Thackeray’s drawings at Houghton Library
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Citation Lonoff de Cuevas, Sue. 2011. Thackeray’s drawings at Houghton Library. Harvard Library Bulletin 21 (4): 13-38.
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Sue Lonof de Cuevas
hen Charlotte Brontë’s editor asked her to illustrate a new edition of Jane Eyre, she turned him down. She lacked the skill to do it herself, she explained, and hiring someone else would be unwise because her characters, “mostly unattractive to look at,” should not be subjected to the idealization that “common-place illustrators” practiced. For her, the sole and supreme exception was William Makepeace Tackeray:
How he can render with a few black lines and dots, shades of expression so fne, so real; traits of character so minute, so subtle, so difcult to seize and fx—I cannot tell; I can only wonder and admire. Tackeray may not be a painter, but he is a wizard of a draughtsman; touched with his pencil, paper lives.1
In 1848, when she made this assessment, she was still writing as Currer Bell and distancing herself from the literary eminence that Tackeray had sought for eleven grinding years. His richly illustrated Vanity Fair was still coming out in serial installments; yet already, in the judgment of more readers than Brontë, it had set him in the highest rank of English novelists. “Tere is no use denying the matter or blinking it now,” Tackeray wrote to his mother that January. “I am become a sort of great man in my way—all but at the top of the tree: indeed there if the truth were known and having a great fght up there with Dickens.” 2 Tackeray would occupy the literary heights until well into the twentieth century, and not just for Vanity Fair. Te novels that followed his greatest triumph—Pendennis, Te History of Henry Esmond, Te Newcomes, Te Virginians, Te Adventures of Philip, Denis Duval, Lovel the Widower—continued to attract loyal readers, and four included his own illustrations.3 He was also celebrated for the shorter writings that preceded and succeeded Vanity Fair: contributions to Punch, Te Book of Snobs, Te Paris Sketchbook, Te English Humourists, and Te Four Georges, to name only a few. For most of these
1 Charlotte Brontë to William Smith Williams, March 11, 1848, Te Letters of Charlotte Brontë, ed. Margaret Smith, 3 vols. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1995–2004), 2:41. 2 William Makepeace Tackeray to Anne Carmichael-Smyth, January 7, 1848, Te Letters and Private Papers of William Makepeace Tackeray, ed. Gordon N. Ray, 4 vols. (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1945), 2:333 (hereafer cited as Letters). 3 Tey were Pendennis, Te Virginians, Lovel the Widower, and the unfnished Denis Duval. too, he prepared illustrations. In pen-and-ink, pencil, and occasionally color, they range from a few def lines of caricature to the fnely detailed drawings from which copperplates or lithographs were made. Some were intended for publication, others served as preliminary sketches. Beyond the drawings that accompany his writings are those to which the text is subordinate—printed as folios, prepared for friends, inserted in his letters, or dashed of for his own amusement. Te twenty examples considered here represent a tiny fraction of a trove that merits more sustained attention. Tackeray was not only one of the most celebrated writers of his period. He was a multifaceted Victorian, wide-ranging in his interests, witty and urbane, a clubman yet also a devoted single parent long before that term became current. Beyond illustrating aspects of his work and life: his drawings can be read as stories in themselves, as keys to his connections with the people he loved, and as comments on the mores of his era. Te earliest Tackeray drawing in Harvard’s archives is in an album assembled by Blanche Paxton, the daughter of the architect of the Crystal Palace (see fgure 3).4 Although this pencil sketch is undated, the caption narrows the possibilities. Tackeray was born in Calcutta, but like most sons of the Anglo-Indian gentry, he was sent back to England for schooling and therefore separated from his mother between the ages of fve and nine. Since she drew “Te House and grounds” and he drew the fgures, this collaborative drawing must have been made afer her return from India on July 5, 1820. Te summery dresses, the tea served on the lawn, and Paxton’s note that he was then “a small boy” suggest that he made it before going back to school or, if not in 1820, soon afer. Te features of the child at the center of the drawing are too generic to attribute with confdence. Still, young William was chubby, like the boy in the sketch, and a watercolor painting of the Tackeray family, made by George Chinnery when the boy was three, shows a curl in the middle of his forehead. If the sketch is autobiographical, the woman to his lef would be his mother, Anne Carmichael-Smyth, who was known for dressing splendidly; the other boy could be his cousin, Richmond Shakespear, who had sailed with him to England in 1816; and the little girl would be his orphaned cousin, Mary Graham.5 In any case, the action mocks the usual decorum of lawn parties. Te woman extends a warning hand to stop the young pugilist from duking it out with the boy on his right, who is restrained by what appears to be a leash. Te holder of the leash
4 Harry Elkins Widener Collection, HEW 8.6.2 F (10). 5 Tackeray’s mother, Anne Becher, married Richmond Tackeray in 1810. He died in 1815. Eighteen months later, she married Henry Carmichael-Smyth, the frst love whom her mother had earlier prevented her from marrying. Unless otherwise noted, biographical details throughout this article come from Gordon N. Ray, Tackeray: Te Uses of Adversity 1811–1846 (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1955) and Tackeray: Te Age of Wisdom, 1847–1863 (rpt. New York: Octagon, 1972) (hereafer cited as Adversity and Wisdom).
14 Tackeray’s Drawings at Houghton Library Figure 3. Tackeray. Childhood drawing of his family and house. Pencil, circa 1820. 19 x 23.5 cm. fHEW 8.6.2 (10). Harry Elkins Widener Collection. extends his free hand toward a man who points a rude fnger at the woman pouring tea, while the little girl sucks her thumb. “His drawing is wonderful,” his mother wrote afer seeing him again in England.6 He had sent her samples when she was in India—the earliest, of a horse and rider, penciled ffeen days before his sixth birthday—and clearly, during those years of separation, sketching became for him a primary means of self-expression and creativity. As his daughter Annie observed “He liked to draw, not so much the things he saw as the things he thought about: knights with heraldic shields, soldiers, brigands, dragons, and demons; his school-books were all ornamented with funny fanciful designs, his papers were covered with them.” 7 But if Tackeray was assiduous at drawing, he balked at studying when it became tedious. From the local school at Chiswick he transferred to Charterhouse and then entered Trinity College, Cambridge, where he chose to take an honours degree. He
6 Anne Tackeray Ritchie, “Te Boyhood of Tackeray,” St. Nicholas 17 (December 1889): 107. 7 Ibid., 107–108.
Sue Lonof de Cuevas 15 soon became diverted, however, and so confrmed the judgment of his Chiswick schoolmaster: “He sees things in a minute which others plod over for hours, but his idleness is almost unconquerable.” 8 Two etchings from this period, hand-colored in copies given to Harvard, lampoon an undergraduate’s progress (see fgure 4).9 In the one captioned “First Term,” a student leans over a book of mathematics,10 his eyelids heavy with fatigue. Te furniture in his bare-walled room is limited to the strictly necessary: straight-back chair, writing desk, tea table, bookcase. In “Second Term,” the evidence of the student’s dissipation abounds. Dressed like a dandy and pufng on a pipe, he sprawls on a sofa, his slippered foot narrowly missing the wine glass next to the decanter to his right. To his lef, a fre blazes; carpeting and heavy curtains increase his creature comforts. Above the mantel is a painting of what seems to be a female nude; behind him is a statue of another nude whose arms make an efort at modesty. As discreet as these nudes now seem, for Tackeray they are an exception. Ray, his leading biographer, notes that he “liked to talk and write bawdy to congenial company.” 11 But if any risqué drawings accompanied those writings, they have gone permanently missing. By the time he quit Trinity in 1830, he was on his way to becoming a worldling, a term he would later use for Becky Sharp. Even as a student, he made several trips to Paris in which gambling and carousing vied with visits to the Louvre and the theater. Afer leaving university, he traveled to Germany, where he took a steamer up the Rhine and then settled in Weimar for six months before returning to London to take up the study of law. While retaining his connection with the Inns of Court, he soon tired of his new profession and spent his time in London reading, drawing, and idling with frivolous friends. On turning twenty-one, he invested in two businesses, frst a bill-discounting frm and then a short-lived weekly paper entitled the National Standard. He might have continued to dabble indefnitely, if the inheritance he had always counted on had not been wiped out by bad investments and his own extravagance. Instead, by 1835 he found himself nearly penniless. Although he had lost his fnancial capital, he never stopped accumulating the literary capital that would eventually enable him to rise to “the top of the tree.” Troughout those years of drifing he wrote copious letters with illustrations of many
8 Adversity, 75–76. 9 Houghton Library, *EC85.T3255.878e (B). Etchings by the late William Makepeace Tackeray, While at Cambridge: Illustrative of University Life, etc., etc.; Now First Published from the Original Plates (London: H. Sotheran & Co., 1878), leaf 7. Harvard has four copies of this portfolio, two of them hand- colored. Earlier sketches of the same name are reproduced in Joseph Grego, compiler, Tackerayana: Notes and Anecdotes Illustrated by Hundreds of Sketches by William Makepeace Tackeray (London: Chatto & Windus, 1898), 48. 10 Details of images here and elsewhere have been checked through magnifcation. 11 Cf. Adversity, 156.
16 Tackeray’s Drawings at Houghton Library Figure 4. Tackeray. “First Term” and “Second Term” from Etchings . . . while at Cambridge (London: Sotheran, 1878). Leaf size: 23 cm. *EC85.T3255.878e (B). Gif of W.B.O. Field, 1942.
Sue Lonof de Cuevas 17 of the persons and events he described. A typical example is the letter he wrote to his cousin James (Jimbo) Carmichael-Smyth to announce his return to England at the end of November 1832 (see fgure 5).12 In word and image, it envisions what will happen when the news of his arrival reaches “the party in the drawing room”: his mother will fall into hysterics as the book she was reading fies into the air and his father rushes to aid her; the lamp on the table will quiver and topple; cousin Mary will plunge to the foor from her music stool; Jimbo will go “into a convulsive ft”; and the family’s servant John will drop his urn, scalding Jimbo back into sensibility. Te speed of Tackeray’s sketching is apparent in his diagonal pen-strokes, yet his skill in composing is evident too in the illusion of perspective, the motion of the book, the stabilizing force of John in the doorway, and the strong horizontal of Mary in the foreground. In addition to such illustrated letters, Tackeray composed his own graphic books and folios. For Edward Torre, the son of family friends, he designed “Simple Melodies,” a booklet with six illustrated nonsense verses (see fgure 21).13 Other children received comparable presents but did not preserve them. He also continued his boyhood practice of creating tales of mayhem and romance in multipanel cartoons.14 But even before the Standard failed, he had decided to turn his pastime into a profession and earn his living as an artist. In London, he went to an art school run by Henry Sass and befriended men who were or would become leading artists of the period: Daniel Maclise, George Cattermole, and his childhood favorite, George Cruikshank. In the fall of 1834 he moved to Paris, where he set to work becoming a painter. He remained there until 1837, sampling the Bohemian life of the ateliers, until he fell in love, married Isabella Shawe, and settled into a domesticity that made a steadier income essential. Ironically, his career as a writer was launched by an assessment of his drawing diametrically opposed to Charlotte Brontë’s. In the spring of 1836, Charles Dickens was urgently seeking an illustrator for Te Pickwick Papers. Te original artist, Robert Seymour, committed suicide two installments into the serial; the replacement his publishers hastily hired botched the illustrations for the third. Tackeray was one of several candidates whom Dickens subsequently interviewed. Whether he returned from Paris or had been in London on other business, he came to their meeting at
12 Harry Elkins Widener Collection, HEW 12.6.9, reproduced in Letters 1:256–57. 13 Houghton Library, MS Eng 951.9, available online at
18 Tackeray’s Drawings at Houghton Library Figure 5. Tackeray to James Carmichael-Smyth, [November 29], 1832. Leaf size: 24 cm. HEW 12.6.9. Harry Elkins Widener Collection.
Sue Lonof de Cuevas 19 Furnivall’s Inn with three drawings and unwarranted confdence.15 To examine those drawings is to understand not only why Tackeray failed to get the job, but also why the shif in ambition that this failure inspired was so justifed. Dickens met the “young Anglo-Indian giant with a broken nose”16 at an unspecifed date. However, since Seymour died on April 20, 1836, and a successor was subsequently hired and fred, it could not have been before the end of April. By then, at least two illustrated serial installments of Pickwick had come out. Nonetheless, Tackeray arrived with drawings for the wrapper of Dickens’s already-completed series, Sketches by Boz. His disregard of Dickens’s novel in progress could be explained by his absence from England. But the style of his sketches and their incompleteness suggests that he paid minimal attention to the tastes of his would-be employer or the tenor of his predecessors’ drawings. Dickens liked illustrations that were action-packed, in which even a character who stood in place would radiate vitality, as he did himself, or if lazy, project an exaggerated ennui. Episodes connected to the text teem with detail: Cruikshank’s cover illustration for Sketches by Boz shows two fag-waving men ascending in a balloon, while a cheering crowd below waves them of, hats in air. In contrast, Tackeray’s drawings are static. In the frst (see fgure 6) he places an artist with a sketchpad inside an oval frame. Posed in profle, the sketcher has the hint of a grin on his long-nosed face, but he is clearly an observer and elderly. Te grotesque face at the bottom, perhaps infuenced by Cruikshank, provides the only hint of humor. In the second (see fgure 7) the lack of motion is even more pronounced: although the woman at the top bears a parasol and a man on the right is carrying a pennant, all are on pedestals, remote from the viewer and certainly from Dickens’s Pickwickians. Furthermore, aside from the man in the oval, all three sketches are roughed in with an absence of detail that would hardly appeal to an employer who required meticulous depictions of his episodes. Although Tackeray departed from the interview persuaded that he would get the job, his drawings suggest that subconsciously, at least, he had sabotaged his eforts to work under the writer he would later view as his competitor. As the illustrator of his own books and articles, Tackeray was always attentive to the ft between image and words. He preferred sketching rapidly to laboring over preparations for a copperplate, but he also re-drew and reconsidered. A case in point is his preliminary sketch for chapter 1 of Vanity Fair (see fgure 8).17 Again he brings a hurtling book into the action as Becky, departing from Miss Pinkerton’s academy, fings back the copy of Dr. Johnson’s Dictionary that Miss Jemima Pinkerton gave her. In the sketch, the emphasis is on Miss Jemima. Both she and the weeping little girl are
15 Houghton Library, MS Eng 1669. Te frst was published in Adversity, plate 9. 16 Edgar Johnson, Charles Dickens: His Tragedy and Triumph, 2 vols. (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1952), 1:140. 17 Houghton Library, MS Hyde 93.
20 Tackeray’s Drawings at Houghton Library Figure 6. Tackeray. “Audition” Drawing, submitted as an illustration to Dickens’s work. Pencil, 1836. 16.5 x 12 cm. MS Eng 1669. Purchased with the Louis J. Appell Jr. Fund for British Civilization in Harvard College Library and the Class of 1952 Fund, 2008.
Sue Lonof de Cuevas 21 Figure 7. Tackeray. “Audition” Drawing, submitted as an illustration to Dickens’s work.. Pencil, 1836. 16.5 x 12 cm. MS Eng 1669. Purchased with the Louis J. Appell Jr. Fund for British Civilization in Harvard College Library and the Class of 1952 Fund, 2008.
22 Tackeray’s Drawings at Houghton Library well outlined, but because the book is coming toward her, the viewer’s eye follows that trajectory. Te emphasis on her is further reinforced by her clasped hands, popping eyes, and open-mouthed dismay. Te little girl’s role is less clear in this version, although readers would know that she is crying over Amelia Sedley’s departure. Still, there is no connection between the child and grinning Becky, nor is there a hint of the coach that carries Becky and Amelia away. In the actual illustration (see fgure 9) the ambiguities have vanished.18 Te composition has been greatly strengthened, frst through the shif from an interior setting to the threshold between the school and the world, and then through the contrast between convention, represented by the classical urns on the pillars, and Becky’s rebellious defance. Although Miss Jemima remains in the foreground, here at right rather than at lef, the viewer’s eye moves from the thrust of the columns to Becky’s head protruding from the coach. Te open book is at the center of the drawing, its sense of motion reinforced by Miss Jemima’s upraised hands. Since her face, like the little girl’s, is now in profle with its eye-popping outrage subdued into surprise, Becky’s sneer and hurling arm command more attention, and her head forms a triangle with those of the two coachmen: “Mr. Sambo” at the rear, the driver fourishing his whip. Te carriage would have given period readers further indications of the Sedley’s status. Tese changes and the manifest improvement raise a question: is the drawing in fgure 8 the only preliminary sketch or could there have been others, now lost? By the period of Vanity Fair, Tackeray’s life could have been the basis for a novel, and in fact some Victorians suspected that Charlotte Brontë appropriated it for Jane Eyre. Afer the birth of a third daughter in 1840 (the second had died at ten months), his wife became depressed and suicidal. By 1841 he was forced to recognize that she was incurably insane and would require lifelong guardianship. His little girls, Annie and Minny, remained with his mother in Paris until, in 1846, his income fnally enabled him to rent a house in Kensington, to which they moved that fall. Before their arrival he had lived like a bachelor, but not in emotional autonomy. For gradually and with increasing fervor, he had formed an attachment to Jane Brookfeld, the wife of one of his oldest friends. A profle sketch he made of her in 1847 (see fgure 23)19 suggests the extent to which he idealized her, and while he protested that he loved her as a sister, his letters and other documents attest to the more amorous nature of his feelings. Two illustrated items in Houghton Library’s collection bear witness to this complex connection. One is the half-title page of a copy of Rebecca and Rowena, a Christmas story that he wrote in 1849 (see fgure 10).20 Period readers would instantly have recognized
18 “Rebecca’s Farewell,” Vanity Fair, vol. 1 of Te Works of William Makepeace Tackeray . . . Te Biographical Edition (New York & London: Harper, 1898), facing page 4. 19 Houghton Library, MS Eng 951.17 (7). 20 Houghton Library, *EC85.T3255.B855c.
Sue Lonof de Cuevas 23 Figure 8. Tackeray. Original drawing for Vanity Fair: “Rebecca’s Farewell.” Ink, circa 1847. 10 x 4 cm. MS Hyde 93. Bequest of Mary Hyde Eccles, 2003.
24 Tackeray’s Drawings at Houghton Library Figure 9. Tackeray. “Rebecca’s Farewell” from Vanity Fair (London: Bradbury & Evans, 1848), opposite page 4. Leaf size: 23 cm. HEW 12.7.3. Harry Elkins Widener Collection.
Sue Lonof de Cuevas 25 the title’s reference to Ivanhoe, Sir Walter Scott’s much-celebrated novel of medieval England. In Scott’s action-packed romance, Sir Wilfred of Ivanhoe rescues the lovely Jewess, Rebecca, from the villain who would have burned her as a witch; however, he still marries the Lady Rowena, a descendant of Saxon nobles. Tackeray deplored this denouement. As he explains in chapter 1 of his parody, he could never “believe that such a woman [as Rebecca], so admirable, so tender, so heroic, so beautiful, could disappear altogether before such another woman as Rowena, that vapid, faxen-headed creature . . .” And so in his madcap “continuation” the marriage falls apart, absurd exploits ensue, and afer the death of the insuferable Rowena, the converted Rebecca weds Ivanhoe. Tackeray ofen represented himself as a jester, and in this drawing for William and Jane Brookfeld he does so twice. In the dedication at the upper right corner—“To W and JB / From Wamba the Gaby . . .”—he borrows the name of Ivanhoe’s court clown, adding an old-fashioned word for “simpleton.” In the caricature of himself above the title, this identity is clinched by the long-eared cap and rendered more complex by allusions to Don Quixote: the rider is fabby as well as spectacled, his arms crossed weakly over his weapon, and mounted on a donkey with a wary eye. Still, he is poised to come to the rescue of the characters drawn below. At lef, “Sir Wilfrid” [sic] of Ivanhoe stands in full Crusader regalia; armed and ready for battle, he looks beseechingly to the right. At right, Rebecca stands in a modest gown, her dark hair falling past her waist, her fngers clasped around an object that might be a tiny fgurine. A stroke of faulty shading makes her look cross-eyed; however, when the head is magnifed the lefward direction of her gaze becomes clear. Coming between them is Lady Rowena, nose in air, her hauteur further emphasized by her crown and ermine-trimmed jacket. At her knee, a male face looks up in possible subjection. But she tilts her head back as if keeping an eye on Rebecca or the aging man behind her who smiles as he sips from a goblet. Beneath these fgures is a cartouche containing fanciful initials, perhaps the Brookfelds’, and Tackeray’s monogram at right. At its top, the fsh suspended from a hook could refer to an episode known only to them, or the hook could double as a question mark pertaining to this fshy narrative. What is certain, however, is the diference between this drawing and the ten illustrations published in Rebecca and Rowena. Richard Doyle did them because Tackeray was recovering from a fever that had lef his hand too shaky for sketching. But he would still have given Doyle instructions, which seem to have been for scenes of violence alternating with scenes of festivity. In Doyle’s plates Rowena appears just once, in the background, and Rebecca does not appear at all.21 When other women appear, they entertain or serve as adjuncts to the far more active men. On New Year’s Day of
21 A letter of December 1849 to the publisher, Edward Chapman, refers to “cuts” that have been made in the drawings, but no further explanation is given. Houghton Library, bMS Eng 881 and Letters 2:656.
26 Tackeray’s Drawings at Houghton Library Figure 10. Tackeray. Half-title of Rebecca and Rowena, inscribed to the Brookfelds (London: Chapman & Hall, 1850). Leaf size: 19 cm. *EC85.T3255.B855c. Gif of Herbert L. Carlebach, 1950.
Sue Lonof de Cuevas 27 Figure 11. Tackeray. Half-title of Rebecca and Rowena, inscribed to Richard Doyle (London: Chapman & Hall, 1850). Leaf size: 19 cm. *EC85.T3255.849r (C). Gif of Herbert L. Carlebach, 1945.
28 Tackeray’s Drawings at Houghton Library 1850, Tackeray added two pen-and-ink drawings to a presentation copy forrDoyle (see fgure 11).22 In the frst, a mustached knight in spectacles sits on a caparisoned horse. A helper props up the back of his long lance, which is piercing the eye of a foe with broken sword; other comical creatures sprawl around them. In the second a weary Doyle, dressed as Pierrot, removes his long-eared hat; a mask lies discarded behind him. Te knight jousts absurdly and the clown looks humorless, but still, masculinity dominates. In contrast, in the drawing Tackeray made for the Brookfelds, women are ascendant. Ivanhoe wears armor but his axe hangs low, and “Wamba’s” skirted paunch feminizes him. In the central lower panel domesticity prevails, but Rowena is palpably dissatisfed and fanked by the two separated lovers. As represented here, the threesome encapsulates chapter 1 of Tackeray’s parody: the marriage turns sour, Ivanhoe starts drinking, and then he leaves to join his king with the image of Rowena before him. But the subtext may be more biographical. Te bond between Tackeray and Jane Brookfeld had intensifed when she confessed that she was sufering in her marriage, and much as he denied having impure feelings toward her, he must have fantasized about conditions that would end the constraints on his love. Tere may be a hint of that longing in his alteration of the subtitle. As published, it is “A Romance upon Romance,” with “upon” connoting “about.” But Tackeray had meant to change “A” to “Or,” 23 and in the copy for the Brookfelds he does so. He thereby complicates the meaning of “upon,” which could now mean “afer” or “following on.” A more explicit expression of longing appears in the second Houghton item purportedly related to Jane Brookfeld: a page with the draf of the following poem and two heads in profle (see fgure 12).24
Tough we never say it Yet the secret rests In our two sad breasts I’m In Silently enfolded. And we both obey it And it throbs & smarts And Tearing at our hearts But we never told it.
22 Houghton Library, *EC85.T3255.849r (C). Te date and “From the Author” are inscribed in a banner attached to the knight’s lance. 23 See the letter cited in note 21. 24 Houghton Library, MS Eng 951.17 (12). According to Heather G. Cole, “Te poem itself was recorded as being addressed to Mrs. Brookfeld when it arrived at Houghton, as a single item, in 1949,” but the attribution is not conclusive (email to the author of December 7, 2010).
Sue Lonof de Cuevas 29 Figure 12. Tackeray. Manuscript of “Tough we never say it/ Yet the secret rests.” Ink, undated. Leaf size: 22 x 14 cm. MS Eng 951.17 (12). Gif of Herbert L. Carlebach, 1949.
30 Tackeray’s Drawings at Houghton Library Tough our lips are mute Yet its signal fies Flashing from my eyes Where your own her own behold it. And reply unto’t With a glance of light O so tender bright! But we never told it.
Across the page is the line “Hopeless but how sweet dear” and the deleted couplet, “I’m always thinking of it / But yet I never tell it.” Te poem was not published and no evidence exists that the draf went any further. Tis restraint suggests that the lines express a personal longing whose object was Jane Brookfeld, a conjecture reinforced by the drawing of the woman’s head at upper right. Although generic, it resembles sketches of Jane that are now in Houghton’s collection (see fgure 13).25 Te head of the handsome young man below, with the preliminary sketch of a cravat at lef, is certainly not Tackeray’s. However, in the years when he was closest to Jane, he was also writing Pendennis and drawing its eponymous protagonist. Figure 14 shows one of his rough sketches for the novel with its hero in profle at right;26 a profle in the Biographical Edition, labeled “Pendennis Head” by his daughter, looks even more like the one in the manuscript.27 Pendennis is the most autobiographical of Tackeray’s novels: he based parts of Pen’s life on his own, confessed to identifying with him, and, according to his descendants, had Jane model Figure 13. Tackeray. Detail from 28 Sketches of Mrs. Brookfeld. Ink, for several illustrations. At eighteen, Pen falls in love undated. On a sheet: 18 x 12.5 cm. with an actress to whom he writes impassioned verses; MS Eng 941. Gif of Herbert L. he later shows them to “the men of his set” at Oxbridge, Carlebach, 1954.
25 Houghton Library, MS Eng 941. 26 Houghton Library, HEW 12.6.16. Tis is one of eight drawings in a volume that also contains an autograph manuscript of eighteen pages of Pendennis. 27 Anne Ritchie, Introduction to Te History of Pendennis, vol. 2 of Te Works of William Makepeace Tackeray . . . Te Biographical Edition (New York and London: Harper, 1898), xxxiii. 28 See, for example, the letter from Tackeray’s mother to his daughters, September 29, 1854, in John Aplin, Te Inheritance of Genius: A Tackeray Family Biography, 1798–1875 (Cambridge: Lutterworth, 2010), 113.
Sue Lonof de Cuevas 31 Figure 14. Tackeray. Original drawing for Pendennis. Ink, undated. Leaf size: 19 cm. HEW 12.6.16. Harry Elkins Widener Collection.
32 Tackeray’s Drawings at Houghton Library where he becomes “a man of fashion.”29 Could Tackeray have considered working these manuscript lines into his novel? Again, in the absence of evidence his intentions are unverifable. Implicitly, however, the profle distances the speaker of the verses from an author close to forty, who typically drew himself in caricature or as a jester. Tat self-image is confrmed here by the upside-down lines in the lower right corner:
My little share [?] of sense I use for making Japes; I tumble in motley shapes And if I’ve wit I sell it.
Jane Brookfeld thrived on the adoration of this celebrated man of letters. But she did not reciprocate his passion, and when her husband fnally insisted on ending the connection, she complied. Tackeray was devastated. To lessen his misery and supplement his income, he went to America in 1852, where he delivered lectures in East Coast cities from Boston to Savannah. In New York he began an enduring friendship with the family of George Baxter and his wife. Teir older daughter, nineteen-year-old Sally, was beautiful, intelligent, and fattering. With her, Tackeray began a circumspect firtation that helped to assuage the loss of Jane. Sally’s two brothers and younger sister, Lucy, must also have helped to fll the void lef by his separation from his children. “He entered with great interest into all our plans and amusements,” Lucy wrote later, “and on one occasion, when my eldest brother’s costume for a juvenile fancy ball was under discussion, he took pen and paper as he sat chatting among us, and drew little sketches of the proper dress for a page of various periods, being well versed in all the details belonging to each costume.” 30 Te sheets with those eighteen sketches are now in Houghton Library’s collections;31 the last seven are shown in fgure 27. Tey consist of frontal, side, and back views of characters in period dress, with additional sketches to indicate hats and other details. Four are labeled—“Time of William III,” “Time of Mary Q of Scots,” “Louis XVI,” “Henry V” —so hypothetically the costumes span four centuries. Nonetheless, they form a set unifed by the page’s recurring face and form. Tackeray’s correspondence with the Baxters continued until nearly the end of his life and past the end of Sally’s. She married, moved to South Carolina, had four children, and died at twenty-nine in 1862, a victim of consumption and a tragic witness
29 Pendennis, pages 169 and 170. 30 Lucy W. Baxter, introduction to Tackeray’s Letters to an American Family . . .” (New York: Century, 1904), 4–5. 31 Houghton Library, MS Eng 951.10.
Sue Lonof de Cuevas 33 to the war that was ravaging America. But already in 1852, when Tackeray sailed on the steamer Canada, the slavery question had leapt into prominence in England as well as the United States through the publication and enormous popularity of Uncle Tom’s Cabin. Tackeray’s attitude toward Negroes and slavery is one of the most difcult issues that a student of his work must confront. He ridiculed the Irish, looked down on most foreigners and, Rebecca aside, portrayed Jews stereotypically. Such attitudes, however, were all too pervasive in English writers of the period. He was typical too in separating women into the ultra-pure and the tainted; yet in characters like Becky Sharp and the sexually dynamic Beatrix Esmond he subverted the ideals he professed. But the racism that pervades his fction and his letters is extreme even by Victorian standards. In Vanity Fair, it is hinted in his references to the Sedley’s servant, Sambo, and glaring in his depiction of Miss Swartz, Amelia’s mulatto schoolmate (whom Mira Nair’s flm version recasts as a clever, talented beauty); and Vanity Fair is not the worst. But along with the prejudice went a fascination that his frst trip to America increased. In October 1852, on board the Canada, he amused his fellow passengers by transforming playing cards into drawings, fve of which are now at Houghton.32 Under his inventive pen, the two of diamonds became an illustration of swordplay with a caption from Macbeth (see fgure 25), and the ace of clubs became the head of George III, “looking black on receiving the Declaration of American Independence” (see fgure 26). Te other three cards are also ingenious but repugnant because of their racism. In one, for example, he turns a heart into the outsized lips of Uncle Tom. And yet, the receivers of these cards did not perceive them as ofensive, for in antebellum America, minstrel shows in blackface were a national art form, the dandy was a recognized character in them, and the publication of Uncle Tom’s Cabin provided artists as well as actors with abundant new material. Te most complex card is the fve of spades, with characters from Uncle Tom’s Cabin at the top and a Negro dressed as a dandy below (see fgure 15). Its caption is a weak attempt at humor, and the misspelled “Niggar” highlights Tackeray’s ignorance. Nonetheless he gave this 2½" x 3¾" surface an unusual amount of attention. It is the only card to which touches of color have been added and contrasting black men are represented. Tackeray claimed that he had not read Harriet Beecher Stowe’s book, but he was evidently familiar with its highlights, and, in fact, he represented Simon Legree whipping Uncle Tom in at least three drawings.33 In this one, a kneeling Tom clasps his hands in supplication as Legree draws back his lash, a tendril just touching the fnger
32 Houghton Library, MS Eng 951.17 (8). 33 Letter quoted in Joe Lockard, Watching Slavery (New York: Peter Lang, 2008), 21. See also his analysis of Tackeray’s racism, 15–26. A playing card in the Berg Collection at the New York Public Library represents Legree, Uncle Tom, and Little Eva, as does a similar card in the Morgan Library and Museum.
34 Tackeray’s Drawings at Houghton Library Figure 15. Tackeray. “Transformation” playing card featuring a scene from Uncle Tom’s Cabin. Ink, [1852]. 9 x 6.5 cm. MS Eng 951.17 (8). Gif of Mary Graton Briggs, 1936. of the other white man, who protests in vain. Tackeray gives the well-fed protestor a Quaker hat and makes him literally lame: his cane and unshod foot suggest gout. In contrast to him and the famboyant dandy, Tom’s head and feet are bare, his trousers ragged, his gaunt face human and imploring. Tackeray returned to the United States in 1855–1856, again with the aim of providing for his daughters; this time he traveled as far south as New Orleans and as far west as St. Louis. But his earlier appreciation of the new country had ebbed. It was with relief that he came back to London and to travels that would take him no further than Scotland or the Continent. On such trips, throughout his life, he carried notebooks large and small that enabled him to record his impressions.
Sue Lonof de Cuevas 35 Figures 16 and 17. Tackeray’s aide-memoire. Ivory and brass sketchbook, undated. 11 x 5 cm. MS Eng 1652. Gif of Mrs. Mara Dole, 1996.
36 Tackeray’s Drawings at Houghton Library Of those that survive, the most curious is an aide-mémoire or pocket sketchbook consisting of fve 1" x 3" ivory panels bound together by a metal pin and clasp, with Tackeray’s initials on the cover (see fgures 16 and 17).34 Ivory notebooks per se were not uncommon in England or America: Benjamin Franklin sold them, Tomas Jeferson used them, and Victorian stationers carried them, ofen in seven-leaf versions that served as pocket calendars.35 But Tackeray’s is special because of its content: although it has only three inner leaves, he also utilized the inner front and back cover to fll a total of eight little panels with sketches of men’s and women’s faces. His motives for using it can partly be inferred. Its compactness made it easy to whip from a pocket whenever circumstances inspired him. With its slender pencil, now lost or used up, which ft into a groove at the side of the back leaf, he could quickly transcribe his visual notes without attracting the attention of their subjects. And when he was done, it would become a trinket worth giving to a friend or admirer. But the more explicit purpose of these multiple sketches remains to be determined. Tackeray made a few notes to himself that have since become smudged and faint. On one leaf, the words “[ ]s I’ve met” can be made out, with a date of “Friday May [5?],” but the year and the remaining words are blurred. On the other side, “Paris” appears below a line that, again, seems to indicate the context. Of the sixteen or more faces drawn on these panels—some delicately fnished, others roughed into the background—only two have been identifed so far. One is Tackeray himself, in top hat and profle. Another, next to the panel on which “Paris” appears, is a woman whose full chin, arched eyebrows, and simply gathered hair resemble those of Jane Brookfeld in a sketch still owned by Tackeray’s descendants.36 Te other faces are similarly drawn from life, for the most part with features that could make them identifable. But who are they, and how did they matter to him? To have drawn them on ivory rather than paper suggests that these were not throw-away sketches. But were they to be a personal momento or to count toward some eventual work? Studies of Tackeray’s drawings have never been abundant, and with a few exceptions they have focused on the illustrations of Vanity Fair.37 Te absence of
34 Houghton Library, MS Eng 1652. 35 I am grateful to Heather G. Cole for this information. 36 Published in Wisdom, plate 7. 37 In total, they are Clare Douglass, “A New ‘Look’ at the Canon: De-familiarizing the Works of Tackeray, Dickens, Collins, and Gaskell Trough a Recovery of Teir Illustrations,” Diss., University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, 2007; S.A. Muresianu, “Tackeray’s Flore et Zephyr,” Harvard Library Bulletin 27, no. 2 (Summer 1979): 223–244; Viola Hopkins Winner, “Tackeray and Richard Doyle, the ‘Wayward Artist’ of Te Newcomes,” Harvard Library Bulletin 26, no. 2 (Summer 1978): 193–211; Gordon N. Ray, Te Illustrator and the Book in England from 1790 to 1914 (New York: Pierpont Morgan Library, 1976), 74–77 and 264; Patricia Runk Sweeney, “Tackeray’s Best Illustrator,” Costerus: Essays in English and American
Sue Lonof de Cuevas 37 scholarly attention, however, creates an opportunity for future researchers. At the bicentennial of Tackeray’s birth, he is no longer the hero idolized by Charlotte Brontë or Dickens’s leading competitor. Nevertheless, as Ray has observed, “his illustrations have the transcending merit of coming directly from the mind that created the work being illustrated.”38 Even when they are unrelated to his published work, they remain a storehouse of information on Victorian attitudes, humor, and culture that has yet to be sufciently explored.
Language and Literature, New Series 2 (1974): 83–111; Joan Stevens, “Tackeray’s Pictorial Capitals,” Costerus (1974): 113–140; and John R. Harvey, Victorian Novels and Teir Illustrators (New York: New York University Press, 1971), 67–102. 38 Te Illustrator and the Book in England, 74.
38 Tackeray’s Drawings at Houghton Library Contributors
John Aplin was formerly Head of the Department of Performing Arts at Brunel University. In recent years, he has devoted his time to working on the Tackeray family papers. He is the author of the recent Te Inheritance of Genius: A Tackeray Family Biography, 1798-1875 and Memory and Legacy: A Tackeray Family Biography, 1876- 1919, as well as a 5-volume collection of the correspondence of the Tackeray family.
Heather Cole is Assistant Curator of Modern Books and Manuscripts at Houghton Library.
Sue Lonoff de Cuevas came to Harvard in 1980 as a head preceptor in the Expository Writing Program. Subsequently, she was an associate director of the Derek Bok Center for Teaching and Learning and a faculty member of the Extension School. Her publications include a book about the drawings of the writer Marguerite Youcenar and several studies of Charlotte and Emily Brontë.
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