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    Vanity Fair
    Vanity Fair
    Vanity Fair
    Ebook1,064 pages15 hours

    Vanity Fair

    By William Makepeace Thackeray

    4/5

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    William Makepeace Thackeray (1811–1863) was an Indian-born English author, novelist, and illustrator. During the Victorian era he was ranked second only to Charles Dickens, and today he remains famous for his classic English novel “Vanity Fair”. Originally published as a 19-volume serial between 1847 and 1848, the story revolves around the lives of Becky Sharp and Amelia Sedley during the Napoleonic Wars. A satirisation of British society in the early 19th-century, “Vanity Fair” was highly successful when first published and is today considered a timeless classic. A true masterpiece of English fiction and a must-read for all literature lovers. Other notable works by this author include: “Men's Wives” (1852), “Catherine” (1839–40), and “The Luck of Barry Lyndon” (1844). Read & Co. Classics is republishing this novel now in a new edition complete with a biography of the author from “Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, Volume XXIII”
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherRead & Co. Classics
    Release dateMay 6, 2021
    ISBN9781528792523
    Author

    William Makepeace Thackeray

    William Makepeace Thackeray (18.07.1811–24.12.1863) war ein britischer Schriftsteller und gilt neben Charles Dickens und George Eliot als bedeutendster englischsprachiger Romancier des Viktorianischen Zeitalters. Sein literarisches Meisterwerk „Vanity Fair“ (deutsch: „Jahrmarkt der Eitelkeit“) machte ihn endgültig zu einem angesehenen Autor.

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    Reviews for Vanity Fair

    4/5

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    • 2/5
      I can understand the point Thackeray was trying to make by leaving out the hows and whys of plot, because all of that was improper in Becky Sharp's case. Still, it wasn't much of a story. Perhaps I am too steeped in more modern storytelling, but I was hardly satisfied when the puppet box was stored away. As was, I think, Thackeray's point.
    • 4/5
      The cynic's Jane Austen. All's well that ends well, and it does for both the main characters - nice Amelia and scheming Becky. It's never clear whose side the narrator is on. He has the most disconcerting habit of presenting happy things as spoilt somehow, and tragedy as possibly amusing. Also - possibly the earliest recorded instance (at least that I've read), of the modern semi-vulgar use of 'screw'. Thackeray's landowners are often screwing their tenants. It may have been meant in a slightly more particular sense, but you can still read that just about how it sounds today. I was glad for Amelia and her happy ending, whether the narrator cared or not. It's unusual for a book to make you want an ending that it seems like the storyteller doesn't care about at all. The people were very aptly drawn - everyone ought to recognize someone they know in the descriptions of the various main and side characters. Thackeray's naming is funny, also. He calls the characters things like "Lord Tapeworm" - adjective surnames that often quickly encapsulate their personality - it reads like a novel, but seems allegorical too. I'd read more Thackeray, though, while I enjoy his writing, I'm not sure I care for him personally. He isn't nice. I know that in these times, that's a sentiment that detracts more from the opinion-holder than the subject, but it gives you a better feeling when you know that, to your novelist, mutual happiness and well-being is at least a desirable goal.
    • 4/5
      I thought I will never finish this book; I tried once but gave up after a few pages. I am glad I tried again, and what a sense of accomplishment upon finishing it. At times, Thackeray deviates too much from the main story, when he cites tales of other people. But overall, it is an interesting read, with Thackeray using uncommon literary devices, for example, he even inserts himself into the story. I also find myself touched when old Osborne forgives Amelia and returns guardianship of Georgie to her.
    • 5/5
      Brilliant, snarky, hilarious.
    • 5/5
      The sad thing about earning a BA in English Literature is that most of the books you have to read and think about won't actually be enjoyable. This is an exception. It's funny.
    • 4/5
      Thackeray's novel without a hero, a story of the manners and morality of society in the years around the Battle of Waterloo, is a respected and admired classic, and also - perhaps more importantly - a document of the time. Like the other writers of his period, Thackeray is more than happy to digress, to follow a tangent away from his story to describe a time or place, and like Hugo's 'Les Miserables' it is in these digressions that the most interesting details emerge.
    • 4/5
      Long and sprawling, witty and satirical, this is quite a character study. I think I recognized someone I know in real life in each and every one of the main characters. A novel without a hero, you say, Mr. Thackeray? Then please explain Dobbin! :)
    • 3/5
      Dated material yet quite rich in style. I was surprised how the author uses names to satirize people, the lawyer Mr. Bullocks, for example.
    • 3/5
      This was a really really good story, I just wish it hadn't been so long winded. The bit where Amelia has to choose whether to part with her child is absolutely heartbreaking, really really well written. In contrast there were some bits (particularly in Belgium) which were so tedious I practically lost the will to live.
    • 4/5
      I loved this book. Being immersed in 19th century society in and around London was a real treat. Of course there were some tedious parts - the naming of all the people at an event, etc., but the story was wonderful and the characters rich and fulfilling. A wonderful summer read
    • 3/5
      This story does go on and on, but I enjoyed the process. Great characters: Becky Sharpe--conniving, resourceful, a survivor; Amelia Sedley, sweet, loyal to a fault; George Osborne, not nearly as good as he ought to be, Joseph Sedley, a glutton and somewhat of a coward; many, many others with their foibles and great names--Lords Binky and Bareacres. I'm glad I finally read it.
    • 5/5
      Very Soap Opera-ish. A lot like Tom Jones in that the author will lead up to an exciting part then not talk about it for a long time to keep you reading. Vanity Fair at least was a serial which is why. Good story, not very deep, but worthwhile fluff. Predictable ending.
    • 1/5
      I read this in high school for a senior English class for one of our quarterly book reports.

      Absolutely hated the main character.
    • 5/5
      I couldn't believe how readable this was! Highly entertaining. A great view into the rise of the mercantile class in the early 19th century of London. Also paints an interesting set of portraits that show the ways one can live in that setting: avariciously, sympathetically, courageously, etc., and what the consequences might be.
    • 3/5
      I didn't love Thackeray's chattiness and tendency to harangue the reader about "Vanity Fair--Vanity Fair!" And I didn't love how the characters' signature traits grew more and more extreme until it was difficult to like or sympathize with them. And it was way too long. Despite these quibbles, I did enjoy it.
    • 4/5
      The book seems to me primarily a character study of a collection of characters particularly in terms of their response to money and class in society. The book is set in the 1800's England. Most of the characters were totally enamored and obsessed with advancing in society, some willing to lie and cheat in every way possible to get there.
    • 4/5
      William Makepeace Thackeray was the 19th century equivalent to Jackie Collins but with the inside scoop on the decadent English and French nobility instead of the Hollywood elite. His tale about the overly ambitious but lovely Becky is both a piercing stab at English society and a guilty pleasure to read. I think he meant it to be a morality tale, but I, for one, wanted Becky to rule the world.
    • 3/5
      I enjoyed this book--although a healthy dose of red pencil when it was first edited would have helped. I loved that everything didn't end "happily ever after" and that Becky Sharpe didn't suddenly become a good person.
    • 4/5
      Interesting study of women trying to survive in a world in which women have few options. Becky would have been more sympathetic if she had been a nicer person but I feel Victorian limits on women prevented that.
    • 4/5
      I wonder if anyone who works for the magazine Vanity Fair has ever read the book. I would think that if they had, they wouldn't call it Vanity Fair because Thackeray was (very effectively in my opinion) making fun of the kind of people who live that type of life style.

      (Maybe someday I'll write more of a review but wanted to get that idea down.)
    • 4/5
      When Becky is the subject, the book sings. Some much to love/so much to hate about her. (Mother of the year she isn't!) When Thackeray is making general observations on life, the book doesn't exactly sing, but it certainly holds one's attention. Much is very insightful and original, and even when what he says isn't particularly original, his ability with words makes well-worn ground seem new. When Amelia is the subject, yawn, yawn, yawn. So, four stars, but I'm glad I read it.
    • 4/5
      I quite enjoyed the book when I eventually got around to finishing it. Despite Becky Sharp's rather unorthodox way of going through life, she is certainly one of the most memorable characters. She is flawed and by no means is she a typical Victorian Lady (as is usually depicted), but she manages to keep the reader's attention. Thackeray successfully manages to satirize society, and shows how vain people can really be.
    • 4/5
      Ok, I'm not going to lie, by and large I have little idea what this was about (it was kinda like shoving four seasons of a television sitcom into one weekend...). That being said, I found it hilarious. The author's writing voice was phenomenal, and the character depth and building was wonderful.
    • 4/5
      Such a wonderful book. Becky Sharp is so wicked ! Her friend Amelia is such a wimp I want to hit her every time I read it. It is so funny!!!!
    • 5/5
      Although this novel is coralled into the category of "classic" that desuades so many from reading a book it is well worth the time. It exposes the effects of manipulation and greediness, and it shows that people will ultimately get what they deserve. Although the characters inhabit a time apart from ours, they may as well be living in current times. Readers should be able to relate easily to this book.
    • 5/5
      I read this ages ago. First in my Victorian novel class, and a few years later at a more leisurely pace. It is a real treat. Very pointed satire made even funnier with the sly illustrations. This is certainly one for the ages; pure entertainment
    • 2/5
      The two stars I gave this reflect my own liking of the book, not the writing style or anything else. I couldn't finish this book. It was too cynical and depressing for me. None of the characters appealed. Life is too short, and I have too many other books to read. The one thing I did enjoy was Thackeray's description of society and the habits of the times, but again, his moralizing and condemning attitude grated on me at this time.
    • 3/5
      I love the 19th century... but the movie was better. The book was a bit tedious, disappointing, really.
    • 4/5
      Yet another long, presumably serialized, early Victorian soap opera about a young girl and others, clawing up the social ladder. Great characters and character development. The author's short essays and sarcastic observations are very amusing.
    • 4/5
      A favourite I have returned to on a number of occasions. Amoral she may be but I can't help but love Becky Sharp for her resourcefulness, especially when compared with the rather insipid Amelia. As a young woman without family or fortune she is forced to rely upon her own cunning to achieve a position in society.

    Book preview

    Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray

    William

    Makepeace Thackeray

    One of the greatest of English authors and novelists, son of Richmond Thackeray (Mrs Richmond Thackeray was born Miss Becher), and grandson of W. R. Thackeray of Hadley, Middlesex, was born at Calcutta on July 18, 1811. Both his father and grandfather had been Indian civil servants. His mother, who was only nineteen at the date of his birth, was left a widow in 1816, and afterwards married Major Henry Carmichael Smyth. Thackeray himself was sent home to England from India as a child, and went to Charterhouse, since his time removed to Godalming from its ancient site near Smithfield. Anthony Trollope, in his book on Thackeray in the English Men of Letters series, quotes a letter written to him about Thackeray's school-days by Mr G. S. Venables. He came to school young, Mr Venables wrote, a pretty, gentle, and rather timid boy. This accords with the fact that all through Thackeray's writings the student may find traces of the sensitiveness which often belongs to the creative mind, and which, in the boy who does not understand its meaning and its possible power is apt to assume the guise of a shy disposition. To this very matter Mr Venables tersely refers in a later passage of the letter quoted by Trollope: When I knew him better, in later years, I thought I could recognize the sensitive nature which he had as a boy. Another illustration is found in the statement, which will be recognized as exact by all readers of Thackeray, that "his change of retrospective feeling about his school-days was very characteristic. ln his earlier books he always spoke of the Charterhouse as Slaughter House and Smithfield.

    As he became famous and prosperous his memory softened, and Slaughter House was changed into Grey Friars, where Colonel Newcome ended his life. Even in the earlier references the bitterness which has often been so falsely read into Thackeray is not to be found. In Mr and Mrs Frank Berry" (Men's Wives) there is a description of a Slaughter-House fight, following on an incident almost identical with that used in Vanity Fair for the fight between Dobbin and Cuff. In both cases the brutality of school life, as it then was, is very fully recognized and described, but not to the exclusion of the chivalry which goes alongside with it. In the first chapter of Mr and Mrs Frank Berry, Berry himself and Old Hawkins both have a touch of the heroic. In the story which forms part of Men's Wives the bully whom Berry gallantly challenges is beaten, and one hears no more of him. In Vanity Fair Cuff the swaggerer is beaten in a similar way, but regains his popularity by one well-timed stroke of magnanimity, and afterwards shows the truest kindness to his conqueror.

    In February 1829 Thackeray went to Trinity College, Cambridge, and in that year contributed some engaging lines on Timbuctoo, the subject for the prize poem, to a little university paper called The Snob, the title of which he afterwards utilized in the famous Snob Papers. The first stanza has become tolerably well known, but is worth quoting as an early instance of the direct comic force afterwards employed by the author in verse and prose burlesques:—

    In Africa a quarter of the world—

    Men's skins are black; their hair is crisp and curled;

    And somewhere there, unknown to public view,

    A mighty city lies, called Timbuctoo.

    One other passage at least in The Snob, in the form of a skit on a paragraph of fashionable intelligence, seems to bear traces of Thackeray's handiwork. At Cambridge James Spedding, Monckton Milnes (Lord Houghton), Edward Fitzgerald, W. H. Thompson (afterwards master of Trinity), and other distinguished persons were among his friends. In 1830 he left Cambridge without taking a degree, and went to Weimar and to Paris. His visit to Weimar bore fruit in the sketches of life at a small German court which appear in Fitz-Boodle's Confessions and in Vanity Fair. In 1832 he came of age, and inherited a sum which Trollope's book describes as amounting to about five hundred a year. The money was soon lost, some in an Indian bank, some in two newspapers which in Lovel the Widower are referred to under one name as The Museum, in connexion with which our friends Honeyman and Sherrick of The Newcomes are briefly brought in. His first regular literary employment after the loss of his patrimony was on Fraser's Magazine, in which in 1837–38 appeared The History of Mr Samuel Titmarsh and the Great Hoggarty Diamond, a work filled with instances of the wit, humour, satire, pathos, which found a more ordered if not a fresher expression in his later and longer works. For freshness, indeed, and for a fine perception which enables the author to perform among other feats that of keeping up throughout the story the curious simplicity of its supposed narrator's character, the Great Hoggarty Diamond can scarce be surpassed. The characters, from Lady Drum, Lady Fanny, Lady Jane, and Edmund Preston down to Brough, his daughter, Mrs Roundhand, Gus Hoskins, and, by no means least, Samuel Titmarsh's pious aunt with her store of Rosolio, are living; the book is crammed with honest fun; and, for pure pathos, the death of the child, and the meeting of the husband and wife over the empty cradle (a scene illustrated by the author himself with that suggestion of truth which no shortcoming in drawing could spoil), stands, if not alone in its own line, at least in the company of very few such scenes in English fiction. The Great Hoggarty Diamond, oddly enough, met with the fate that afterwards befell one of Lever's best stories which appeared in a periodical week by week,— it had to be cut short at the bidding of the editor. In the same year in which it appeared Thackeray married Isabella, daughter of Colonel Matthew Shawe. Of the daughters born of the marriage, one, Mrs Richmond Ritchie, has earned distinction as a novelist. Mrs Thackeray, to quote Trollope, became ill and her mind failed her, and Thackeray thereupon became as it were a widower till the end of his days. In 1840 came out The Paris Sketch Book. Much of it had been written and published at an earlier date, and in the earlier writings there are some very curious divagations in criticism. The book contains also a striking story of card-sharping, afterwards worked up and put into Altamont's mouth in Pendennis, and a very powerful sketch of a gambler's death and obsequies. Three years before, in 1837, Thackeray had begun, in Fraser, the Yellowplush Papers, with their strange touches of humour, satire, tragedy (in one scene, the closing one of the history of Mr Deuceace), and their sublimation of fantastic bad spelling (M'Arony for macaroni is one of the typical touches of this); and this was followed by Catherine, a strong story, and too disagreeable perhaps for its purpose, founded closely on the actual career of a criminal named Catherine Hayes, and intended to counteract the then growing practice of making ruffians and harlots prominent characters in fiction. There soon followed Fitz-Boodle's Confessions and Professions, including the series Men's Wives, already referred to; and, slightly before these, The Shabby Genteel Story, a work interrupted by Thackeray's domestic affliction and afterwards republished as an introduction to The Adventures of Philip, which took up the course of the original story many years after the supposed date of its catastrophe. Tn 1843, and for some ten years onwards according to Trollope, Thackeray was writing for Punch, and the list of his contributions included among many others the celebrated Snob Papers and the Ballads of Policeman X. In 1843 also came out the Irish Sketch Book, and in 1844 the account of the journey From Cornhill to Grand Cairo, in which was published the excellent poem of The White Squall. In 1844 there began in Fraser the Memoirs of Barry Lyndon, called in the magazine The Luck of Barry Lyndon, a Romance of the Last Century. Barry Lyndon has, with a very great difference in treatment, some resemblance to Smollett's Count Fathom;—the hero, that is to say, is or becomes a most intolerable scoundrel, who is magnificently unconscious of his own iniquity. The age and pressure of the time depicted are caught with amazing verisimilitude, and in the boyish career of Barry Lyndon there are fine touches of a wild chivalry, simplicity, and generosity, which mingle naturally with the worse qualities that, under the influence of abominable training, afterwards corrupt his whole mind and career. The man is so infatuated with and so blind to his own roguery, he has so much dash and daring, and is on occasions so infamously treated, that it is not easy to look upon him as an entirely detestable villain until, towards the end of his course, he becomes wholly lost in brutish debauchery and cruelty. His latter career is founded on that of Andrew Robinson Stoney Bowes, who married the widow of John, ninth earl of Strathmore. There is also no doubt a touch of Casanova in Barry Lyndon's character. Besides the contributions to Punch specially referred to, there should be noticed Punch's Prize Novelists, containing some brilliant parodies of Edward Lytton Bulwer, Lever, Mr D'Israeli (in Codlingsby, perhaps the most perfect of the series), and others. Among minor but admirable works of the same period are found A Legend of the Rhine (a burlesque of the great Dumas's Othon l'Archer), brought out in a periodical of George Cruikshank's, Cox's Diary (on which has been founded a well-known Dutch comedy, Janus Tulp), and the Fatal Boots. This is the most fitting moment for mentioning also Rebecca and Rowena, which towers, not only over Thackeray's other burlesques, excellent as they are, but over every other burlesque of the kind ever written. Its taste, its wit, its pathos, its humour, are unmatchable; and it contains some of the best songs of a particular kind ever written—songs worthy indeed to rank with Peacock's best. In 1846 was published, by Messrs Bradbury and Evans, the first of twenty-four numbers of Vanity Fair, the work which first placed Thackeray in his proper position before the public as a novelist and writer of the first rank. It was completed in 1848, when Thackeray was thirty-seven years old; and in the same year Abraham Hayward paid a tribute to the author's powers in the Edinburgh Review. It is probable that on Vanity Fair has been largely based the foolish cry, now heard less and less frequently, about Thackeray's cynicism, a cry which he himself, with his keen knowledge of men, foresaw and provided against, amply enough as one might have thought, at the end of the eighth chapter, in a passage which is perhaps the best commentary ever written on the author's method. He has explained how he wishes to describe men and women as they actually are, good, bad, and indifferent, and to claim a privilege—

    Occasionally to step down from the platform, and talk about them: if they are good and kindly, to love and shake them by the hand; if they are silly, to laugh at them confidentially in the reader's sleeve; if they are wicked and heartless, to abuse them in the strongest terms politeness admits of. Otherwise you might fancy it was I who was sneering at the practice of devotion, which Miss Sharp finds so ridiculous; that it was I who laughed good-humouredly at the railing old Silenus of a baronet—whereas the laughter comes from one who has no reverence except for prosperity, and no eye for anything beyond success. Such people there are living and flourishing in the world—Faithless, Hopeless, Charityless: let us have at them, dear friends, with might and main. Some there are, and very successful too, mere quacks and fools: and it was to combat and expose such as those, no doubt, that laughter was made.

    As to another accusation which was brought against the book when it first came out, that the colours were laid on too thick, in the sense that the villains were too villainous, the good people too goody-goody, the best and completest answer to that can be found by any one who chooses to read the work with care. Osborne is, and is meant to be, a poor enough creature, but he is an eminently human being, and one whose poorness of character is developed as he allows bad influences to tell upon his vanity and folly. The good in him is fully recognized, and comes out in the beautiful passage describing his farewell to Amelia on the eve of Waterloo, in which passage may be also found a sufficient enough answer to the statement that Amelia is absolutely insipid and uninteresting. So with the companion picture of Rawdon Crawley's farewell to Becky: who that reads it can resist sympathy, in spite of Rawdon's vices and shady shifts for a living, with his simple bravery and devotion to his wife? As for Becky, a character that has since been imitated a host of times, there is certainly not much to be said in her defence. We know of her, to be sure, that she thought she would have found it easy to be good if she had been rich, and we know also what happened when Rawdon, released without her knowledge from a spunging-house, surprised her alone with and singing to Lord Steyne in the house in May Fair. After a gross insult from Steyne, Rawdon Crawley, springing out, seized him by the neckcloth, until Steyne, almost strangled, writhed and bent under his arm. 'You lie, you dog,' said Rawdon; 'you lie, you coward and villain!' And he struck the peer twice over the face with his open hand, and flung him bleeding to the ground. It was all done before Rebecca could interpose. She stood there trembling before him. She admired her husband, strong, brave, and victorious. This admiration is, as Thackeray himself thought it, the capital touch in a scene which is as powerful as any Thackeray ever wrote—as powerful, indeed, as any in English fiction. Its full merit, it may be noted in passing, has been curiously accented by an imitation of it in M. Daudet's Fromont Jeune et Risler Aîné. As to the extent of the miserable Becky's guilt in the Steyne matter, on that Thackeray leaves it practically open to the reader to form what conclusion he will. There is, it should be added, a distinct touch of good in Becky's conduct to Amelia at Ostend in the last chapter of the book, and those who think that too little punishment is meted out to the brilliant adventuress in the end may remember this to her credit. It is supreme art in the treatment of her character that makes the reader understand and feel her attractiveness, though he knows her extraordinarily evil qualities; and in this no writer subsequent to Thackeray who has tried to depict one of the genus Becky Sharp has even faintly succeeded. Among the minor characters there is not one—and this is not always the case even with Thackeray's chief figures—who is incompletely or inconsistently depicted; and no one who wishes to fully understand and appreciate the book can afford to miss a word of it.

    Vanity Fair was followed by Pendennis, Esmond, and The Newcomes, which appeared respectively in 1850, 1852, and 1854. It might be more easy to pick holes critically in Pendennis than in Vanity Fair. Pendennis himself, after his boyish passion and university escapades, has disagreeable touches of flabbiness and worldliness; and the important episode of his relations with Fanny Bolton, which Thackeray could never have treated otherwise than delicately, is so lightly and tersely handled that it is a little vague even to those who read between the lines; the final announcement that those relations have been innocent can scarcely be said to be led up to, and one can hardly see why it should have been so long delayed. This does not of course affect the value of the book as a picture of middle and upper class life of the time, the time when Vauxhall still existed, and the haunt for suppers and songs which Thackeray in this book called the Back Kitchen, and it is a picture filled with striking figures. In some of these, notably in that of Foker, Thackeray went, it is supposed, very close to actual life for his material, and in that particular case with a most agreeable result. As for the two umbra of the marquis of Steyne, it is difficult to believe that they were intended as caricatures from two well-known persons. If they were, for once Thackeray's hand forgot its cunning. Here, as in Vanity Fair, the heroism has been found a little insipid; and there may be good ground for finding Laura Pendennis dull, though she has a spirit of her own. In later books she becomes, what Thackeray's people very seldom are, a tiresome as well as an uninviting person. Costigan is unique, and so is Major Pendennis, a type which, allowing for differences of period and manners, will exist as long as society does, and which has been seized and depicted by Thackeray as by no other novelist. His two encounters, from both of which he comes out victorious, one with Costigan in the first, the other with Morgan in the second volume, are admirable touches of genius. In opposition to the worldliness of the major, with which Pendennis does not escape being tainted, we have Warrington, whose nobility of nature has come unscathed through a severe trial, and who, a thorough gentleman if a rough one, is really the guardian of Pendennis's career. There is, it should be noted, a characteristic and acknowledged confusion in the plot of Pendennis, which will not spoil any intelligent reader's pleasure.

    Probably most readers of The Newcomes (1854) to whom the book is mentioned think first of the grand, chivalrous, and simple figure of Colonel Newcome, who stands out in the relief of almost ideal beauty of character against the crowd of more or less imperfect and more or less base personages who move through the novel. At the same time, to say, as has been said, that this book is full of satire from the first to the last page is to convey an impression which is by no means just. There is plenty of kindliness in the treatment of the young men who, like Clive Newcome himself and Lord Kew, possess no very shining virtue beyond that of being honourable gentlemen; in the character of J. J. Ridley there is much tenderness and pathos; and no one can help liking the Bohemian F. B., and looking tolerantly on his failings. It may be that both the fiendish temper of Mrs Mackenzie and the sufferings she inflicts on the Colonel are too closely insisted on; but it must be remembered that this heightens the singular pathos of the closing scenes of the Colonel's life. It has seemed convenient to take The Newcomes after Pendennis, because Pendennis and his wife reappear in this book as in the Adventures of Philip; but Esmond (1852) was written and published before The Newcomes. To some students Esmond seems and will seem Thackeray's capital work. It has not been rivalled, and only a few times approached by Mr Besant, as a romance reproducing with unfailing interest and accuracy the figures, manners, and phrases of a past time, and it is full of beautiful touches of character. But Beatrix, upon whom so much hinges, is an unpleasing character, although one understands fully why men were captivated by her insolent beauty and brilliancy; and there is some truth in Thackeray's own saying, that Esmond was a prig. Apart from this, the story is, like the illusion of a past time in the narrative, so complete in all its details, so harmoniously worked out, that there is little room for criticism. As to Esmond's marriage with the lady whom he has served and loved as a boy, that is a matter for individual judgment. Beatrix, it has been indicated above, is wonderfully drawn; and not the least wonderful thing about her is her reappearance as the jaded, battered, worldly, not altogether unkindly, Baroness in The Virginians. It was just what Beatrix must have come to, and the degradation is handled with the lightest and finest touch.

    In 1851 Thackeray had written The English Humourists of the Eighteenth Century, delivered as a series of lectures at Willis's Rooms in the same year, and re-delivered in the United States in 1852 and 1853, as was afterwards the series called The Four Georges. Both sets were written for the purposes of lecturing. In 1857 Thackeray stood unsuccessfully as a parliamentary candidate for Oxford against Mr Cardwell, and in the same year appeared the first number of The Virginians, a sequel to Esmond. This is a most unequal work, inferior, as sequels are apt to be, to Esmond as an historical romance, less compact and coherent, prone to divagation and desultoriness, yet charming enough in its lifelikeness, in the wit and wisdom of its reflexions, and, as has been said, in its portrait of Beatrix grown old. The last number of The Virginians came out in 1859, and in the same year Thackeray undertook the editorship of the Cornhill Magazine. This was a task which, as readers of his Roundabout paper Thorns in the Cushion will remember, the kindliness and sensitiveness of his disposition made irksome to him, and he resigned the editorship in April 1862, though he continued to write for the magazine until he died. In the Cornhill appeared from his pen Lovel the Widower, previously written, with different names for some of the personages, in dramatic form; The Adventures of Philip; the Roundabout Papers; and the story, unhappily never finished, called Denis Duval. Lovel the Widower, changed from the dramatic to the narrative form, remains a piece of high comedy in which the characters are indicated rather than fully worked out, with a bold and practised touch. It contains some references to Thackeray's early and unfortunate newspaper speculations, and it was provided by the author with illustrations which as in others of his books have a value which is entirely their own in furnishing, as it were, a far completer commentary on the letterpress than could have been given by any draughtsman, however perspicacious and finished, who approached the pictorial representation of the characters from the outside. To the general statement thus indicated an exception should be made in the case of Doyle's illustrations to The Newcomes and to Rebecca and Rowena. On the other hand, not even Doyle could have matched the fun and spirit of Thackeray's own illustrations to another burlesque story, one of his best, The Rose and the Ring. The Roundabout Papers, a small storehouse of some of Thackeray's best qualities as an essayist, came out in the Cornhill Magazine simultaneously with Lovel the Widower and with The Adventures of Philip. Among them is one differing in form from the rest, called The Notch on the Axe—a Story à la Mode. It is an almost perfect specimen of the author's genius for burlesque story-telling; but it contains an odd instance, which a careful reader will not fail to discover, of the odd habit of inaccuracy of which Thackeray himself was conscious. The Adventures of Philip is, as has been before said, in the nature of a sequel to or a completion of A Shabby Genteel Story. As with the other direct sequel, it is a work of great inequality. It contains scenes of humour, pathos, satire, which rank with Thackeray's best work; some old friends from others of the novels make brief but pleasant reappearances in its pages; there are fine sketches of journalistic, artistic, and diplomatic life, and the scene from the last-named in Paris is inimitable. The Little Sister is altogether delightful; the Twysden family are terribly true and vastly diverting; the minor characters, among whom old Ridley, J. J.'s father, should be mentioned, are wonder fully hit off; nor did Thackeray ever write a better scene than that of the quarrel between Bunch, Baynes, and M'Whirter in the Paris pension. Philip himself is impossible; one cannot say that the character is ill-drawn it is not drawn at all. It is an entirely different personage in different chapters; and it has here and there a very unpleasant touch which must have come of rapid writing. Yet so admirable are many parts of the book that it can not be left out of the list of Thackeray's most considerable works. Denis Duval, which reached only three numbers, promised to be a first-rate work, more or less in the Esmond manner. The author died while it was in progress, on the day before Christmas day 1863. He was buried in Kensal Green, and a bust by Marochetti was put up to his memory in Westminster Abbey.

    Little has yet been said of Thackeray's performances in poetry. They formed a small but not the least significant part of his life's work. The grace and the apparent spon taneity of his versification are beyond question. Some of the more serious efforts, such as The Chronicle of the Drum (1841), are full of power, and instinct with true poetic feeling. Both the half-humorous half-pathetic ballads and the wholly extravagant ones must be classed with the best work in that kind; and the translations from Beranger are as good as verse translations can be. He had the true poetic instinct, and proved it by writing poetry which equalled his prose in grace and feeling.

    It is not necessary to discuss the precise place which Thackeray will in future hold, in respect to his immediate contemporaries.

    What seems absolutely certain is that the force and variety of his genius and art will always hold for him a place as one of the greatest of English novelists and essayists, and, it should be added, as by no means the least of English critics.

    An excerpt from

    Encyclopædia Britannica,

    Ninth Edition, Volume XXIII

    BEFORE THE CURTAIN

    As the manager of the Performance sits before the curtain on the boards and looks into the Fair, a feeling of profound melancholy comes over him in his survey of the bustling place. There is a great quantity of eating and drinking, making love and jilting, laughing and the contrary, smoking, cheating, fighting, dancing and fiddling; there are bullies pushing about, bucks ogling the women, knaves picking pockets, policemen on the look-out, quacks (OTHER quacks, plague take them!) bawling in front of their booths, and yokels looking up at the tinselled dancers and poor old rouged tumblers, while the light-fingered folk are operating upon their pockets behind. Yes, this is VANITY FAIR; not a moral place certainly; nor a merry one, though very noisy. Look at the faces of the actors and buffoons when they come off from their business; and Tom Fool washing the paint off his cheeks before he sits down to dinner with his wife and the little Jack Puddings behind the canvas. The curtain will be up presently, and he will be turning over head and heels, and crying, How are you?

    A man with a reflective turn of mind, walking through an exhibition of this sort, will not be oppressed, I take it, by his own or other people's hilarity. An episode of humour or kindness touches and amuses him here and there—a pretty child looking at a gingerbread stall; a pretty girl blushing whilst her lover talks to her and chooses her fairing; poor Tom Fool, yonder behind the waggon, mumbling his bone with the honest family which lives by his tumbling; but the general impression is one more melancholy than mirthful. When you come home you sit down in a sober, contemplative, not uncharitable frame of mind, and apply yourself to your books or your business.

    I have no other moral than this to tag to the present story of Vanity Fair. Some people consider Fairs immoral altogether, and eschew such, with their servants and families: very likely they are right. But persons who think otherwise, and are of a lazy, or a benevolent, or a sarcastic mood, may perhaps like to step in for half an hour, and look at the performances. There are scenes of all sorts; some dreadful combats, some grand and lofty horse-riding, some scenes of high life, and some of very middling indeed; some love-making for the sentimental, and some light comic business; the whole accompanied by appropriate scenery and brilliantly illuminated with the Author's own candles.

    What more has the Manager of the Performance to say?—To acknowledge the kindness with which it has been received in all the principal towns of England through which the Show has passed, and where it has been most favourably noticed by the respected conductors of the public Press, and by the Nobility and Gentry. He is proud to think that his Puppets have given satisfaction to the very best company in this empire. The famous little Becky Puppet has been pronounced to be uncommonly flexible in the joints, and lively on the wire; the Amelia Doll, though it has had a smaller circle of admirers, has yet been carved and dressed with the greatest care by the artist; the Dobbin Figure, though apparently clumsy, yet dances in a very amusing and natural manner; the Little Boys' Dance has been liked by some; and please to remark the richly dressed figure of the Wicked Nobleman, on which no expense has been spared, and which Old Nick will fetch away at the end of this singular performance.

    And with this, and a profound bow to his patrons, the Manager retires, and the curtain rises.

    London,

    June 28, 1848

    VANITY FAIR

    CHAPTER I

    Chiswick Mall

    While the present century was in its teens, and on one sunshiny morning in June, there drove up to the great iron gate of Miss Pinkerton's academy for young ladies, on Chiswick Mall, a large family coach, with two fat horses in blazing harness, driven by a fat coachman in a three-cornered hat and wig, at the rate of four miles an hour. A black servant, who reposed on the box beside the fat coachman, uncurled his bandy legs as soon as the equipage drew up opposite Miss Pinkerton's shining brass plate, and as he pulled the bell at least a score of young heads were seen peering out of the narrow windows of the stately old brick house. Nay, the acute observer might have recognized the little red nose of good-natured Miss Jemima Pinkerton herself, rising over some geranium pots in the window of that lady's own drawing-room.

    It is Mrs. Sedley's coach, sister, said Miss Jemima. Sambo, the black servant, has just rung the bell; and the coachman has a new red waistcoat.

    Have you completed all the necessary preparations incident to Miss Sedley's departure, Miss Jemima? asked Miss Pinkerton herself, that majestic lady; the Semiramis of Hammersmith, the friend of Doctor Johnson, the correspondent of Mrs. Chapone herself.

    The girls were up at four this morning, packing her trunks, sister, replied Miss Jemima; we have made her a bow-pot.

    Say a bouquet, sister Jemima, 'tis more genteel.

    Well, a booky as big almost as a haystack; I have put up two bottles of the gillyflower water for Mrs. Sedley, and the receipt for making it, in Amelia's box.

    And I trust, Miss Jemima, you have made a copy of Miss Sedley's account. This is it, is it? Very good—ninety-three pounds, four shillings. Be kind enough to address it to John Sedley, Esquire, and to seal this billet which I have written to his lady.

    In Miss Jemima's eyes an autograph letter of her sister, Miss Pinkerton, was an object of as deep veneration as would have been a letter from a sovereign. Only when her pupils quitted the establishment, or when they were about to be married, and once, when poor Miss Birch died of the scarlet fever, was Miss Pinkerton known to write personally to the parents of her pupils; and it was Jemima's opinion that if anything could console Mrs. Birch for her daughter's loss, it would be that pious and eloquent composition in which Miss Pinkerton announced the event.

    In the present instance Miss Pinkerton's billet was to the following effect:—

    The Mall, Chiswick,

    June 15, 18

    Madam,—After her six years' residence at the Mall, I have the honour and happiness of presenting Miss Amelia Sedley to her parents, as a young lady not unworthy to occupy a fitting position in their polished and refined circle. Those virtues which characterize the young English gentlewoman, those accomplishments which become her birth and station, will not be found wanting in the amiable Miss Sedley, whose INDUSTRY and OBEDIENCE have endeared her to her instructors, and whose delightful sweetness of temper has charmed her AGED and her YOUTHFUL companions.

    In music, in dancing, in orthography, in every variety of embroidery and needlework, she will be found to have realized her friends' fondest wishes. In geography there is still much to be desired; and a careful and undeviating use of the backboard, for four hours daily during the next three years, is recommended as necessary to the acquirement of that dignified DEPORTMENT AND CARRIAGE, so requisite for every young lady of FASHION.

    In the principles of religion and morality, Miss Sedley will be found worthy of an establishment which has been honoured by the presence of THE GREAT LEXICOGRAPHER, and the patronage of the admirable Mrs. Chapone. In leaving the Mall, Miss Amelia carries with her the hearts of her companions, and the affectionate regards of her mistress, who has the honour to subscribe herself,

    Madam, Your most obliged humble servant,

    Barbara Pinkerton

    P.S.—Miss Sharp accompanies Miss Sedley. It is particularly requested that Miss Sharp's stay in Russell Square may not exceed ten days. The family of distinction with whom she is engaged, desire to avail themselves of her services as soon as possible.

    This letter completed, Miss Pinkerton proceeded to write her own name, and Miss Sedley's, in the fly-leaf of a Johnson's Dictionary—the interesting work which she invariably presented to her scholars, on their departure from the Mall. On the cover was inserted a copy of Lines addressed to a young lady on quitting Miss Pinkerton's school, at the Mall; by the late revered Doctor Samuel Johnson. In fact, the Lexicographer's name was always on the lips of this majestic woman, and a visit he had paid to her was the cause of her reputation and her fortune.

    Being commanded by her elder sister to get the Dictionary from the cupboard, Miss Jemima had extracted two copies of the book from the receptacle in question. When Miss Pinkerton had finished the inscription in the first, Jemima, with rather a dubious and timid air, handed her the second.

    For whom is this, Miss Jemima? said Miss Pinkerton, with awful coldness.

    For Becky Sharp, answered Jemima, trembling very much, and blushing over her withered face and neck, as she turned her back on her sister. For Becky Sharp: she's going too.

    MISS JEMIMA! exclaimed Miss Pinkerton, in the largest capitals. Are you in your senses? Replace the Dixonary in the closet, and never venture to take such a liberty in future.

    Well, sister, it's only two-and-ninepence, and poor Becky will be miserable if she don't get one.

    Send Miss Sedley instantly to me, said Miss Pinkerton. And so venturing not to say another word, poor Jemima trotted off, exceedingly flurried and nervous.

    Miss Sedley's papa was a merchant in London, and a man of some wealth; whereas Miss Sharp was an articled pupil, for whom Miss Pinkerton had done, as she thought, quite enough, without conferring upon her at parting the high honour of the Dixonary.

    Although schoolmistresses' letters are to be trusted no more nor less than churchyard epitaphs; yet, as it sometimes happens that a person departs this life who is really deserving of all the praises the stone cutter carves over his bones; who IS a good Christian, a good parent, child, wife, or husband; who actually DOES leave a disconsolate family to mourn his loss; so in academies of the male and female sex it occurs every now and then that the pupil is fully worthy of the praises bestowed by the disinterested instructor. Now, Miss Amelia Sedley was a young lady of this singular species; and deserved not only all that Miss Pinkerton said in her praise, but had many charming qualities which that pompous old Minerva of a woman could not see, from the differences of rank and age between her pupil and herself.

    For she could not only sing like a lark, or a Mrs. Billington, and dance like Hillisberg or Parisot; and embroider beautifully; and spell as well as a Dixonary itself; but she had such a kindly, smiling, tender, gentle, generous heart of her own, as won the love of everybody who came near her, from Minerva herself down to the poor girl in the scullery, and the one-eyed tart-woman's daughter, who was permitted to vend her wares once a week to the young ladies in the Mall. She had twelve intimate and bosom friends out of the twenty-four young ladies. Even envious Miss Briggs never spoke ill of her; high and mighty Miss Saltire (Lord Dexter's granddaughter) allowed that her figure was genteel; and as for Miss Swartz, the rich woolly-haired mulatto from St. Kitt's, on the day Amelia went away, she was in such a passion of tears that they were obliged to send for Dr. Floss, and half tipsify her with salvolatile. Miss Pinkerton's attachment was, as may be supposed from the high position and eminent virtues of that lady, calm and dignified; but Miss Jemima had already whimpered several times at the idea of Amelia's departure; and, but for fear of her sister, would have gone off in downright hysterics, like the heiress (who paid double) of St. Kitt's. Such luxury of grief, however, is only allowed to parlour-boarders. Honest Jemima had all the bills, and the washing, and the mending, and the puddings, and the plate and crockery, and the servants to superintend. But why speak about her? It is probable that we shall not hear of her again from this moment to the end of time, and that when the great filigree iron gates are once closed on her, she and her awful sister will never issue therefrom into this little world of history.

    But as we are to see a great deal of Amelia, there is no harm in saying, at the outset of our acquaintance, that she was a dear little creature; and a great mercy it is, both in life and in novels, which (and the latter especially) abound in villains of the most sombre sort, that we are to have for a constant companion so guileless and good-natured a person. As she is not a heroine, there is no need to describe her person; indeed I am afraid that her nose was rather short than otherwise, and her cheeks a great deal too round and red for a heroine; but her face blushed with rosy health, and her lips with the freshest of smiles, and she had a pair of eyes which sparkled with the brightest and honestest good-humour, except indeed when they filled with tears, and that was a great deal too often; for the silly thing would cry over a dead canary-bird; or over a mouse, that the cat haply had seized upon; or over the end of a novel, were it ever so stupid; and as for saying an unkind word to her, were any persons hard-hearted enough to do so—why, so much the worse for them. Even Miss Pinkerton, that austere and godlike woman, ceased scolding her after the first time, and though she no more comprehended sensibility than she did Algebra, gave all masters and teachers particular orders to treat Miss Sedley with the utmost gentleness, as harsh treatment was injurious to her.

    So that when the day of departure came, between her two customs of laughing and crying, Miss Sedley was greatly puzzled how to act. She was glad to go home, and yet most woefully sad at leaving school. For three days before, little Laura Martin, the orphan, followed her about like a little dog. She had to make and receive at least fourteen presents—to make fourteen solemn promises of writing every week: Send my letters under cover to my grandpapa, the Earl of Dexter, said Miss Saltire (who, by the way, was rather shabby). Never mind the postage, but write every day, you dear darling, said the impetuous and woolly-headed, but generous and affectionate Miss Swartz; and the orphan little Laura Martin (who was just in round-hand), took her friend's hand and said, looking up in her face wistfully, Amelia, when I write to you I shall call you Mamma. All which details, I have no doubt, JONES, who reads this book at his Club, will pronounce to be excessively foolish, trivial, twaddling, and ultra-sentimental. Yes; I can see Jones at this minute (rather flushed with his joint of mutton and half pint of wine), taking out his pencil and scoring under the words foolish, twaddling, &c., and adding to them his own remark of QUITE TRUE. Well, he is a lofty man of genius, and admires the great and heroic in life and novels; and so had better take warning and go elsewhere.

    Well, then. The flowers, and the presents, and the trunks, and bonnet-boxes of Miss Sedley having been arranged by Mr. Sambo in the carriage, together with a very small and weather-beaten old cow's-skin trunk with Miss Sharp's card neatly nailed upon it, which was delivered by Sambo with a grin, and packed by the coachman with a corresponding sneer—the hour for parting came; and the grief of that moment was considerably lessened by the admirable discourse which Miss Pinkerton addressed to her pupil. Not that the parting speech caused Amelia to philosophise, or that it armed her in any way with a calmness, the result of argument; but it was intolerably dull, pompous, and tedious; and having the fear of her schoolmistress greatly before her eyes, Miss Sedley did not venture, in her presence, to give way to any ebullitions of private grief. A seed-cake and a bottle of wine were produced in the drawing-room, as on the solemn occasions of the visits of parents, and these refreshments being partaken of, Miss Sedley was at liberty to depart.

    You'll go in and say good-by to Miss Pinkerton, Becky! said Miss Jemima to a young lady of whom nobody took any notice, and who was coming downstairs with her own bandbox.

    I suppose I must, said Miss Sharp calmly, and much to the wonder of Miss Jemima; and the latter having knocked at the door, and receiving permission to come in, Miss Sharp advanced in a very unconcerned manner, and said in French, and with a perfect accent, Mademoiselle, je viens vous faire mes adieux.

    Miss Pinkerton did not understand French; she only directed those who did: but biting her lips and throwing up her venerable and Roman-nosed head (on the top of which figured a large and solemn turban), she said, Miss Sharp, I wish you a good morning. As the Hammersmith Semiramis spoke, she waved one hand, both by way of adieu, and to give Miss Sharp an opportunity of shaking one of the fingers of the hand which was left out for that purpose.

    Miss Sharp only folded her own hands with a very frigid smile and bow, and quite declined to accept the proffered honour; on which Semiramis tossed up her turban more indignantly than ever. In fact, it was a little battle between the young lady and the old one, and the latter was worsted. Heaven bless you, my child, said she, embracing Amelia, and scowling the while over the girl's shoulder at Miss Sharp. Come away, Becky, said Miss Jemima, pulling the young woman away in great alarm, and the drawing-room door closed upon them for ever.

    Then came the struggle and parting below. Words refuse to tell it. All the servants were there in the hall—all the dear friends—all the young ladies—the dancing-master who had just arrived; and there was such a scuffling, and hugging, and kissing, and crying, with the hysterical YOOPS of Miss Swartz, the parlour-boarder, from her room, as no pen can depict, and as the tender heart would fain pass over. The embracing was over; they parted—that is, Miss Sedley parted from her friends. Miss Sharp had demurely entered the carriage some minutes before. Nobody cried for leaving HER.

    Sambo of the bandy legs slammed the carriage door on his young weeping mistress. He sprang up behind the carriage. Stop! cried Miss Jemima, rushing to the gate with a parcel.

    It's some sandwiches, my dear, said she to Amelia. You may be hungry, you know; and Becky, Becky Sharp, here's a book for you that my sister—that is, I—Johnson's Dixonary, you know; you mustn't leave us without that. Good-by. Drive on, coachman. God bless you!

    And the kind creature retreated into the garden, overcome with emotion.

    But, lo! and just as the coach drove off, Miss Sharp put her pale face out of the window and actually flung the book back into the garden.

    This almost caused Jemima to faint with terror. Well, I never—said she—what an audacious—Emotion prevented her from completing either sentence. The carriage rolled away; the great gates were closed; the bell rang for the dancing lesson. The world is before the two young ladies; and so, farewell to Chiswick Mall.

    CHAPTER II

    In Which Miss Sharp and

    Miss Sedley Prepare to Open the Campaign

    When Miss Sharp had performed the heroical act mentioned in the last chapter, and had seen the Dixonary, flying over the pavement of the little garden, fall at length at the feet of the astonished Miss Jemima, the young lady's countenance, which had before worn an almost livid look of hatred, assumed a smile that perhaps was scarcely more agreeable, and she sank back in the carriage in an easy frame of mind, saying—So much for the Dixonary; and, thank God, I'm out of Chiswick.

    Miss Sedley was almost as flurried at the act of defiance as Miss Jemima had been; for, consider, it was but one minute that she had left school, and the impressions of six years are not got over in that space of time. Nay, with some persons those awes and terrors of youth last for ever and ever. I know, for instance, an old gentleman of sixty-eight, who said to me one morning at breakfast, with a very agitated countenance, I dreamed last night that I was flogged by Dr. Raine. Fancy had carried him back five-and-fifty years in the course of that evening. Dr. Raine and his rod were just as awful to him in his heart, then, at sixty-eight, as they had been at thirteen. If the Doctor, with a large birch, had appeared bodily to him, even at the age of threescore and eight, and had said in awful voice, Boy, take down your pant—? Well, well, Miss Sedley was exceedingly alarmed at this act of insubordination.

    How could you do so, Rebecca? at last she said, after a pause.

    Why, do you think Miss Pinkerton will come out and order me back to the black-hole? said Rebecca, laughing.

    No: but—

    I hate the whole house, continued Miss Sharp in a fury. I hope I may never set eyes on it again. I wish it were in the bottom of the Thames, I do; and if Miss Pinkerton were there, I wouldn't pick her out, that I wouldn't. O how I should like to see her floating in the water yonder, turban and all, with her train streaming after her, and her nose like the beak of a wherry.

    Hush! cried Miss Sedley.

    Why, will the black footman tell tales? cried Miss Rebecca, laughing. He may go back and tell Miss Pinkerton that I hate her with all my soul; and I wish he would; and I wish I had a means of proving it, too. For two years I have only had insults and outrage from her. I have been treated worse than any servant in the kitchen. I have never had a friend or a kind word, except from you. I have been made to tend the little girls in the lower schoolroom, and to talk French to the Misses, until I grew sick of my mother tongue. But that talking French to Miss Pinkerton was capital fun, wasn't it? She doesn't know a word of French, and was too proud to confess it. I believe it was that which made her part with me; and so thank Heaven for French. Vive la France! Vive l'Empereur! Vive Bonaparte!

    O Rebecca, Rebecca, for shame! cried Miss Sedley; for this was the greatest blasphemy Rebecca had as yet uttered; and in those days, in England, to say, Long live Bonaparte! was as much as to say, Long live Lucifer! How can you—how dare you have such wicked, revengeful thoughts?

    Revenge may be wicked, but it's natural, answered Miss Rebecca. I'm no angel. And, to say the truth, she certainly was not.

    For it may be remarked in the course of this little conversation (which took place as the coach rolled along lazily by the river side) that though Miss Rebecca Sharp has twice had occasion to thank Heaven, it has been, in the first place, for ridding her of some person whom she hated, and secondly, for enabling her to bring her enemies to some sort of perplexity or confusion; neither of which are very amiable motives for religious gratitude, or such as would be put forward by persons of a kind and placable disposition. Miss Rebecca was not, then, in the least kind or placable. All the world used her ill, said this young misanthropist, and we may be pretty certain that persons whom all the world treats ill, deserve entirely the treatment they get. The world is a looking-glass, and gives back to every man the reflection of his own face. Frown at it, and it will in turn look sourly upon you; laugh at it and with it, and it is a jolly kind companion; and so let all young persons take their choice. This is certain, that if the world neglected Miss Sharp, she never was known to have done a good action in behalf of anybody; nor can it be expected that twenty-four young ladies should all be as amiable as the heroine of this work, Miss Sedley (whom we have selected for the very reason that she was the best-natured of all, otherwise what on earth was to have prevented us from putting up Miss Swartz, or Miss Crump, or Miss Hopkins, as heroine in her place!) it could not be expected that every one should be of the humble and gentle temper of Miss Amelia Sedley; should take every opportunity to vanquish Rebecca's hard-heartedness and ill-humour; and, by a thousand kind words and offices, overcome, for once at least, her hostility to her kind.

    Miss Sharp's father was an artist, and in that quality had given lessons of drawing at Miss Pinkerton's school. He was a clever man; a pleasant companion; a careless student; with a great propensity for running into debt, and a partiality for the tavern. When he was drunk, he used to beat his wife and daughter; and the next morning, with a headache, he would rail at the world for its neglect of his genius, and abuse, with a good deal of cleverness, and sometimes with perfect reason, the fools, his brother painters. As it was with the utmost difficulty that he could keep himself, and as he owed money for a mile round Soho, where he lived, he thought to better his circumstances by marrying a young woman of the French nation, who was by profession an opera-girl. The humble calling of her female parent Miss Sharp never alluded to, but used to state subsequently that the Entrechats were a noble family of Gascony, and took great pride in her descent from them. And curious it is that as she advanced in life this young lady's ancestors increased in rank and splendour.

    Rebecca's mother had had some education somewhere, and her daughter spoke French with purity and a Parisian accent. It was in those days rather a rare accomplishment, and led to her engagement with the orthodox Miss Pinkerton. For her mother being dead, her father, finding himself not likely to recover, after his third attack of delirium tremens, wrote a manly and pathetic letter to Miss Pinkerton, recommending the orphan child to her protection, and so descended to the grave, after two bailiffs had quarrelled over his corpse. Rebecca was seventeen when she came to Chiswick, and was bound over as an articled pupil; her duties being to talk French, as we have seen; and her privileges to live cost free, and, with a few guineas a year, to gather scraps of knowledge from the professors who attended the school.

    She was small and slight in person; pale, sandy-haired, and with eyes habitually cast down: when they looked up they were very large, odd, and attractive; so attractive that the Reverend Mr. Crisp, fresh from Oxford, and curate to the Vicar of Chiswick, the Reverend Mr. Flowerdew, fell in love with Miss Sharp; being shot dead by a glance of her eyes which was fired all the way across Chiswick Church from the school-pew to the reading-desk. This infatuated young man used sometimes to take tea with Miss Pinkerton, to whom he had been presented by his mamma, and actually proposed something like marriage in an intercepted note, which the one-eyed apple-woman was charged to deliver. Mrs. Crisp was summoned from Buxton, and abruptly carried off her darling boy; but the idea, even, of such an eagle in the Chiswick dovecot caused a great flutter in the breast of Miss Pinkerton, who would have sent away Miss Sharp but that she was bound to her under a forfeit, and who never could thoroughly believe the young lady's protestations that she had never exchanged a single word with Mr. Crisp, except under her own eyes on the two occasions when she had met him at tea.

    By the side of many tall and bouncing young ladies in the establishment, Rebecca Sharp looked like a child. But she had the dismal precocity of poverty. Many a dun had she talked to, and turned away from her father's door; many a tradesman had she coaxed and wheedled into good-humour, and into the granting of one meal more. She sate commonly with her father, who was very proud of her wit, and heard the talk of many of his wild companions—often but ill-suited for a girl to hear. But she never had been a girl, she said; she had been a woman since she was eight years old. Oh, why did Miss Pinkerton let such a dangerous bird into her cage?

    The fact is, the old lady believed Rebecca to be the meekest creature in the world, so admirably, on the occasions when her father brought her to Chiswick, used Rebecca to perform the part of the ingenue; and only a year before the arrangement by which Rebecca had been admitted into her house, and when Rebecca was sixteen years old, Miss Pinkerton majestically, and with a little speech, made her a present of a doll—which was, by the way, the confiscated property of Miss Swindle, discovered surreptitiously nursing it in school-hours. How the father and daughter laughed as they trudged home together after the evening party (it was on the occasion of the speeches, when all the professors were invited) and how Miss Pinkerton would have raged had she seen the caricature of herself which the little mimic, Rebecca, managed to make out of her doll. Becky used to go through dialogues with it; it formed the delight of Newman Street, Gerrard Street, and the Artists' quarter: and the young painters, when they came to take their gin-and-water with their lazy, dissolute, clever, jovial senior, used regularly to ask Rebecca if Miss Pinkerton was at home: she was as well known to them, poor soul! as Mr. Lawrence or President West. Once Rebecca had the honour to pass a few days at Chiswick; after which she brought back Jemima, and erected another doll as Miss Jemmy: for though that honest creature had made and given her jelly and cake enough for three children, and a seven-shilling piece at parting, the girl's sense of ridicule was far stronger than her gratitude, and she sacrificed Miss Jemmy quite as pitilessly as her sister.

    The catastrophe came, and she was brought to the Mall as to her home. The rigid formality of the place suffocated her: the prayers and the meals, the lessons and the walks, which were arranged with a conventual regularity, oppressed her almost beyond endurance; and she looked back to the freedom and the beggary of the old studio in Soho with so much regret, that everybody, herself included, fancied she was consumed with grief for her father. She had a little room in the garret, where the maids heard her walking and sobbing at night; but it was with rage, and not with grief. She had not been much of a dissembler, until now her loneliness taught her to feign. She had never mingled in the society of women: her father, reprobate as he was, was a man of talent; his conversation was a thousand times more agreeable to her than the talk of such of her own sex as she now encountered. The pompous vanity of the old schoolmistress, the foolish good-humour of her sister, the silly chat and scandal of the elder girls, and the frigid correctness of the governesses equally annoyed her; and she had no soft maternal heart, this unlucky girl, otherwise the prattle and talk of the younger children, with whose care she was chiefly intrusted, might have soothed and interested her; but she lived among them two years, and not one was sorry that she went away. The gentle tender-hearted Amelia Sedley was the only person to whom she could attach herself in the least; and who could help attaching herself to Amelia?

    The happiness—the superior advantages of the young women round about her, gave Rebecca inexpressible pangs of envy. What airs that girl gives herself, because she is an Earl's grand-daughter, she said of one. How they cringe and bow to that Creole, because of her hundred thousand pounds! I am a thousand times cleverer and more charming than that creature, for all her wealth. I am as well bred as the Earl's grand-daughter, for all her fine pedigree; and yet every one passes me by here. And yet, when I was at my father's, did not the men give up their gayest balls and parties in order to pass the evening with me? She determined at any rate to get free from the prison in which she found herself, and now began to act for herself, and for the first time to make connected plans for the future.

    She took advantage, therefore, of the means of study the place offered her; and as she was already a musician and a good linguist, she speedily went through the little course of study which was considered necessary for ladies in those days. Her music she practised incessantly, and

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