As we
came up the hill there was difficulty, and here and there a hard pull, to be
sure but strength, and spirits, and all sorts of cheery incidents and
companionship on the road.[1]
-
Thackeray[2]
[1] This
passage is from Thackeray’s Roundabout
Papers - 9: On a Joke I Once Heard from the Late Thomas Hood.
[2] William Makepeace
Thackeray was born at Calcutta, India in 1811, the son and grandson of officers
of the East India Company. His father died when he was six; the next William
was sent to school in England. After some years at private schools, he entered
the Charterhouse in 1822, and remained till 1828. Neither there nor at
Cambridge, where he was a member of Trinity College for a year and a half, did
he distinguish himself as a scholar. He
finally left the university because he felt he was wasting his time, and
determined to finish his education by travel. During a stay of several months
at Weimar he became friendly with Goethe. On his return to
England he took up the study of law; he was later called to the bar but never
practiced.
William’s father had left him a considerable fortune, most of
which had disappeared by the time he was twenty-three, part lost in an
unsuccessful newspaper, part in unfortunate investments, and part through
gambling. Finding that he had to earn his bread, he resolved to study art, and
in 1834 went to Paris for this purpose. Two years later he was appointed Paris
correspondent of a short-lived paper, The
Constitutionalist, and on the strength of this he married Isabella Shawe,
the daughter of an Irish officer. After four years of happy married life, Mrs.
Thackeray’s mind gave way, and though she lived till 1894 she never recovered.
For a number of years William had to struggle to keep his head
above water, writing for newspaper and periodicals and doing a good deal of
illustrating. Though he never acquired great technical skill as a draftsman, he
had a gift of turning out amusing sketches, and for ten years he was on the
staff of Punch as both artist and
author. It was in that publication, with The
Snobs of England, that he first achieved popularity, his earlier novels having
failed to hit the popular taste. In 1847 his serialized Vanity Fair found great success; by its conclusion he belonged to
the first rank of English novelists.
Further novels strengthened his reputation. In 1851 he took up
lecturing, first in London, and in 1852, in an American tour. He was received
with great hospitality, made many friends, and went home the next spring the
richer by some $10,000. A second tour in America followed in 1855, and was also
successful.
Thackeray was now one of the notable figures of English society and
was financially at ease. In 1857 he stood for Parliament for the city of
Oxford, narrowly losing. Apparently little downcast, he returned to his
literary work and issued The Virginians,
1857–59. With this book the quality of his work began to fall off, and none of
his subsequent novels achieved great success. In 1860 he undertook the
editorship of the newly founded Cornhill
Magazine; to it he contributed his delightful essays, The Roundabout Papers. But his health, which for years had been far
from good, unfitted him for the labor of editorship, and he resigned in 1862. On
the morning before Christmas, 1863, he was found dead. (Source: William Allan Neilson in his
prefatory notes for a 1917 edition of Vanity
Fair)
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