CHAPTER XXII

THACKERAY--MEREDITH--HARDY

You remember David Copperfield, Peggoty, Mr. Pickwick, Sam Weller, and scores of others, all of whom we found living so intensely and abundantly in Dickens' novels.

Many other novelists, as well as Charles Dickens, have made interesting, delightful characters for us to know and love. In this chapter and the chapter following, we will learn something of a group of writers, men and women, in whose novels we find wonderful knowledge of human nature, not as wonderful as Shakespeare's knowledge perhaps, but showing the same deep insight as Scott and Dickens.

The writers spoken of are not very widely separated in time. Two of them lived and wrote as recently as from the middle of the nineteenth century down to the present. George Meredith died in 1909, and Thomas Hardy in 1928. The whole group represents a very brilliant period in English literature.

William Makepeace Thackeray was born in Calcutta in India. Like the children of other Anglo-Indian civil servants, he was sent home to England when he was a very little boy, leaving his mother behind him in India. Thackeray had a deeply affectionate nature. All his life he was devoted to his own people. No one can rightly {148} understand his novels who does not remember that Thackeray was tender-hearted. We can read a letter that the little boy William Makepeace wrote to his mother when he was seven years old. His mother kept it carefully. Some years ago when his daughter, Mrs. Ritchie, herself a novelist, was writing memories of her famous father, she printed the little letter in her Introduction to _The Newcomes_.

There is nothing in the letter to show that the boy was to be a great writer, but as long as he lived he wrote these loving letters to his mother. When he was a man with children of his own, his home was his mother's home whenever she liked to come to stay with him. It was his stepfather's home also, for his mother had married again. He told his own children that when he was a boy at school, he sometimes used to pray that he would dream of his mother in the night, for he was lonely and not very happy.

_Vanity Fair_ is the name of one of Thackeray's great novels. You know where Thackeray found the name,--in _The Pilgrim's Progress_. His novel is intended as a picture of people who are interesting and very real, but many of whom are selfish, false and hard-hearted. Thackeray painted the world as he had experienced it, and he tried to show what a difference there is between love and hate, selfishness and unselfishness. _Vanity Fair_ has a famous opening chapter. Becky Sharp, and Amelia Sedley, two girls, are leaving a boarding school. Becky is clever, amusing and poor. Amelia is gentle, a little dull perhaps, and her people are rich. The school-mistresses make {149} a great fuss over Amelia, but are disagreeable to Becky. So Becky throws the dictionary, which is Miss Pinkerton's parting gift, out of the window of the coach as they are driving away. _Vanity Fair_ is a famous novel. When you read it, as you will some day, you will learn the story of Becky and Amelia, of George Osborne whom Amelia marries, of Jos. Sedley, Amelia's brother, of Rawdon Crawley, the man Becky married, and of splendid, faithful Major Dobbin. There are chapters which tell of how George Osborne goes to fight at the battle of Waterloo, and again of when the battle is over, that we can never forget. Thackeray's style is so golden and perfect that to read anything he has written is like listening to strains of pure music.

Other novels by Thackeray which rank with _Vanity Fair_ are _Esmond_ and _The Virginians_, _Pendennis_ and _The Newcomes_. One of the most famous characters in _Esmond_ is the exquisitely beautiful Beatrix Esmond who turned away from love for ambition. Colonel Newcome in _The Newcomes_ is one of the people who have been chosen by the world to represent nobility of character, a man high-minded, distinguished, brave, honest, pure and humble of heart.

There are scenes of great tenderness and nobility in Thackeray's novels. Two, which may be mentioned, are in Esmond--Lady Castlewood welcoming Henry Esmond home, Book II, chapter six, and again Lady Castlewood vindicating Esmond, Book III, chapter four. Find _Esmond_ and read these chapters or ask someone to read them to you. When Thackeray tells in _Vanity {150} Fair_ how George Osborne lies with his face to the sky after Waterloo, every reader's heart is stilled and touched. But many people think that the most famous instance of Thackeray's genius is in the end of _The Newcomes_ when Colonel Newcome, impoverished, living in Grey Friars Hospital, thinks that he is a boy at school again, and answers the calling of the roll after the fashion in his old school at Charterhouse.

Several biographies have been written of Thackeray, but you will find the most interesting details of the life of this great writer in the biographical notes written by his daughter, Mrs. Ritchie, for what is called the Biographical Edition of Thackeray's works.

Meredith, unlike Thackeray, writes in a style which is difficult to read; but he is brilliant, sparkling, and wonderfully clever. We need to bring to his novels all the intelligence and powers of application which we possess. But when difficulties are overcome, there is great delight in reading Meredith. He is never dull. There is always meaning, like precious gold, to find in his novels, and in his poems too, for Meredith was a poet. Meredith shows us that our minds, characters and wills have a conquering quality; we are not at the mercy of impulses, instincts and intuitions. Not since Shakespeare wrote, has any genius drawn such portraits of women as appear in Meredith's novels. Three of his most brilliant and fascinating women characters are Diana in _Diana of the Crossways_, Clara Middleton and Laetitia Dale in _The Egoist_. There is also in _The Egoist_ a splendidly drawn portrait {151} of a boy, Crossjay Patterne. This boy and the beautiful, high-minded Clara Middleton are friends and playmates; it is quite possible for a boy or a girl to have a grown-up friend, who is at the same time a playmate.

_Diana of the Crossways_ and _The Egoist_ are perhaps the most readable among the many novels Meredith has written. Sir Willoughby Patterne in _The Egoist_ is a study of a man whose interests are centered in himself. Diana is charming, brilliant, impulsive, and of a noble nature. She is a very attractive heroine.

Thomas Hardy was born in 1840, in a tiny village called Higher Bockhampton, in the parish of Stinsford, Dorset, England. It is a country of woods and heaths, lonely and silent. Old customs and manners were maintained in this place in the heart of England, long after they had disappeared in more populous centres. Hardy's novels tell us of the quaint customs, and of the interesting and picturesque characters that he knew in his youth. Three of his early novels, _Under the Greenwood Tree_, _The Return of the Native_, and _The Trumpet-Major_ seem to hold under a magic spell, for our enjoyment, old England and the people of old England, not at a time as long ago as when the fairies were supposed to live, but near the beginning of the nineteenth century, when people were looking for Napoleon Bonaparte to invade England from France across the Channel.

Hardy himself, his father and his grandfather were all fond of music, and we read much of people singing and dancing in Hardy's early novels, {152} of the members of the church choir, of glee and carol singers. Thomas Hardy, when he was a lad, used to play the fiddle at dances in the farm houses nearby where he lived. His mother did not allow him to take any money for his playing, but once he broke the rule and with the few shillings he had been given bought a copy of the _Boys' Own Book_. This book was kept in Hardy's library all his life. He played at weddings too. No doubt, the boy learned much of his neighbours in this way of which afterwards his genius made use in his novels.

Some of the most charming scenes that Hardy ever wrote you will find in the first five chapters of _Under the Greenwood Tree_. Read these chapters, and you will see the English landscape long ago on a Christmas Eve. You will breathe the pure, chill air, and sing Christmas carols with the other carollers. The story begins: "To dwellers in a wood almost every species of tree has its voice as well as its feature."

To the end of his life, Hardy was fascinated by the story of Napoleon. In the country where he lived, there lived also older men who had fought against Napoleon, and many who remembered the dread with which people looked for his invasion of England. One of Hardy's early novels, _The Trumpet-Major_, is a fine tale of country folk, of soldiers and sailors who fought against Napoleon, and of the press-gang that carried away men to serve in the Navy. But, proudest recollection of all for the novelist, the Hardy who held the great Nelson in his arms when he lay dying victorious in the cockpit of his ship, _The Victory_, after {153} Trafalgar, belonged to the same family as his own. You remember, Nelson whispered, "Kiss me, Hardy."

Little wonder that Thomas Hardy, who also was a poet besides being a novelist, wrote what is perhaps his greatest work in a poetical drama called _The Dynasts_, a drama of the Napoleonic wars.

This poetical drama is a great vision of war, of suffering, brave, stout-hearted, jesting men, and of mighty spirits who from some vast height view the battling world, and wonder what the future of mankind may be. Such lines as the following stay in our memories and convince us that Thomas Hardy was not only a great novelist, but a great poet.

The systemed suns the skies enscroll Obey Thee in their rhythmic roll, Ride radiantly at Thy command, Are darkened by Thy Masterhand!

And these pale panting multitudes Seen surging here, their moils, their moods, All shall "fulfil their joy" in Thee, In Thee abide eternally!

Exultant adoration give The Alone, through Whom all living live. The Alone, in Whom all dying die, Whose means the End shall justify!

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