Part 4

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 Curzon 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 on the south side of the street, near the western end, and only a few doors farther east than the house in which Lord Beaconsfield 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 railings 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 in the world.” It was in this cozy little domicile that the arch little hypocrite entertained Lord Steyne, whose house in Gaunt Square is only a few hundred yards distant, and Rawdon fleeced young Southdown 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 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 burglarious intentions.

IX.

The places with which Thackeray was personally associated are more interesting, 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 contribute to _Fraser’s Magazine_. In 1837, then newly married, he lived in Great Coram street, close by the Foundling Hospital. As I have stated, he had chambers at No. 10, Crown Office Row, in the Temple, and at No. 88, St. James’s street, both of which buildings are now demolished. When he had become a successful author, 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 unsuccessfully 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 private 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 work, though he was sometimes 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 he gathered fresh inspiration from the gentle odours of the sublime 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 knitted by continuous streets and houses, it is like a thriving country town, old-fashioned, but prosperous, with shops as brilliant 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 here, and the palace in which Queen Victoria 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-fitting; 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 neighbors, and often sat down to dinner with them. He attended regularly the nine o’clock services in the old parish church on Sunday mornings.

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 Fair_, _Esmond_, and _Pendennis_ were written. There are few houses in the great city which possess a more brilliant 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 entablature under the window commemorating the genius that has consecrated it. Between the dates, 1847 and 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 Fair_, _Esmond_, and _Pendennis_, 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 __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 cottage. {99}

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. Merriman, whose family have lived in Kensington 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 _Vanity 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 portentous mile-stone of life.

The “dear old street,” as Miss Thackeray calls it, ends in Kensington Square, which is 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. {101}

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 mansion of red brick, adjoining a much more 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 unattractive as a burial ground could be. It is like a prison-yard, with few trees, and inclosed by high brick walls. But its numerous tenantry include many who have worked faithfully and well in literature and 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.

FOOTNOTES.

{5} Mr. R. R. Bowker.

{15} The school was founded by Thomas Sutton, a rich merchant, in 1611. The buildings which are mostly of the 16th Century, had been used until the Reformation, as a monastery of Carthusian monks. “Charterhouse” is a corruption of Chartreuse, and the scholars still call themselves Carthusians.

{19} 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.

{29} One day, while the great novel of _The Newcomes_ was in course of publication, 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 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_!” So they walked in, and took a table in a remote corner, and then Thackeray, drawing the fresh sheets of MS. from his breast pocket, read through that exquisitely touching chapter, which records the death of Colonel Newcome. When he came to the final _Adsum_, 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_.

{42} Mr. Edmund Yates states in his interesting _Memoirs of a Man of the World_, that the Cider Cellars, next to the stage door of the Adelphi, was the prototype of the Back Kitchen, immortalized in _Pendennis_. The Cave of Harmony, frequently mentioned by Thackeray, was sketched from Evans’s, in Covent Garden.

{72} “One day, many years ago, I saw him chaffing on the sidewalk in London, in front of the Athenæum Club, with a monstrous-sized, ‘copiously ebriose’ cabman, and I judged from the driver’s ludicrously careful way of landing the coin deep down 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 replied; and then, quoting Falstaff, ‘a goodly portly man, i’ faith, and a corpulent, of a cheerful look, a pleasing eye, and a most noble carriage.’ 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 kindness!”—_Yesterdays with Authors_. J. T. FIELDS.

{99} “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 written; 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 myself.’”—_Yesterdays with Authors_. J. T. FIELDS.

{101} Kensington Square has had many celebrated inhabitants, including Talleyrand, Joseph Addison, the Duchess of Mazarin, and Archbishop Herring.