RECOLLECTIONS OF THACKERAY.

Globe, Volume XXI, Issue 1744, 22 September 1879, Page 3

RECOLLECTIONS OF THACKERAY.

Thackeray's generosity to others in a struggling position is well known. The following are fair examples:—One morning Thackeray knocked at the door of Horace Mayhew's chambers in Begent street, crying from without, " It's no use, Horry Mayhew ; open the door." On entering, he said cheerfully, " Well, young gentleman, you'll admit an old fogey." When leaving, with his hat in bis hand, he remarked, " By-the-bye, how stupid I I was going away without doing part of the business of my visit. You spoke the other day of poor George. Bomebody —most unaccountable —has retnrned me a five-pound note I lent him a long time ago. I didn't expect it. So just hand it to George ; and tell him, when his pocket will bear it, to pass it on to some poor fellow of his acquaintances By-bye." He was gone t This waß one of Thackeray's delicate methods of doing a favor ; the recipient was asked to pass it on. One of his last acts on leaving America after a lecturing tour was to return 25 per cent of the proceeds of one of his lectures to a young speculator who had been a loser by the bargain. While known to hand a gold piece to a waiter with the remark, " My friend, will you do ma the favor to accepe a sovereign ?" he has also been known to say to visitors who had a proffered card, "Don't leave this bit of paper ; it has cost yon two cents, and will do jnst as good for your next call." Evidently aware that money when properly ÜBed is a wonderful health restorer, he was found by a friend who had entered his bedroom in Paris, gravely placing Rome Napoleons in a pillbox, on the lid of which was written, " One to be taken occasionally." When asked to explain, it came out that these strange pills were for an old person who said she was very ill, and in distress ; and so he had concluded that this was the medicine wanted. " Dr. Thackeray," he remarked, " intends to leave it with her himself. Let us walk out together." To a young literaTy man, afterwards his amanuensis, he wiote thus, on hearing that a loss had befallen him, "I am sincerely sorry to hear of your position, and send the little contribution which came so opportunely from another friend whom I was enable once to help. When you are well-to-do again, I know you will pay it back ; and I dare say somebody else will want the money, which is meanwhilo most heartily at your service." When enjoying an American repast at Boston in 1852, his friends there, determined to surprise him with the size of their oysters, had placed six of the largest bivalves they could find on his plate. After swallowing number one with some little difficulty, a friend asked him how he felt, " Profoundly grateful," he gasped," and as if I had swallowed a little baby." Previous to a farewell dinner given by his American intimates and admirers, he remarked that it was very kind of his friends to give him a dinner, bat that such things always set him trembling. " Besides," he remarked to his secretary, " I have to make a speech, and what am I to say? Here, take a pen in your hand and sit down, and I'll see if I can hammer out something. It's hammering now. I'm afraid it will be stammering by and by." His short speeches, when delivered, were as characteristic and unmistakeable as anything he ever wrote. All the distinct features of his written style were present. Thackeray sometimes made a good point in his replies. He was pestered on one occasion by a young American, who questioned him as to what he thought of this person and that in England. "Mr Thackeray," he asked, " what do they think of Tapper 1 " "They don't think of Tapper," he quietly replied. At the weekly " Punch " dinners, Jerrold and he used to sit together, when the former seemed inclined to wrangle when everything was not to his mind. " There's no use quarreling," said Thackeray. " for we must meet again next week." In dictating to his amanuensis during the composition of the lectures on the " Four Georges," he would light a cigar, pace the room for a few minutes, and then resume his work with increased cheerfulness, changing his position very frequently, so that he was sometimes sitting, standing, walking, or lying about. His enunciation was always clear and distinct, and his words and thoughts were so well weighed that the progress of writing was but seldom checked. He dictated with calm deliberation, and showed no risible feeling even when he had made a humourous point. His whole literary career was one of unremitting industry ; he wrote slowly, and like " George Eliot," gave forth his thoughts in such perfect form, that he rarely required to retouch his work. His hand-writing was neat and plain, often very minute ; which led to the remark, that if all trades failed he would earn sixpences by writing the Lord's Prayer and the Creed in the size of one. Unlike many men of less talent, he looked upon caligraphy as one of the fine arts; When at the height of his fame he waß satisfied when he wrote six pages a day, generally working during the day, seldom at night. An idea which would only be Blightly developed in some of his shorter stories, he trea sured up and expanded in some of his larger works. When he received an adverse criticism, he remarked in a letter to a friend regarding it, "What can the man mean by saying I am uncharitable, unkindly, that I sneer at virtue, and so forth 1 My own conscience being pretty clear, I can receive the ! Bulletin's ' displeasure with calmness—remembering how I used to lay about me in my own youthful days, and how I generally took a good tall mark to hit at." That he felt the gravity of hiß calling is evident from a reply written in 1848 to friends in Edinburgh, who, presaging his future eminence, has presented him with an inkstand in the rhape of a silver statuette of " Punch." "Who is this that sets up to preach to mankind," he wrote, "and to laugh at many things which men reverence ? I hope I may be able to tell the truth always, and to see it aright, according to the eyes which God Almighty gives me. And if in the exercise of my calling I get friends, and find encouragement and sympathy, I need not tell you how much I feel, and am thankful for this support."—" Chambers's Journal."