Thackeray: The Life of a Literary Man

Even after reading this very competent and entertaining biography Thackeray remains an enigma. He wrote one novel, Vanity Fair, which ranks with the greatest in English and another, Esmond, can be argued as the finest and most convincing historical novel in the language. Pendennis and The Newcomes are still enjoyable today and Barry Lyndon has a cynical realism that makes it a more chilling work than the elegiac cinematic masterpiece that Stanley Kubrick made from it. Yet much of the remainder of his work is tedious to the modern reader (this reviewer must be one of the few to have read The Virginians cover to cover and has no desire to repeat the experience). As this biography details so clearly, Thackeray regarded writing as necessary drudgery for much of his career and never ceased to look for alternative sources of income. Today this shows through in his work to an extent that may not have been obvious to his contemporaries, who read much of it in the form of magazine contributions and monthly parts. The inevitable comparison, today as in his lifetime, is with Dickens and the difference is primarily one of character. Thackeray, for all his mildly satirical stance, remained a man uncritical of, even content with, the world he lived in, incapable of feeling the indignation with which Dickens viewed social abuses, even if he seldom proposed concrete solutions for them. At its best this tolerance of things as they were led to Thackeray's greatest gift - his ability to portray real and credible characters, often flawed and weak at the same time as they are well-meaning, loveable and fundamentally decent. It also means however that his work is largely devoid of any larger message and that it so rooted in his time and culture that much of it loses universal appeal. This theme of essentially uncritical acceptance of his society - and to a great extent also of others such as the Western Europe and United States of his time (the latter on the brink of the Civil War) - is perhaps linked to the somewhat brutishly sybaritic attitude which is a disturbing theme through the biography. Thackeray's contemptuous attitude the prostitutes he consorted with in his early life, and perhaps later, and his acceptance of women and slaves as beings to be used and patronised, strikes a very unpleasant note, even allowing for the standards of his time. This also as echoes in his slow disengagement from his insane wife. Reading the American-tours section of this biography sent me back, for comparison purposes, to Dickens' "American Notes". The contrast between Dickens' honest indignation at the realities of Slavery is in stark comparison to Thackeray's half-tolerance, half-disgust, whole disengagement when coming in direct contact with the institution. Thackeray himself lamented that the cultural mores of his age prevented a fictional hero being presented with the honesty with which Fielding portrayed Tom Jones. This is borne out not only by his treatment of Pendennis, bu

Even after reading this very competent and entertaining biography Thackeray remains an enigma. He wrote one novel, Vanity Fair, which ranks with the greatest in English and another, Esmond, can be argued as the finest and most convincing historical novel in the language. Pendennis and The Newcomes are still enjoyable today and Barry Lyndon has a cynical realism that makes it a more chilling work than the elegiac cinematic masterpiece that Stanley Kubrick made from it. Yet much of the remainder of his work is tedious to the modern reader (this reviewer must be one of the few to have read The Virginians cover to cover and has no desire to repeat the experience). As this biography details so clearly, Thackeray regarded writing as necessary drudgery for much of his career and never ceased to look for alternative sources of income. Today this shows through in his work to an extent that may not have been obvious to his contemporaries, who read much of it in the form of magazine contributions and monthly parts. The inevitable comparison, today as in his lifetime, is with Dickens and the difference is primarily one of character. Thackeray, for all his mildly satirical stance, remained a man uncritical of, even content with, the world he lived in, incapable of feeling the indignation with which Dickens viewed social abuses, even if he seldom proposed concrete solutions for them. At its best this tolerance of things as they were led to Thackeray's greatest gift - his ability to portray real and credible characters, often flawed and weak at the same time as they are well-meaning, loveable and fundamentally decent. It also means however that his work is largely devoid of any larger message and that it so rooted in his time and culture that much of it loses universal appeal. This theme of essentially uncritical acceptance of his society - and to a great extent also of others such as the Western Europe and United States of his time (the latter on the brink of the Civil War; compare the account in this book of his attitude to slavery with Dickens' honest indignation in "American Notes") - is perhaps linked to the somewhat brutishly sybaritic attitude which is a disturbing theme through the biography. Thackeray's contemptuous attitude the prostitutes he consorted with in his early life, and perhaps later, and his acceptance of women and slaves as beings to be used and patronised, strikes a very unpleasant note, even allowing for the standards of his time. This also as echoes in his slow disengagement from his insane wife. Thackeray himself lamented that the cultural mores of his age prevented a fictional hero being presented with the honesty with which Fielding portrayed Tom Jones. This is borne out not only by his treatment of Pendennis, but by the obscurity with which he seems to have cloaked so many of his own comings and goings. Beyond the farcical platonic affairs he conducted with a married Englishwoman and with a young New York socialite in his later life