Thackeray Part 8

He had two wives, whom he loved dearly and treated badly. He hired grand houses, and bought fine horses for which he could never pay. He was often religious, but more often drunk. As a man of letters, other men of letters who followed him, such as Thackeray, could not be very proud of him. But everybody loved him; and he seems to have been the inventor of that flying literature which, with many changes in form and manner, has done so much for the amus.e.m.e.nt and edification of readers ever since his time. He was always commencing, or carrying on,--often editing,--some one of the numerous periodicals which appeared during his time.

Thackeray mentions seven: _The Tatler_, _The Spectator_, _The Guardian_, _The Englishman_, _The Lover_, _The Reader_, and _The Theatre_; that three of them are well known to this day,--the three first named,--and are to be found in all libraries, is proof that his life was not thrown away.

I almost question Prior's right to be in the list, unless indeed the mastery over well-turned conceits is to be included within the border of humour. But Thackeray had a strong liking for Prior, and in his own humorous way rebukes his audience for not being familiar with _The Town and Country Mouse_. He says that Prior's epigrams have the genuine sparkle, and compares Prior to Horace. "His song, his philosophy, his good sense, his happy easy turns and melody, his loves and his epicureanism bear a great resemblance to that most delightful and accomplished master." I cannot say that I agree with this. Prior is generally neat in his expression. Horace is happy,--which is surely a great deal more.

All that is said of Gay, Pope, Hogarth, Smollett, and Fielding is worth reading, and may be of great value both to those who have not time to study the authors, and to those who desire to have their own judgments somewhat guided, somewhat a.s.sisted. That they were all men of humour there can be no doubt. Whether either of them, except perhaps Gay, would have been specially ranked as a humorist among men of letters, may be a question.

Sterne was a humorist, and employed his pen in that line, if ever a writer did so, and so was Goldsmith. Of the excellence and largeness of the disposition of the one, and the meanness and littleness of the other, it is not necessary that I should here say much. But I will give a short pa.s.sage from our author as to each. He has been quoting somewhat at length from Sterne, and thus he ends; "And with this pretty dance and chorus the volume artfully concludes. Even here one can't give the whole description. There is not a page in Sterne's writing but has something that were better away, a latent corruption,--a hint as of an impure presence. Some of that dreary double entendre may be attributed to freer times and manners than ours,--but not all. The foul satyr's eyes leer out of the leaves constantly. The last words the famous author wrote were bad and wicked. The last lines the poor stricken wretch penned were for pity and pardon." Now a line or two about Goldsmith, and I will then let my reader go to the volume and study the lectures for himself. "The poor fellow was never so friendless but that he could befriend some one; never so pinched and wretched but he could give of his crust, and speak his word of compa.s.sion. If he had but his flute left, he would give that, and make the children happy in the dreary London courts."

Of this too I will remind my readers,--those who have bookshelves well-filled to adorn their houses,--that Goldsmith stands in the front where all the young people see the volumes. There are few among the young people who do not refresh their sense of humour occasionally from that shelf, Sterne is relegated to some distant and high corner. The less often that he is taken down the better. Thackeray makes some half excuse for him because of the greater freedom of the times. But "the times" were the same for the two. Both Sterne and Goldsmith wrote in the reign of George II.; both died in the reign of George III.

CHAPTER VIII.

THACKERAY'S BALLADS.

We have a volume of Thackeray's poems, republished under the name of _Ballads_, which is, I think, to a great extent a misnomer. They are all readable, almost all good, full of humour, and with some fine touches of pathos, most happy in their versification, and, with a few exceptions, hitting well on the head the nail which he intended to hit. But they are not on that account ballads. Literally, a ballad is a song, but it has come to signify a short chronicle in verse, which may be political, or pathetic, or grotesque,--or it may have all three characteristics or any two of them; but not on that account is any grotesque poem a ballad,--nor, of course, any pathetic or any political poem. _Jacob Omnium's Hoss_ may fairly be called a ballad, containing as it does a chronicle of a certain well-defined transaction; and the story of _King Canute_ is a ballad,--one of the best that has been produced in our language in modern years. But such pieces as those called _The End of the Play_ and _Vanitas Vanitatum_, which are didactic as well as pathetic, are not ballads in the common sense; nor are such songs as _The Mahogany Tree_, or the little collection called _Love Songs made Easy_. The majority of the pieces are not ballads, but if they be good of the kind we should be ungrateful to quarrel much with the name.

How very good most of them are, I did not know till I re-read them for the purpose of writing this chapter. There is a manifest falling off in some few,--which has come from that source of literary failure which is now so common. If a man write a book or a poem because it is in him to write it,--the motive power being altogether in himself and coming from his desire to express himself,--he will write it well, presuming him to be capable of the effort. But if he write his book or poem simply because a book or poem is required from him, let his capability be what it may, it is not unlikely that he will do it badly. Thackeray occasionally suffered from the weakness thus produced. A ballad from _Policeman X_,--_Bow Street Ballads_ they were first called,--was required by _Punch_, and had to be forthcoming, whatever might be the poet's humour, by a certain time. _Jacob Omnium's Hoss_ is excellent.

His heart and feeling were all there, on behalf of his friend, and against that obsolete old court of justice. But we can tell well when he was looking through the police reports for a subject, and taking what chance might send him, without any special interest in the matter. _The Knight and the Lady of Bath_, and the _Damages Two Hundred Pounds_, as they were demanded at Guildford, taste as though they were written to order.

Here, in his verses as in his prose, the charm of Thackeray's work lies in the mingling of humour with pathos and indignation. There is hardly a piece that is not more or less funny, hardly a piece that is not satirical;--and in most of them, for those who will look a little below the surface, there is something that will touch them. Thackeray, though he rarely uttered a word, either with his pen or his mouth, in which there was not an intention to reach our sense of humour, never was only funny. When he was most determined to make us laugh, he had always a further purpose;--some pity was to be extracted from us on behalf of the sorrows of men, or some indignation at the evil done by them.

This is the beginning of that story as to the _Two Hundred Pounds_, for which as a ballad I do not care very much:

Special jurymen of England who admire your country's laws, And proclaim a British jury worthy of the nation's applause, Gaily compliment each other at the issue of a cause, Which was tried at Guildford 'sizes, this day week as ever was.

Here he is indignant, not only in regard to some miscarriage of justice on that special occasion, but at the general unfitness of jurymen for the work confided to them. "Gaily compliment yourselves," he says, "on your beautiful const.i.tution, from which come such beautiful results as those I am going to tell you!" When he reminded us that Ivanhoe had produced Magna Charta, there was a purpose of irony even there in regard to our vaunted freedom. With all your Magna Charta and your juries, what are you but sn.o.bs! There is nothing so often misguided as general indignation, and I think that in his judgment of outside things, in the measure which he usually took of them, Thackeray was very frequently misguided. A satirist by trade will learn to satirise everything, till the light of the sun and the moon's loveliness will become evil and mean to him. I think that he was mistaken in his views of things. But we have to do with him as a writer, not as a political economist or a politician. His indignation was all true, and the expression of it was often perfect. The lines in which he addresses that Pallis Court, at the end of Jacob Omnium's Hoss, are almost sublime.

O Pallis Court, you move My pity most profound.

A most amusing sport You thought it, I'll be bound, To saddle hup a three-pound debt, With two-and-twenty pound.

Good sport it is to you To grind the honest poor, To pay their just or unjust debts With eight hundred per cent, for Lor; Make haste and get your costes in, They will not last much mor!

Come down from that tribewn, Thou shameless and unjust; Thou swindle, picking pockets in The name of Truth august; Come down, thou h.o.a.ry Blasphemy, For die thou shalt and must.

And go it, Jacob Homnium, And ply your iron pen, And rise up, Sir John Jervis, And shut me up that den; That sty for fattening lawyers in, On the bones of honest men.

"Come down from that tribewn, thou shameless and unjust!" It is impossible not to feel that he felt this as he wrote it.

There is a branch of his poetry which he calls,--or which at any rate is now called, _Lyra Hybernica_, for which no doubt _The Groves of Blarney_ was his model. There have been many imitations since, of which perhaps Barham's ballad on the coronation was the best, "When to Westminster the Royal Spinster and the Duke of Leinster all in order did repair!"

Thackeray in some of his attempts has been equally droll and equally graphic. That on _The Cristal Palace_,--not that at Sydenham, but its forerunner, the palace of the Great Exhibition,--is very good, as the following catalogue of its contents will show;

There's holy saints And window paints, By Maydiayval Pugin; Alhamborough Jones Did paint the tones Of yellow and gambouge in.

There's fountains there And crosses fair; There's water-G.o.ds with urns; There's organs three, To play, d'ye see?

"G.o.d save the Queen," by turns.

There's statues bright Of marble white, Of silver, and of copper; And some in zinc, And some, I think, That isn't over proper.

There's staym ingynes, That stands in lines, Enormous and amazing, That squeal and snort Like whales in sport, Or elephants a grazing.

There's carts and gigs, And pins for pigs, There's dibblers and there's harrows, And ploughs like toys For little boys, And ilegant wheel-barrows.

For thim genteels Who ride on wheels, There's plenty to indulge 'em There's droskys snug From Paytersbug, And vayhycles from Bulgium.

There's cabs on stands And shandthry danns; There's waggons from New York here; There's Lapland sleighs Have cross'd the seas, And jaunting cyars from Cork here.

In writing this Thackeray was a little late with his copy for _Punch_; not, we should say, altogether an uncommon accident to him. It should have been with the editor early on Sat.u.r.day, if not before, but did not come till late on Sat.u.r.day evening. The editor, who was among men the most good-natured and I should think the most forbearing, either could not, or in this case would not, insert it in the next week's issue, and Thackeray, angry and disgusted, sent it to _The Times_. In _The Times_ of next Monday it appeared,--very much I should think to the delight of the readers of that august newspaper.

Mr. Molony's account of the ball given to the Nepaulese amba.s.sadors by the Peninsular and Oriental Company, is so like Barham's coronation in the account it gives of the guests, that one would fancy it must be by the same hand.

The n.o.ble Chair[7] stud at the stair And bade the dhrums to thump; and he Did thus evince to that Black Prince The welcome of his Company.[8]

O fair the girls and rich the curls, And bright the oys you saw there was; And fixed each oye you then could spoi On General Jung Bahawther was!

This gineral great then tuck his sate, With all the other ginerals, Bedad his troat, his belt, his coat, All bleezed with precious minerals; And as he there, with princely air, Recloinin on his cus.h.i.+on was, All round about his royal chair The squeezin and the pus.h.i.+n was.

O Pat, such girls, such jukes and earls, Such fas.h.i.+on and n.o.bilitee!

Just think of Tim, and fancy him Amidst the high gentilitee!

There was the Lord de L'Huys, and the Portygeese Ministher and his lady there, And I recognised, with much surprise, Our messmate, Bob O'Grady, there.

All these are very good fun,--so good in humour and so good in expression, that it would be needless to criticise their peculiar dialect, were it not that Thackeray has made for himself a reputation by his writing of Irish. In this he has been so entirely successful that for many English readers he has established a new language which may not improperly be called Hybernico-Thackerayan. If comedy is to be got from peculiarities of dialect, as no doubt it is, one form will do as well as another, so long as those who read it know no better. So it has been with Thackeray's Irish, for in truth he was not familiar with the modes of p.r.o.nunciation which make up Irish brogue. Therefore, though he is always droll, he is not true to nature. Many an Irishman coming to London, not unnaturally tries to imitate the talk of Londoners. You or I, reader, were we from the West, and were the dear County Galway to send either of us to Parliament, would probably endeavour to drop the dear brogue of our country, and in doing so we should make some mistakes. It was these mistakes which Thackeray took for the natural Irish tone. He was amused to hear a major called "Meejor," but was unaware that the sound arose from Pat's affection of English softness of speech. The expression natural to the unadulterated Irishman would rather be "Ma-ajor." He discovers his own provincialism, and trying to be polite and urbane, he says "Meejor." In one of the lines I have quoted there occurs the word "troat." Such a sound never came naturally from the mouth of an Irishman. He puts in an h instead of omitting it, and says "dhrink." He comes to London, and finding out that he is wrong with his "dhrink," he leaves out all the h's he can, and thus comes to "troat." It is this which Thackeray has heard. There is a little piece called the _Last Irish Grievance_, to which Thackeray adds a still later grievance, by the false sounds which he elicits from the calumniated mouth of the pretended Irish poet. Slaves are "sleeves," places are "pleeces," Lord John is "Lard Jahn," fatal is "fetal," danger is "deenger," and native is "neetive." All these are unintended slanders.

Tea, Hibernice, is "tay," please is "plaise," sea is "say," and ease is "aise." The softer sound of e is broadened out by the natural Irishman,--not, to my ear, without a certain euphony;--but no one in Ireland says or hears the reverse. The Irishman who in London might talk of his "neetive" race, would be mincing his words to please the ear of the c.o.c.kney.

_The Chronicle of the Drum_ would be a true ballad all through, were it not that there is tacked on to it a long moral in an altered metre. I do not much value the moral, but the ballad is excellent, not only in much of its versification and in the turns of its language, but in the quaint and true picture it gives of the French nation. The drummer, either by himself or by some of his family, has drummed through a century of French battling, caring much for his country and its glory, but understanding nothing of the causes for which he is enthusiastic.

Whether for King, Republic, or Emperor, whether fighting and conquering or fighting and conquered, he is happy as long as he can beat his drum on a field of glory. But throughout his adventures there is a touch of chivalry about our drummer. In all the episodes of his country's career he feels much of patriotism and something of tenderness. It is thus he sings during the days of the Revolution:

We had taken the head of King Capet, We called for the blood of his wife; Undaunted she came to the scaffold, And bared her fair neck to the knife.

As she felt the foul fingers that touched her, She shrank, but she deigned not to speak; She looked with a royal disdain, And died with a blush on her cheek!

'Twas thus that our country was saved!

So told us the Safety Committee!

But, psha, I've the heart of a soldier,-- All gentleness, mercy, and pity.

I loathed to a.s.sist at such deeds, And my drum beat its loudest of tunes, As we offered to justice offended, The blood of the b.l.o.o.d.y tribunes.

Away with such foul recollections!

No more of the axe and the block.

I saw the last fight of the sections, As they fell 'neath our guns at St. Rock.

Young Bonaparte led us that day.

And so it goes on. I will not continue the stanza, because it contains the worst rhyme that Thackeray ever permitted himself to use. _The Chronicle of the Drum_ has not the finish which he achieved afterwards, but it is full of national feeling, and carries on its purpose to the end with an admirable persistency;

A curse on those British a.s.sa.s.sins Who ordered the slaughter of Ney; A curse on Sir Hudson who tortured The life of our hero away.

A curse on all Russians,--I hate them; On all Prussian and Austrian fry; And, oh, but I pray we may meet them And fight them again ere I die.

_The White Squall_,--which I can hardly call a ballad, unless any description of a scene in verse may be included in the name,--is surely one of the most graphic descriptions ever put into verse. Nothing written by Thackeray shows more plainly his power over words and rhymes.