon which the dining
room of Carlton House once stood ; but in
Thackeray's time a very small apartment
near the top of the building, served for
those addicted to the dreamy weed, and he
was among them. He was not a great
smoker, though he usually had a cigar at
hand; he coquetted with it, puffed at it
awhile and watched the blue wreaths van-
ishing towards the ceiling, and then put it
down, or let it go out He did not apply him-
self to it with the constancy and caressing
intentness of complete enjoyment, but was
riage/ It was the manner of saying this, then and
there, in the London street, the cabman moving
slowly off on his sorry vehicle, with one eye (an eye
dewy with gin and water, and a tear of gratitude,
perhaps) on Thackeray, and the great man himself
so jovial and so full of Viii^tssV^— Yesterdays
with Authors. J. T. Fields.
74 Thackeray s London.
fitful, as if the pleasure he derived was
dubious.
Much of the pleasure of his life was
dubious. We have here seen but one side
of his character, the geniality which was
unextinguished by an inherent sadness of
temperament : the comfortableness of his
hours of relaxation. But he was not a
happy man, even w^ien he had achieved
success, and his powers had been fully
recognized. Self-confidence is an ingre-
dient of genius which was lacking in him.
He was always in doubt about his work, he
trusted his judgment when he discovered
defects in it, but never felt sure of its
merits. More distressing than all else was
his procrastination : the heart-breaking and
peace-destroying spectre of postponed work
was too often before him, and he was often
crippled by his hesitation and despair.
The south-west corner of the South
Thackeray's L o7idon. 7 5
library, on the second floor of the Club, is
filled with books of English history, and
some of his work was done there. There-
from, no doubt, some of the material of the
lectures on the Georges was drawn; he
could look out of the window on the very
site of Carlton House, now a square of
grass and flowers ; and probably on these
shelves he found some help in com-
pleting Esmond and developing The
Virginians. He often left the library
looking fatigued and troubled, and he was
sometimes heard complaining of the per-
plexity he found in disposing of this charac-
ter or that, and asserting that he knew that
what he was writing would fail.
He divided his time between the Athe-
naeum Club, the Reform, and the Garrick.
Contiguous to the first two is the neighbor-
hood of St. James's, which principally con-
sists of clubs, bachelors' chambers, and
'J 6 Thackeray's London.
fashionable shops, and is associated with
many of Thackeray's characters. At No. 88
St. James's street, in a building now de-
molished, he himself once occupied chambers,
and there began and finished Barry Lyndo7i.
Major Pendennis had chambers in Bury
street, a narrow lane coming from Piccadilly
parallel with St. James's street ; and it was
in them that the famous scene took place
between the shrewd old soldier and Mr.
Morgan, in which that rebellious flunky
was brought whining to his knees by the
strategic courage of his master. We have
searched the neighbourhood for the "Wheel
of Fortune " public-house, which Mr. Mor-
gan frequented to discuss with other
gentlemen's gentlemen, gentlemen's affairs.
It is not to be found ; and Bury street has
scarcely a house in it that looks old enough
to have been the Major's. But St. James's
Church is here — a gloomy old building of
Thackeray' s London, yj
smoky brick with lighter trimmings of
stone ; and the reader may remember how,
one day, Esmond and Dick Steele were
walking along Jermyn street after dinner
at the Guards', when they espied a fair,
tall man in a snuff-coloured suit, with a
plain sword, very sober, and almost shabby
in appearance, who was poring over a folio
volume at a book-shop close by the church ;
and how Dick, shining in scarlet and gold
lace, rushed up to the student and took
him in his arms and hugged him ; and how
the object of these demonstrations proved
to be Addison, who invited Steele and
Esmond to his chambers in the Haymarket,
where he read verses of the Campaign
to them, and regaled them with pipes and
Burgundy. I never walk through Jermyn
street, or past the old church, without seeing
these three figures, and they are no more
78 Thackeray's Lojtdoit.
like shadows than any in the nineteenth
century throng which fills the street.
Willis's Rooms, formerly Al mack's, are
in King street, which is parallel to Jermyn
street, and it was in them, that Thackeray
gave his lectures.
VIII.
THACKERAY constantly mixes up
real with fictitious names in his des-
criptions. Some disguise was often necessary,
and sometimes even compulsory. He could
not be as explicit or as literal as Dickens,
because most of his characters represented a
very different class. The latter could draw in-
detail the house he selected as most appro-
priate for the occupation of Sairey Gamp,,
because the actual tenants were not likely
to find him out, or, if they ever read his
description, to quarrel with it. But many
of the clients whom Thackeray had to pro-
vide with dwellings were great people, and
So Thackeray's London.
could only be placed in great neighbour-
hoods, where the houses are large, conspicu-
ous, and easily distinguished. He either
had to omit any descriptive detail, or to
mask the actual place he had in mind by
locating it in some street or square with a
fanciful name. Any student of his works will
have no difficulty, however, in finding Guant
House, Gaunt Square, and Great Gaunt
street, if he makes a personal search for
them in Mayfair, though they are not in-
dicated in any map or directory.
Mayfair (let me say for the benefit of
my readers who are so unfortunate as
not to know London) is one of the three
most fashionable neighbourhoods of the
great metropolis, and of the three it is
the most aristocratic and most ancient.
It is, as nearly as possible, a square, about
half a mile wide and three-quarters of a
mile long, bounded at one end by Oxford
Thackeray's L ondon. 8 \
street, with its shops and plebeian traffic, at
the other end by the most delightful of
London streets, Piccadilly ; at one side by
Bond street, and at the other by Park
Lane, the houses in which overlook the
beautiful expanse of Hyde Park. The
names of some of its streets have become
synonymous with patrician pomp and the
affluence of inheritance. It is the highest
heaven of social aspiration, the most exalt-
ed object of worldly veneration. This is
the house of the Duke of Hawksbury ; this
of the Earl of Tue-brook ; that of Viscount
Wallasey, and that of Lord Arthur Bebbing-
ton. It is preeminently the region of the
" quality." But let not the reader suppose
that it is a region of exterior splendor, of
spacious architecture, of brilliant appear-
ance.
Belgravia is far grander to look at, and
seems to possess greater riches, and to use
G
8 2 Thackeray s L ondoii.
them more lavishly. Even Tyburnia, the
neighborhood to the north of Hyde Park,
is more suggestive of social eminence.
Mayfair displays none of the signs of the
rude enjoyment and proud assertiveness
which spring from recent prosperity. It
is old-fashioned, un-changing, and dull. It
is little different from what it was at the
beginning of the century, except that it is
nearer decay, and that febrile irruptions ot
modern Queen Anne architecture occa-
sionally vary the sombreness of its original
style. The physiognomy of its houses ex-
presses a sort of torpor, as if familiarity
with honours were as wearisome as con-
tinuous association with misfortune. They
have an air of funereal resignation. Many
of the streets are short and narrow : many
of the houses are dingy. The ornaments
are of a sepulchral kind, such as urns over
the door-ways, and funeral wreaths about
Thackeray's London, 83
the porticoes. The blazoned heraldry of
the hatchments has been nearly extin-
guished by the smoke. At some doors
there are two incongruous obelisks, joined
to the iron railing which screens the base-
ment, and the portico is extended to the
curb. But ornaments even as unsatisfac-
tory as these are not common, and most
of the houses, with high fronts of blackened
brick and oblong windows, are unadorned,
except by a few boxes of flowers on the
sills. The lackeys, with crimson knee-
breeches, white stockings, laced coats,
buckled shoes, and powdered hair, blaze
in this gloom with a pyrotechnic splendour.
Occasionally, the uniform rows of smoky
brick and pointed stucco houses are over-
shadowed by a larger mansion, shut within
its own walls, and some of the streets enter
spacious squares, where there are sooty
trees and grass and chirping sparrows.
G 2
84 Thackeray's London.
It is possible that Thackeray had no
exact place in mind when he wrote of
Gaunt House and Gaunt Square, but it
IS not Hkely. The creatures of his imagi-
nation were flesh and blood to him, too
vital to be left without habitations. "All
the world knows," he says in Vanity
Fair, *' that Gaunt House stands in Gaunt
Square, out of which Great Gaunt street
leads Gaunt House occupies
nearly a side of the square. The remain-
ing three sides consist of mansions which
have passed away into dowagerism. . . .
It has a dreary look, nor is Lord Steyne's
palace less dreary. All to be seen of it
is a vast wall in front, with rustic columns
at the great gate." Berkeley Square
almost exactly corresponds with this
description. Here are the gloomy man-
sions, looking out on grass and trees
which seem to belong to a cemetery, and
Thackeray s L ondon . 8 5
here, immediately recognizable, is the
palace, filling nearly a side of the square,
and shut within high walls to hide what
they inclose from the prying eyes of the
passers, though the upper stories can be
seen from the opposite side of the way.
Here is the very gate, with heavy knockers,
though the rustic columns of Thackeray's
text have been replaced by new ones of
a different shape. We do not find in the
middle of the square the statue of Lord
Gaunt, "in a three-tailed wig, and other-
wise habited like a Roman emperor," but
we can identify almost every other detail
of the picture. Now, as this palace has
long been occupied by a noble family, it
would not be just for us to mention the
name of the house, lest some undeserved
reproach should thereby fall on the
tenants ; for, while Thackeray described
the locality with such faithful elaboration
86 Thackeray's London.
it is not to be inferred that he drew the
character of Lord Steyne from an actual
person living in the neighbourhood; nothing
indeed, could be less probable.
He also speaks of the square as Shiverley
Square, and briefly mentions it in describ-
ing Becky's drive to the house of Sir Pitt
Crawley : " Having passed through Shiver-
ley Square into Great Gaunt street, the
carriage at length stopped at a tall, gloomy
house, between two other tall, gloomy
houses, each with a hatchment over the
middle drawing-room window, as is the
custom in Great Gaunt street, in which
gloomy locality death seems to reign per-
petual."
Great Gaunt street is undoubtedly Hill
street, which he mentions specifically in an-
other place as the home of Lady Gaunt's
mother. Sometimes it was necessary for
him to invent a name, and when he did so
Thackeray's London. Sy
he was peculiarly apt. Gaunt Square seems
a more fitting and descriptive name than
Berkeley Square, but he frequently varied
the real with the fictitious name with play-
ful caprice.
It was in another of these queer old
streets in Mayfair that that wicked old
fairy godmother, the Countess of Kew, lived,
and there (in Queen street) Ethel Newcome
visited her, and was instructed in the ri-
gourous social code which unites fortune
with fortune, or fortune with rank, and
which is by no means limited to Mayfair
or Belgravia, but finds expositors and ad-
herents under the bluer skies of America.
Ethel herself lived with her mother in Park
Lane, the western boundary of Mayfair,
and assuredly the most attractive part of
the region. Park Lane has all of Hyde
Park before its windows, —all the variegated
and plentifully stocked flower-beds of the
88 Thackeray's Lojidon.
Ring Road, the wide sweep of grassy play-
ground, and the knots of patriarchal trees
which give the Park one of its greatest
charms. Unlike most of the region behind
it is cheerful ; or, if not exactly cheerful,
it has not the mopish signs of withdrawal
from all natural human interests which are
seen in many of the houses in Gaunt
Square and the tributary streets. Some of
the houses are small, with oriel windows,
and little balconies filled with flower-pots ;
some of them are palatial in size and de-
coration ; but all of them are fashionable,
and elderly bachelors are known to give
incredibly large prices for the smallest pos-
sible quarters under the roof of the meanest
of them. The exteriors are not of the
sooty brick which characterizes Hill street,
but of plaster, which is annually repainted
in drab or cream colour at the beginning
of each season. What with the flowers of
Thackeray* s London. 89
the Park and the gardens which lie before
some of the houses, Park Lane seems a
fitting abode for those who are fortunate
both in birth and in wealth ; it is as patri-
cian as any other part of Mayfair, and it
relieves itself of the gloom which seems to
be considered an inevitable accessory of
respectability elsewhere.
In one of these houses — which one it is-
not easy to say, as Thackeray has given
us no clue — Lady Ann Newcome lived, and
at it Mrs. Hobson Newcome looked from
afar with an envy which betrayed itself in
her constant reiterations of her contentment
with her own circumstances. Mrs. Hobson.
lived in Bryanston Square, a dingily ver-
dant quadrangle north of Oxford street,
near which Clive had a studio ; and J. J.
Ridley, Fred Bayham, Miss Cann, and the
Rev. Charles Honeyman, lodged together
in Walpole street, Mayfair. The Rev.
go Thackeray's London,
Charles Honeyman's chapel was close by,
and before the story of Vaiiity Fair,
reached its end there was a charitable lady
in the congregation who wrote hymns and
called herself Lady Crawley, and from
whom William Dobbin and Amelia Sedley,
-now united, shrunk as they passed her at
the fancy fair, recognizing in that altered
person the dreadful Becky.
In the eyes of the lover of Thackeray,
no character of history or fiction has lent
more interest to Mayfair than Becky, to
which neighbourhood she came with her
husband some two or three years after their
return from Paris, establishing herself in
** a very small, comfortable house in Cur-
zon street," and demonstrating to the world
the useful and interesting art of living on
nothing a year. There is more than one
small house in Curzon street, but among
them all Becky's is unmistakable. It is
TJiackeray 's Lo ndo n. 91
on the south side of the street, near the
western end, and only a few doors farther
east than the house in which Lord Beacons-
field died. It is four stories and a half
high, and is built of blackish brick like its
neighbours, with painted sills and portico.
Its extreme narrowness, compared with its
height, especially distinguishes it : the front
door, with drab pilasters and a moulded
architrave, is just half its width, and only
leaves room for one parlour window on
the first floor. One can see over the rail-
ings into the basement and through the
kitchen windows. Phantoms appear to us
in all the windows — the ghost of Becky
herself, dressed in a pink dress, her shapely
arms and shoulders wrapped in gauze ; her
ringlets hanging about her neck ; her feet
peeping out of the crisp folds of silk —
*'the prettiest little feet in the prettiest
little sandals in the finest silk stockings
92 Thackeray's Londo7i,
in the world." It was in this cozy little
domicile that the arch little hypocrite en-
tertained Lord Steyne, whose house in
Gaunt Square is only a few hundred yards
distant, and Rawdon fleeced young South-
down at cards. No one can help smiling
at the remembrances that come upon him
in looking at those basement windows.
No one who has read Vanity Fair is
likely to forget the picture of the sensual
marquis gazing into the kitchen and seeing
no one there just before he knocks at the
door, where he is met by Becky, who is as
fresh as a rose from her dressing-table, and
who excuses her pretended dishabille by
saying that she has just come out of the
kitchen, where she has been making pie,
to which palpable' lie the marquis gives an
audacious affirmation by adding that he saw
her there as he came in !
This little house was chosen for that
I
Tliackerafs London. 93
scene in which Thackeray's genius rises to
its highest point of dramatic intensity ; and
so many literary pilgrims come to peep at
it that the tenants must be annoyed, though
the policeman on the beat has become so
accustomed to them that he no longer eyes
them cornerwise or suspects them of bur-
glarious intentions.
IX.
THE places with which Thackeray was
personally associated are more inte-
resting, perhaps, than the scenes of his novels.
In 1834, he lived in Albion street, near Hyde
Park Gardens, and it was there that he, a
young man of twenty-three, began to con-
tribute to Eraser's Magazine. In 1837,
then newly married, he lived in Great
Coram street, close by the Foundling Hos-
pital. As I have stated, he had chambers
at No. 10, Crown Ofifice Row, in the Tem-
ple, and at No. ^S, St. James's street, both
of which buildings are now demolished.
When he had become a successful author,
Tliackerays London, 95
he lived in Brompton and Kensington, and
at the latter place, to which he was greatly-
attached, he died. He was at No. 36,
Onslow Square, Brompton, when he un-
successfully offered himself as member of
Parliament for Oxford, and two years
later, when he began to discover the thorns
in the editorial cushion of the Cornhill
Magazine. Mr. James Hodder, his pri-
vate secretary, has given us an interesting
glimpse of him as he was while in Onslow
Square : —
" Duty called me to his bed-chamber every
morning, and as a general rule I found him up
and ready to begin Avork, though he was some-
times in doubt and difficulty as to whether he
should commence sitting, or standing, or walking,
or lying down. Often he would light a cigar, and,
after pacing the room for a few minutes, would put
the unsmoked remnant on the mantel-piece and
resume his work with increased cheerfulness, as if
•96 Thackeray' s London.
he gathered fresh inspiration from the gentle odours
•of the subhme tobacco."
Little wonder that he liked Kensington.
It is the pleasantest of the many pleasant
London suburbs. Though it is not four
miles from Charing Cross, to which it is
Icnitted by continuous streets and houses,
it is like a thriving country town, old-
fashioned, but prosperous, with shops as
trilliant and as well stocked as those of
Regent street, and with many evidences
of antiquity, but none of decay. There are
lofty new buildings and old ones, behind
the modernized fronts of which you can see
leaded dormer windows, angular chimney-
pots, and bowed-down roofs of red tiles.
There are many weather-worn but splendid
mansions shut within their own high walls,
and some in less sequestered gardens. The
place is famous for its fine old trees and
open spaces of verdure. Holland House is
Thackeray s London. 97
here, and the palace in which Queen Vic-
toria was born, with the beautiful and
deeply wooded gardens adjoining Hyde
Park. The inhabitants of the old suburb
have had many illustrious persons among
them ; and Thackeray is one of those best
and most affectionately remembered.
His tall, commanding figure was often
seen in the old High street, moving along
erect, with a firm, stately tread, though his
dress was somewhat careless and loose-fit-
ting ; his large, candid face was serious and
almost severe as he walked on engaged in
meditation, but, being awakened from his
reverie by the voice of a friend, a glad
smile quickly overspread it and illuminated
it. He had many friends among his neigh-
bors, and often sat down to dinner with
them. He attended regularly the nine
o'clock services in the old parish church on
Sunday mornings.
H
9 8 Thackeray's L ondon.
From 1847 to 1853, Thackeray lived in
the bay-windowed house known as the
" Cottage," at No. 13 (now No. 16) Young
street, and in it Vanity FaiVy Esmondy
and Pendennis were written. There are
few houses in the great city which possess
a more briUiant record than this. Most of
his work was done in a second-story room,
overlooking an open space of gardens and
orchards ; and the gentleman who at present
occupies the house has placed an entabla-
ture under the window commemorating the
genius that has consecrated it. Between
the dates, 1847 ^^d 1853, the initials
W. M. T. are grouped in a monogram in
the centre of the entablature, and in the
border the names of Vanity FaiVy Es-
mondy and Pe?ide?iniSy are inscribed.
Just across the street Miss Thackeray
(Mrs* Ritchie) now lives, in full view of
her old home, and in her charming novel Old
T hacker ay s London. 99
Kensington^ she affectionately calls Young
street " dear old street ! " There is no doubt
that the happiest years of Thackeray's life
were spent in the old, bow-windowed cot-
tage*
I have talked with many persons who
knew him intimately, and under various
circumstances. All speak of him in one
way, — of his gentleness, his kindliness, his
sincerity, and his generosity. *' That man
had the heart of a woman ! " fervidly said
one who was his next-door neighbour for
several years. This gentleman. Dr. J. J.
* " I once made a pilgrimage with Thackeray (at
my request, of course, the visits were planned) to
the various houses where his books had been writ-
ten ; and I remember, when we came to Young
street, Kensington, he said, with mock gravity,
* Down on your knees, you rogue, for here Vanity
Fair was penned ! And I will go down with you,
for I have a high opinion of that little production
mystM.^ "—Yesterdays with Authors. J. T. Fields.
H 2
1 00 Thackeray's L ondon.
Merriman, whose family have lived in Ken-
sington Square since 1794, possesses a
number of valuable souvenirs of the great
author, including some unpublished letters,
in one of which Thackeray regrets that he
has not seen the doctor for some time, and
characteristically adds: "I wish Va7iity Fair
were not so big or we performers in it so
busy ; then we might see each other and
shake hands once in a year or so." On one
occasion the doctor begged him to write
his name in a copy of Vanity Fair which
Thackeray had given him, and the latter
not only did this, but made an exquisite
little drawing on the title-page, than which
the book could not have a more suggestive
or appropriate frontispiece. A little boy
and girl are seated on the ground, one
blowing bubbles and the other hugging a
doll, while behind them looms up the por-
tentous mile-stone of life.
Thackeray's L ondon, i o i
The "dear old street," as Miss Thackeray
calls it, ends in Kensington Square, which
X& full of old houses, to each of which some
historic interest belongs. The square was
built in the latter part of the seventeenth
century, and in one of the old houses Lady
Castlewood, Beatrice, and Colonel Esmond
lived, and there sheltered the reckless and
unscrupulous Pretender.*
In 1853, Thackeray left Kensington and
went to live in Onslow Square, Brompton ;
but he came back to the old court suburb
in 1861, and occupied the fine new house
which he had built for himself in the Palace
Gardens. It is the second house on the
west side of the street, a substantial man-
sion of red brick, adjoining a much more
* Kensington Square has had many celebrated
inhabitants, including Talleyrand, Joseph Addison,
the Duchess of Mazarin, and Archbishop Herring.
102 Thackeray's Lottdoji,
picturesque and older house covered with
ivy ; and it was here that he died suddenly
on December 24, 1863, in the room at the
south-east corner of the second story.
The last time that I saw it, an auctioneer's
flag was hung out, and the broker's men
were playing billiards in the lofty northern
extension which Thackeray built for a
library, and in which he wrote Denis
Duval.
Thackeray was buried in Kensal Green
cemetery in the north-west of London, and
was followed to the grave by Dickens,
Browning, Millais, Trollope, and many who
knew the goodness of the soul that had
been called away. Kensal Green is as un-
attractive as a burial ground could be. It
is like a prison-yard, with few trees, and
inclosed by high brick walls. But its nu-
merous tenantry include many who have
worked faithfully and well in literature and
Thackeray's London. 103
art ; and surrounded by the memorials of
these is one of the simplest tombstones in
the place, inscribed with two dates and the
name of William Makepeace Thackeray.
H\
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