STEEL PLATE.--" Como." AFRICAN DEVELOPMENT. The Soudan. By Sir Samuel W. ... Fortnightly Review........ Contemporary Review.. 736 328 BALLAD OF DEAD Men's Bay, THE. By Algernon Charles ..Academy.... Westminster Review... Cornhill Magazine. ..Fortnightly Review... ....... Macmillan's Magazine. 733 35 359 6 Neuman....... man.... 598 CAPITAL PUNISHMENT, THE CASE AGAINST, By B. Paul Fortnightly Review..... 518 Chambers's Journal. 535 121 Spectator... 620 .Murray's Magazine.... 552 194 New Review... 577 545 .Cornhill Magazine 768 ... National Review.... 367 .Contemporary Review..... 393 .Murray's Magazine.... 178 Nineteenth Century.. 466 Contemporary Review.. 671 ..Longman's Magazine... 773 Fortnightly Review.. 723 Academy. 535 New Review. 355 ..Murray's Magazine 853 .Cornhill Magazine.. 478 ..141, 284, 427, 573, 717, 860 309 325 433 803 Macmillan's Magazine. 507 The Spectator ...... 421 Contemporary Review.. 51 . Spectator... 638 63 Nineteenth Century 705 About Evolution, 281- The Origin of the Marriage Relation, 282— The Glacial Period, 283- Education in the Encyclopædia : A Dictionary of Universal Knowledge, 859-Story of a Mountain, 860-In Search of a Son, 860. Temple Bar. 802 108 Temple Bar... 184 ..Saturday Review... 213 .. Fortnightly Review.. 829 348 42 854 664 Strange Mesmeric Phenomenon, 143-Small-pox and Vaccination in Belgium, 144-Leprosy in India, 287-The "NETHER WORLD," THE. By Archdeacon F. W. Farrar..... Contemporary Review....... SOME ONDIAN INSECTS. By C. T. Buckland, F.Z.S. SOME RECENT SCIENTIFIC ADVANCES. By Alfrea J. H. Crespi. Gentleman's Magazine. THOMAS HARDY: THE HISTORIAN OF WESSEX. By J. M. WOMEN OF SPAIN, THE. By Donna Emilia Pardo Bazan.....Fortnightly Review.. ........ 657 119 278 558 670 484 OF FOREIGN LITERATURE, SCIENCE, AND ART. Eclectic LITERATURE, ART, SCIENCE, BELLESLETTRES ETC. WHITNEY & JOCELYN.MY Eclectic Magazine New Series. Vol. L., No. 1. JULY, 1889. THE PROTOTYPES OF THACKERAY'S CHARACTERS. In a letter to an American friend, who was seeking the prototypes of some of her father's characters, and especially of George Warrington and Blanche Amory, Mrs. Anne Thackeray Ritchie used these words: "My father scarcely ever put real characters into his books, though he of course found suggestions among the people with whom he was thrown. I have always thought there was something of himself in Warrington. Perhaps the serious part of his nature was vaguely drawn in that character. There was also a little likeness to his friend Edward Fitzgerald, who always lived a very solitary life. When I was a girl the Blanche Amory type was a great deal more common than it is now, and I remember several young ladies who used to sing and laugh and flirt very amusingly, but I am quite sure you will not find anything definite anywhere." Thackeray himself makes a similar disclaimer in that admirable little Roundabout paper De Finibus. But, on the other hand, Edmund Yates asserts that "it was a pleasant peculiarity of Mr. NEW SERIES.-VOL. L., No. 1. Old Series o plete in 63 voy's. 66 Thackeray's to make semi-veiled but unmistakable allusions in his books to persons at the time obnoxious to him." And he instances the fact that during the unpleasant episode at the Garrick Club, which lost him Thackeray's friendship, and estranged Dickens and Thackeray, out came the (I think) seventh number of The Virginians, casting a wholly irrelevant and ridiculous lugged-in-by-the-shoulders allusion to me as Young Grub Street in its pages. Mr. Yates feelingly adds that this was 66 generally considered to be hitting below the belt while pretending to fight on the square, and to be unworthy of a man in Thackeray's position." In a succeeding number of the same story there was another fling at Yates as my dear young literary friend, George Garbage." 66 George Augustus Sala, whose "Twice Around the Clock" papers were then running through the Welcome Guest, referred humorously to "Mr. Polyphemus the novelist' and his "Tom Thumb foes". "George Garbage" and "Young Grub Street" and asked what was the effect of all the thunder that had been launched against them: "Is Grub Street," he inquired," in some murky den, with a vulture's quill dipped in vitriol, inditing libels upon the great, good, and wise of the day? Wonder upon wonders, Grub Street sits in a handsome study, listening to his wife laughing over her crochet-work at Mr. Polyphemus's last attack on him, and dandling a little child upon his knee! Oh, the strange world in which we live, and the post that people will knock their heads against." ThatPendennis" was in a measure autobiographical, and that many of the novelist's friends were introduced into it under more or less thin disguises, is evident from many passages in the recently published "Letters" to Mrs. Brookfield, and is, indeed, confessed in this note to George Moreland Crawford, Paris correspondent of the London Daily News, which accompanied a presentation copy of the book: "You will find much to remind you of old talks and faces-of William John O'Connell, Jack Sheehan, and Andrew Archdecne. There is something of you in Warrington, but he is not fit to hold a candle to you, for, taking you all around, you are the most genuine fellow that ever strayed from a better world into this. You don't smoke, and he is a consumed smoker of tobacco; Bordeaux and port were your favorites at the 'Deanery' and the 'Garriek,' and Warrington is always guzzling beer; but he has your honesty, and, like you, could not posture if he tried. You have a strong affinity for the Irish. May you some day find an Irish girl to lead you to matrimony; there's no such good wife as a daughter of Erin." Warrington, therefore, seems to have been drawn largely from Crawford, although there is probably some truth in Mrs. Ritchie's suggestion that it vaguely represents the serious side-the Dr. Jekyll side-of Thackeray's own character. The vain, frivolous, snobbish side-the Dr. Hyde side-is undoubtedly presented in Arthur Pendennis. Indeed, some of the sketches of Arthur are recognizable portraits of the author-artist. Andrew Archdecne stood for Foker, Jack Sheehan for Captain Shandy, and William John O'Connell for Costigan. Archdecne, like Foker, was small in stature and owned a large estate, which enabled him to gratify his tastes for eccentric clothing and for sports of all kinds. He especially delighted in driving coaches as an amateur. With O'Connell, Sheehan, and Crawford, he was in 'the habit of frequenting a tavern near St. Paul's known as the a Deanery," because it had been presided over by "Ingoldsby" Barham— canon of the neighboring cathedral. Archie was good-natured enough, but he never quite forgave Thackeray his caricature. The night that Thackeray delivered his first lecture on the "English Humorists," Archdecne was present, and, meeting him later at the Cider Cellars Club surrounded by a coterie of congratulators, he called out : "How are you, Thack? I was at your show to-day at Willis's. What a lot of swells you had there-yes! But I thought it was dull-devilish dull! I will tell you what it is, Thack, you want a piano!" William John O'Connell was a cousin of the Liberator's, and Edmund Yates describes him as an Irish gentleman "of the old fighting, drinking, creditor-defying school," who lived in London nobody exactly knew how. "He was a very handsome old man, with a red face and white hair, walked lame from the effects of a bullet in his hip received in a duel; and had the deepest, most rolling, most delightful brogue. With a compatriot named O'Gorman Mahone, he also shared the honor of being the Mulligan of Mrs. Perkins's Ball.' 66 66 In the Roundabout paper already alluded to, Thackeray asserts that he had invented Costigan, as I suppose authors invent their personages," out of scraps, heel-taps, odds and ends of characters." And he tells the following entertaining story which, he says, happened ten years after the publication of "Pendennis": "I was smoking in a tavern parlor one night, and this Costigan came into the room alive-the very man; the most remarkable resemblance of the printed sketches of the man, of the rude drawings in which I had depicted him. He had the same little coat, the same battered hat, cocked on one eye, the same twinkle in that eye. 'Sir,' said I, knowing him to be an old friend whom I had met in unknown regions-'Sir,' I said, ' may I offer you a glass of brandy-and-water? ' Bedad, ye may,' says he, and I'll sing ye a song tu.' Of course he spoke with an Irish brogue. Of course he had been in the army; in ten minutes he pulled out an army agent's account whereon his name was written; a few months after we read of him in a police court. had I come to know him, to divine him? Nothing shall convince me that I have not seen that man in the world of spirits; in the world of spirits and water I know I did, but How that is a mere quibble of words. I was not surprised when he spoke in an Irish brogue. I had had cognizance of him before, somehow." Elsewhere Thackeray tells a similar story about another of his characters: "A gentleman came in to see me the other day who was so like the picture of Philip Firmin in Mr. Walker's charming drawings in the Cornhill Magazine, that he was quite a curiosity to me. The same eyes, beard, shoulders, just as you have seen them from month to month. Well, he is not like the Philip Firmin in my mind. Asleep, asleep in the grave, lies the bold, the generous, the reckless, the tenderhearted creature whom I have made to pass through those adventures which have just been brought to an end. It is years since I heard the laughter ringing, or saw the bright When I knew him both were blue eyes. young; I become young as I think of him." "Let Thackeray's recently published ters" give much interesting information as to the lay figures from whom he modelled his characters, although the good taste of the editor has in all cases supWe are left, pressed the real names. therefore, to conjecture the identity of the person described in the following paragraph, who evidently sat for the Fotheringay: "She is kind, frank, open-handed, not very refined, with a warm outpouring of language, and thinks herself the most feeling creature in the world; the way in which she fascinates She afsome people is quite extraordinary. fected me by telling me of an old friend of ours in the country-Dr. Portman's daughter, indeed, who was a parson in our parts-who died of consumption the other day after leading the purest and saintliest life, and who after she had received the sacrament read over her friend's letter, and actually died with it on the bed. Her husband adores her; he is an old cavalry colonel of sixty, and the poor fellow, away now in India, and yearning after her, writes her yards and yards of the most tender, submissive, frantic letters; five or six other men are crazy about her. She trotted them all out, one after another, before me last night; not humorously, I mean, not making fun of them, but complacently describing their adoration for her, and acquiescing in their opinion of herself. Friends, lover, husband, she coaxes them all, and no more cares for them than worthy Miss Fotheringay did. Oh, Becky is a trifle to her, and I am sure I might draw her picture and she would never know in the least that it was herself. I suppose I did not fall in love with her myself because we were brought up together; she was a very simple, generous creature then." Blanche Amory combined the characteristics of at least two young girls who Letters," flit across the pages of these " 3 one of whom is called Miss G. and the "Poor little B., says Thackeray in one place, "does any one suppose I should be such an idiot as to write verses to her? I never wrote her a line. I once drew a picture in her music book, a caricature of a spooney song in which I laughed at her, as has been my practice, alas !'' The first reference to Miss G. occurs in the following passage (page 49): "At the train whom do you think I found? We Miss G., who says she is Blanche Amory, and I think she is Blanche Amory; amiable at times, amusing, clever, and depraved. talked and persiflated all the way to London, and the idea of her will help me to a good chapter, in which I will make Pendennis and Blanche play at being in love, such a wicked, false, humbugging London love as two blasé London people might act and half deceive themselves that they were in earnest. That will complete the cycle of Mr. Pen's worldly experiences, and then we will make, or try to wicked worldlings, most of us; may God betmake, a good man of him. Oh, me! we are ter us and cleanse us!" Here is a curious little glimpse (page 71): "At Procter's was not furiously amusingHer parents were the eternal G. bores one. of course there, the papa with a suspiciouslooking little order in his buttonhole, and a chevalier d'industrie air which I can't get over. E. did not sing, but on the other hand Mrs. did. She was passionate, she was enthusiastic, she was sublime, she was tender. When she had crushed G., who stood by the piano hating her and paying her the most profound compliments, she tripped off on my arm to the cab in waiting." Dr. Sandwith says that Thackeray mentioned to him the name of the original Blanche Amory, and the novelist related how he once travelled with her in a railway carriage and cut his finger. She tore what seemed to be a costly cambric handkerchief and exclaimed: have sacrificed for you!" but he detected her hiding the common rag which she had torn. 66 See what I Was this B. or G.? And was it B. or G. who is humorously sketched off in the following passage from the letters of Jane Welsh Carlyle? If "Have you been reading Thackeray's' Pendennis'?" writes Mrs. Carlyle in 1851. so, you have made acquaintance with Blanche Amory; and when I tell you that my young lady of last week is the original of that portrait, you will give me joy that she, lady's-maid, and infinite baggage are all gone! Not that is quite such a little devil the poor little |
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