The Complete Works of Willia
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THE NEW YORK PUBLIC LIBRARY ASTOR, LENOX AND TILDEN FOUNDATIONS THE COLLECTION OF REGINALD H. E. STARR PRESENTED IN LOVING MEMORY BY HIS MOTHER 1927 Atandard Dibrarp dition THE COMPLETE WORKS OF WILLIAM MAKEPEACE THACKERAY WITH ILLUSTRATIONS BY THE AUTHOR AND 0 THERS, AND WITH INTRODUCTORY NOTES SETTING FORTH THE HISTORY OF THE SEVERAL WORKS IN TWENTY-TWO VOLUMES VOLUME XX ae h Mrs. Perkines Bal’ (page 14) Jl ve ® | a Rutt air nant, sata’ . alu iis, a a Jfr. IT esek wv eT ee em | ‘J x ry a ith Py ili) ui " ‘ ; = Oe ilu =, of . ; a“ a iw = Mrs. Perkiiss Bali (page 14) We Rae der 2 So lie aledises, acd Mr. Wiiter CHRISTMAS STORIES BALLADS AND OTHER POEMS TALES BY WILLIAM MAKEPEACE THACKERAY WITH THE ORIGINAL ILLUSTRATIONS BOSTON AND NEW YORK HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN AND COMPANY Che Riverside Press, Cambridge ee — ~~ { THE NEW YORK PUBLIC LIBRARY 836483A ASTOR, LENOX AND TILDEN FOUNDALIONS R 4927 L ah: Copyright, 1889, Br HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN & 00, The Riverside Presa Printed by H. 0. , Cambridge, Houghton and Mass. ,0 8A . ove e* o & ‘4 a4 at bd ew & © & & 8 ‘ ‘ ac *%so & © See sev . cotetee * e% of e oe 6 “© ee o tee ene? INTRODUCTORY NOTE. We have referred more than once in these notes to the relation subsisting between Thackeray and Dickens. To the superficial eye, the two figures always seem contrasted : they were of the same generation, of the same race, of the same city ; they both wrote fiction, and yet appeared to be at opposite poles. If one brought out a serial novel in green covers, the other followed with one in yellow covers ; if one set the fashion of Christmas books, the other was prompt to trim his sails to the same breeze. On the other hand, the admirer of Thackeray is apt to resent any sugges- tion that his hero was in any way indebted to Dickens, and to be impatient of the kind of comparison which bids two authors stand back to back that critical friends may see which is the taller. Certainly it is more interesting to take a survey of the two authors from a point which permits each to be triangu- lated by himself, but the relation between the two is not one of merely accidental contemporaneousness. Thackeray with his profound self-consciousness had also, no doubt, an uneasy surface consciousness which made him keep an eye pretty constantly on this dangerous and surely more pros- perous rival. In the beginning of his career, when the pen- cil seemed a little readier to his hand than the pen, he even had the notion of playing up to the rising young author in vi INTRODUCTORY NOTE. the same drama. He has told the story himself in a pleas- ant speech which he made in 1858 at the Royal Academy dinner. Dickens had responded to the toast of literature, and Thackeray, whose name was joined in the toast, supple- mented the thanks with this reminiscence : — “Had it not been for the direct act of my friend who has just sat down, I should most likely never have been included in the toast which you have been pleased to drink; and I should have tried to be, not a writer, but a painter or de- signer of pictures. That was the object of my early ambi- tion; and I can remember when Mr. Dickens was a very young man, and had commenced delighting the world with some charming humorous works, of which I cannot men- tion the name, but which were colored light green, and came out once a month, that this young man wanted an ar- tist to illustrate his writings; and I recollect walking up to his chambers with two or three drawings in my hand, which, strange to say, he did not find suitable. But for that unfortunate blight which came over my artistical ex- istence, it would have been my pride and my pleasure to have endeavored one day to find a place on these walls for one of my performances.” Both in public speeches and in printed criticism, as well as occasionally in private, Thackeray gave the meed of his praise to the genius of Dickens, but there are more un- guarded expressions of his aversion from what he no doubt esteemed the artificial sentiment of his popular rival. More than once he shot his satire at him, and probably was restrained from more frequent and more pungent derision by the conviction that an unreasoning public would be quite sure to charge his displeasure to the account of envy. Be this as it may, it is quite clear that Dickens acted some- INTRODUCTORY NOTE. vil what as a goad to the somewhat more slothful writer. It seems a little ironical to speak of Thackeray as slothful, when we are upon the nineteenth volume of his collected writings, and have three more to consider, but there is a sloth which masters one and a sloth which is native to the man but subject to a stronger will, and Thackeray, though slothful, felt the outward goad of circumstance as well as the inward prick of a literary conscience and that more subtle, more enduring influence which is the irrepressible breaking forth of the fountains of genius. If to these forces we add the superficial but still effective impulse of literary rivalry, we are not leaving Thackeray less human. We cannot say that A Christmas Carol was necessary to Mrs. Perkins’s Ball, but it is quite evident that the four or five Christmas books with which Thackeray delighted his contemporaries were generated in an atmosphere which had already been prepared by Dickens. Mrs. Perkins’s Ball, a little pink glazed quarto volume, was published at Christmas, 1846. It is far enough away from A Christmas Carol, and so is Our Street, published in the same style the year following. It would seem as though after these two experiments, in which the fact of a Christmas publication was almost all they had in common with Dickens’s ventures, that Thackeray struck upon a cleverer notion, for when at Christmas, 1848, he published Dr. Birch and his Young Friends, he showed himself in his own sphere, and yet with a Christmas audience clearly in mind. He was no longer avoiding the Dickens trail, but was striking out in a path of his own, and he pursued the way even more surely when he wrote, a few seasons later, The Ring and the Rose. These two books are not chil- dren’s books in the paltry sense which attaches to the Vill INTRODUCTORY NOTE. term, but they were, none the less, written with youthful readers in mind. Indeed, in his Prelude to the latter story he explains the origin of it in connection with a child’s party. The Kickleburys on the Rhine was published at Christmas, 1850, and The Rose and the Ring has its pref- ace dated December, 1854. The first serious poetical work of Thackeray’s to be printed appears to have been The Chronicle of the Drum, and to most readers it will remain as the most effective, regarded purely as a piece of literature. It was published first as an accompaniment to The Second Funeral ‘of Napoleon, in 1841. The other ballads and poems were printed chiefly in Fraser and Punch. Mr. Trollope tells a little anecdote re- garding The Crystal Palace: “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 Saturday, if not before, but did not come till late on Saturday 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 Zhe Times. In The Times of next Monday it appeared,— very much, I should think, to the delight of the readers of that august newspaper.”’? The few Harlter Poems which we have added . to the authorized collection of Thackeray’s poems were for the most part his contributions to The National Standard, his unlucky youthful venture, in 1833. The collection of Tales, with which this volume closes, is drawn from the posthumous edition of his writings issued INTRODUCTORY NOTE. 1x by his English publishers, and from a volume of odds and ends issued by George Redway with the title Sultan Stork and other Stories and Sketches, containing also a bibliog- raphy which has been of special service in the preparation of these notes. Elizabeth Brownrigge was published in Fraser's Magazine in August, September, 1832, when Thackeray was in his twenty-second year. It thus pre- cedes Catherine, and was born of a similar purpose to give @ Vicious dig at the false fiction of the day. Sultan Stork, with two illustrations by George Cruikshank, appeared in Ainsworth’s Magazine, February and May, 1842. Thack- eray had already used the signature of Goliah Gahagan in contributing The Professor to Bentley’s Miscellany in 1837, as well as more freely employing the creation in The Tre- mendous Adventures of Mujor Gahagan. Boston, September, 1889. CONTENTS CHRISTMAS STORIES. PAGE Mrs. PERKINS’S BALL .......4-e.-ce +e eee « I OuR STREET ...-.- +. «2 « © «© «© © © ec «© © © «© SL Dr. BIRCH AND HIS YOUNG FRIENDB ......-.- 65 THe KICKLEBURYS ON THE RHINE ......-. ++ 10 THE RosE AND THE RING; OR, THE HISTORY OF PRINCE GIGLIO AND PRINCE BULBO. ......«..--- 161 BALLADS. THE CHRONICLE OF THE DRUM.