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Thackeray and Bohemia

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Thackeray and Bohemia University of Cambridge Faculty of English Thackeray and Bohemia Antonia Harland-Lang Trinity Hall A dissertation submitted for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy 2010 ii For Moo and Petey iii This dissertation is the result of my own work and includes nothing which is the outcome of work done in collaboration. This dissertation does not exceed the regulation length, including footnotes, references, and appendices but excluding the bibliography. iv Abstract Whether as a counter-cultural phenomenon or a sociological myth, Bohemia has long eluded concrete definitions. In the last thirty years, however, there has been a noticeable contrast between the ambitious theoretical concerns of cultural historians of nineteenth- century Continental Bohemianism and the more staunchly biographical approaches of critics concerned with Bohemian writers in mid-Victorian England. In the absence of the Latin Quarter, attempts to define the English Bohemianism of Thackeray‘s era have been somewhat reductive, revolving around London establishments such as the Garrick Club and disparate groupings such as the metropolitan novelists, journalists, and playwrights who are sometimes pigeonholed as ‗Dickens‘s Young Men‘. This thesis uses the work of William Makepeace Thackeray (1811–63) to argue that such readings have lost sight of the profound impact which mid-Victorian ideas of Bohemianism had on a far wider section of middle-class Englishmen. Chapter 1 explores the pivotal role which Thackeray played in the translation of Bohemian behavioural ideals from France to England. Beginning and ending with his seminal Bohemian protagonist in Vanity Fair (1847–48), it surveys his engagement with the still-evolving ideas of Bohemianism at home and on the Continent. The chapter interrogates the relationship between the anglicized brand of homosociality which characterizes Thackeray‘s later fiction and the often contradictory images of Bohemianism which were circulating in 1830s and 40s Paris while he was an art student and then a foreign correspondent in the city. In the process, it considers the significant influence which these factors have exerted over later conceptions of Thackeray‘s biography and personality. As a whole, the chapter argues that his increasing focus on more anglicized spheres of masculine interaction in the late 1840s contributed to the emergence of a de-radicalized brand of middle-class English Bohemia. The second chapter considers the parallels between the impact of Thackeray‘s work and the contemporaneous writings of the famous chronicler of Parisian Bohemianism, Henry Murger (1822–61). Through analysis of cultural reception and literary form, this chapter investigates the way in which these writers have been both criticized and revered for perpetuating particularly inclusive myths of Bohemianism. It then explores the way in which Thackeray‘s Bildungsroman, The History of Pendennis (1848–50), helped to shape other myths of collective homosocial unconventionality — in particular, those which came to surround Fleet Street journalism. Chapters 3 and 4 are companion chapters, surveying the way in which ideas of Bohemianism developed post-Pendennis in the course of the 1850s and 60s. They demonstrate that the myths of ‗fast‘ Bohemian life which came to be associated with particular journalists, playwrights, and performers, were as much the product of critical attacks as any form of Bohemian self-representation. Exploring the work of ‗Bohemian‘ writers such as George Augustus Sala (1828–95) and Edmund Yates (1831–94), as well as the dynamics of London‘s eclectic club scene, these chapters conclude that ideas of a ‗fast‘ disreputable Bohemianism always coexisted with more widely accepted and understated Bohemian ideals which thrived on remaining undefined. v Contents Acknowledgements vi List of Illustrations vii Abbreviations ix Introduction Bohemian Histories: Painting Paradigms 1 Bohemian Instincts: Housetraining Thackeray 14 1. Le Roi de Bohême: Thackeray’s Translation of Bohemianism 1.1 Defining Defiance: Bohemia and the Dictionary 28 1.2 An Inspired Cockney in Paris and London 35 1.3 Flogging Bohemia: Biographical Extremes 49 1.4 ‗No abodes, no asylum‘: Bohemia Pathologized 61 2. Prosaic Romantics: Thackeray, Murger, and Bohemian Re-creations 2.1 Bohemia is Dead (Vive la Bohème!) 84 2.2 ‗At once unreal and warmly human‘ 101 2.3 Thinking Thackeray: Everybody‘s Past? 107 2.4 The Romance of Journalism 113 2.5 Dealing in Metaphors 132 3. The Chattering Classes: Disclosing Double-Standards in Victorian Bohemia 3.1 Hijacked by Dick Swiveller 145 3.2 Worse than a Parasitic Cuckoo 152 3.3 The Provincial Chatterer 157 3.4 Special Gossip 164 3.5 The Seat of War in the Garrick Club 173 4. Brothers of the Press? Bohemian Independence and Fraternal Cynicism 4.1 Drinking and Thinking in Tory Bohemia 201 4.2 Unbrotherly Metropolis, Unfriendly Bohemia 209 4.3 The Borrowed Machinery of Brotherhood 216 4.4 ‗Hang us if we don‘t all hang together!‘ 229 Conclusion: Idle Rebellions 240 Bibliography 245 vi Acknowledgements First and foremost my love and gratitude go to my amazing parents, Christine Harland- Lang and Peter Lang, to whom this thesis is dedicated. They have been a constant source of support, inspiration, and happiness, and I would have been lost without them. Secondly, I would like to thank my supervisor, Clare Pettitt, for the conversations and observations which have helped to make this project what it is. Sincere thanks are also due to Adrian Poole who has been a caring and meticulous advisor throughout. Similarly, Heather Glen, Raphael Lyne, Peter Mandler, Jan-Melissa Schramm, Shankarayan Srinath, and Andrew Zurcher have all provided invaluable advice over the years for which I am extremely grateful. I am also indebted to the European Commission, to my mother, and to Trinity Hall for the vital funding without which a PhD would not have been a possibility. It is difficult to put into words how grateful I am to my friends at Wolfson and Trinity Hall. However, heartfelt thanks in equal measure to Anna Harpin, Megan Jones, Claire Lockwood, Laura Pechey, and Johnny Regan for their unfaltering friendship, great wisdom, and sense of fun — conversations with all have had an immense impact on my work. Just as significantly, lots of love and thanks to Laura Macleod Brown and Mary McAuley for the joys of Highsett and much more. I have also benefited enormously from the friendship and advice of Catherine Brown, John Gómez, Alice Hall, Sylvia Karastathi, Flora Willson, and other post-1830s people. I certainly owe a significant debt to my brilliant brothers, Edward and Lucian, and thank them especially for their insights into homosocial behaviour in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Likewise, warm thanks to Lucia Gómez, George Shirtcliffe, and Alice Wyman for kind words all along the way. I am also particularly grateful to my grandma, June Harland, for her lively interest in the progress of this project. I wish that my grandad, Peter, was here to see its completion. Finally, David Francis has been the bookends to this thesis. Though he could not be there throughout, without his love, consideration, and anti-bourj irreverence, it could not have happened at all. At no point did he ever lose confidence in either myself or Thackeray. He knows how grateful I am. vii List of Illustrations a Thackeray, The Paris Sketch Book (1840) 2 b Charles Courtry, ‗Comment fut institué le cènacle de la Bohême‘, 9 from Henry Murger, Scènes de la vie de Bohème (Paris: Michel Lévy frères, 1886), originally published 1851 c Gelett Burgess, ‗Map of Bohemia‘, The Lark, 1 March 1896 16 1a Thackeray, ‗Rebecca‘s Farewell‘, Chapter I, Vanity Fair (1847–48) 28 1b Thackeray, ‗Pen pursuing his law studies‘, Chapter XXVIII, 34 The History of Pendennis (1848–50) 1c Richard Doyle, ‗Our Barry-eux Tapestry: Ye Foraye of the 44 Frenche‘, Punch (29 January 1848), 33–38 (p. 36) 1d Thackeray, ‗A Club in an Uproar‘, Punch (11 March 1848), 46 95–96 (p. 95) 1e Thackeray, Chapter Initial (Becky as Napoleon), Chapter LXIV, 52 Vanity Fair 1f Daniel Maclise, Sketch of Thackeray, 1832 59 1g Thackeray, ‗Foreign Correspondence‘, National Standard of 69 Literature (22 June 1833) 2a Le Corsaire-Satan (5 July 1846), 1 88 2b Frontispiece, Scènes de la vie de Bohème (Paris: Michel Lévy 92 frères, 1886) 2c Thackeray, ‗Pen and Mr Finucane — subeditor of the Pall 114 Mall Gazette‘, Chapter XXXV, Pendennis 2d Thackeray, Chapter Initial (Pan with a young Pen), Chapter 128 XXX, Pendennis 2e Engraving from Schiller‘s ‗Pegasus in Harness‘ (1796) 136 3a ‗Kyd‘ (Joseph Clayton Clarke), ‗Dick Swiveller‘, from a Dickens 147 postcard series published by Raphael Tuck & Sons in 1889 3b ‗Our Foreign Correspondents‘, Punch (20 May 1848), 210 168 viii 3c William McConnell, ‗Five O‘Clock p.m.: The Fashionable Club‘, 181 from George Augustus Sala, Twice Round the Clock (serialized in the Welcome Guest, May–November 1858) 3d Thackeray, ‗Mr Brown‘s Letters to a Young Man About Town‘, 191 Punch (11 August 1849), 53 3e Headline illustration, Time, 2 (January 1880), 385 195 3f ‗Club Scandals‘, Time, 2 (January 1880), 393 196 4a Daniel Maclise, ‗The Fraserians‘, Fraser‘s Magazine, 11 201 (January 1835), 14–15 4b Frontispiece, The Savage Club Papers (London: Tinsley 234 Brothers, 1867) ix Abbreviations OED Oxford English Dictionary Letters Ray, Gordon, ed., The Letters and Private Papers of William Makepeace Thackeray, 4 vols (London: Oxford University Press, 1945–46) Wisdom —— Thackeray: The Age of Wisdom, 1847–1863 (London: Oxford University Press, 1958) Adversity —— Thackeray: The Uses of Adversity, 1811–1846 (London: Oxford University Press, 1955) Works Thackeray, William Makepeace, The Works of William Makepeace Thackeray with Biographical Introductions by his Daughter, Anne Ritchie, 13 vols (London: Smith, Elder & Co., 1899) Recollections Yates, Edmund, Edmund Yates: His Recollections and Experiences, 2 vols (London: R. Bentley & Son, 1884) 1 Introduction Bohemian Histories: Painting Paradigms ‗By the end of the [nineteenth] century [...] if you sat on the floor or boiled an egg unassisted you became a Bohemian.
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