WILLIAM MAKEPEACE THACKERAY (1811-1862)

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T twenty-one Thackeray lost an inherited fortune in an attempt to establish a newspaper. When he was fifty, he earned a comfortable income by editing the Cornhill Magazine. During the intervening years he had learned through many disappointments and struggles that popularity and success came from hard work and sincere effort. It was not until he was thirtyseven that he won recognition by the publication of his first and most powerful novel, Vanity Fair. At last he had found his right place.

As Thackeray was well acquainted with the aristocratic society of his time and had made a careful study of that of the preceding century, he drew his subjects from these fields. His characters are real men and women uncolored by his imagination. He is said to have wept after he wrote the scene of the death of Colonel Newcome because that character had become so real to him. Herein lies the principal difference between him and Dickens, who was a romanticist and made his characters fit his purpose. Thackeray was also a satirist, for he liked to show up hypocrisy and ridicule the snobs. Although he was a thoroughly aristocratic gentleman, he did not fail to see the errors of the class.

This desire to reform through ridicule he may have derived from his study of Addison and Steele. He said "I have no brains above my eyes; I describe what I see." This he did, but he saw through the eyes of a moralist, who desired to stress virtue and condemn vice. Even in the short selection given here this attitude is apparent. The motives of the Becky Sharp in buying at the auction sale of the possessions of her early school friend are contrasted with those of the kind and thoughtful Dobbin.

THE AUCTION SALE

If there is any exhibition in all Vanity Fair which Satire and Sentiment can visit arm-in-arm together; where you

light on the strangest contrasts laughable and tearful: where you may be gentle and pathetic, or savage and cynical, with perfect propriety: it is at one of those public assemblies, a crowd of which are advertised every day in the last page of the Times newspaper, and over which the late Mr. George Robins used to preside with so much dignity. There are very few London people, as I fancy, who have not attended at these meetings, and all with a taste for moralising must have thought, with a sensation and interest not a little startling and queer, of the day when their turn shall come too, and Mr. Hammerdown will sell by the orders of Diogenes' assignees, or will be instructed by the executors to offer to public competition, the library, furniture, plate, wardrobe, and choice cellar of wines of Epicurus deceased.

Even with the most selfish disposition, the Vanity-Fairian, as he witnesses this sordid part of the obsequies of a departed friend, can't but feel some sympathies and regret. My Lord Dives's remains are in the family vault: the statuaries are cutting an inscription veraciously commemorating his virtues, and the sorrows of his heir, who is disposing of his goods. What guest at Dives's table can pass the familiar house without a sigh?-the familiar house of which the lights used to shine so cheerfully at seven o'clock, of which the hall-doors opened so readily, of which the obsequious servants, as you passed up the comfortable stair, sounded your name from landing to landing, until it reached the apartment where jolly old Dives welcomed his friends! What a number of them he had; and what a noble way of entertaining them! How witty people used to be here who were morose when they got out of the door; and how courteous and friendly men who slandered and hated each other everywhere else! He was pompous, but with such a .cook what would one not swallow? he was rather dull, perhaps, but

would not such wine make any conversation pleasant? We must get some of his Burgundy at any price, the mourners cry at his club. "I got this box at old Dives's sale," Pincher says, handing it round, "one of Louis XV's mistresses -pretty thing, is it not?-sweet miniature," and they talk of the way in which young Dives is dissipating his fortune.

How changed the house is, though! The front is patched over with bills, setting forth the particulars of the furniture in staring capitals. They have hung a shred of carpet out of an upstairs window-a half-dozen of porters are lounging on the dirty steps-the hall swarms with dingy guests of Oriental countenance, who thrust printed cards into your hand, and offer to bid. Old women and amateurs have invaded the upper apartments, pinching the bed-curtains, poking into the feathers, shampooing the mattresses, and clapping the wardrobe drawers to and fro. Enterprising young housekeepers are measuring the looking-glasses and hangings to see if they will suit the new ménage-(Snob will brag for years that he has purchased this or that at Dives's sale): and Mr. Hammerdown is sitting on the great mahogany dining-tables, in the dining-room below, waving the ivory hammer, and employing all the artifices of eloquence, enthusiasm, entreaty, reason, despair; shouting to his people; satirising Mr. Davids for his sluggishness; inspiring Mr. Moss into action; imploring, commanding, bellowing, until down comes the hammer like fate, and we pass to the next lot. O Dives, who would ever have thought, as we sat round the broad table sparkling with plate and spotless linen, to have seen such a dish at the head of it as that roaring auctioneer?

It was rather late in the sale. The excellent drawingroom furniture by the best makers; the rare and famous wines, selected regardless of cost, and with the well-known

taste of the purchaser; the rich and complete set of family plate, had been sold on the previous days. Certain of the best wines (which all had a great character among amateurs in the neighbourhood) had been purchased for his master, who knew them very well, by the butler of our friend John Osborne, Esquire, of Russell Square. A small portion of the most useful articles of the plate had been bought by some young stockbrokers from the City. And now the public being invited to the purchase of minor objects, it happened that the orator on the table was expatiating on the merits of a picture, which he sought to recommend to his audience: it was by no means so select or numerous a company as had attended the previous days of the auction.

"No. 369," roared Mr. Hammerdown. "Portrait of a gentleman on an elephant. Who'll bid for the gentleman on the elephant? Lift up the picture, Blowman, and let the company examine this lot." A long, pale, military-looking gentleman, seated demurely at the mahogany table, could not help grinning as this valuable lot was shown by Mr. Blowman. "Turn the elephant to the Captain, Blowman. What shall we say, sir, for the elephant?" but the Captain, blushing, in a very hurried and discomfited manner turned away his head, and the auctioneer repeated his discompo

sure.

"Shall we say twenty guineas for this work of art?-fifteen, five, name your own price. The gentleman without the elephant is worth five pound."

"I wonder it ain't come down with him," said a professional wag; "he's anyhow a precious big one"; at which (for the elephant-rider was represented as of a very stout figure) there was a general giggle in the room.

"Don't be trying to deprecate the value of the lot, Mr. Moss," Mr. Hammerdown said; "let the company examine

it as a work of art-the attitude of the gallant animal quite according to nature; the gentleman in a nankeen-jacket, his gun in his hand, is going to the chase; in the distance a banyhann-tree and a pagody, most likely resemblances of some interesting spot in our famous Eastern possessions. How much for this lot? Come, gentlemen, don't keep me here all day."

Some one bid five shillings, at which the military gentleman looked towards the quarter from which this splendid offer had come, and there saw another officer with a young lady on his arm, who both appeared to be highly amused with the scene, and to whom, finally, this lot was knocked down for half a guinea. He at the table looked more surprised and discomposed than ever when he spied this pair, and his head sank into his military collar and he turned his back upon them, so as to avoid them altogether.

Of all the other articles which Mr. Hammerdown had the honour to offer for public competition that day it is not our purpose to make mention, save of one only; this was a little square piano, which came down from the upper regions of the house (the state grand piano having been disposed of previously); this the young lady tried with a rapid and skillful hand (making the officer blush and start again), and for it, when its turn came, her agent began to bid.

But there was an opposition here. The Hebrew aide-decamp in the service of the officer at the table bid against the Hebrew gentleman employed by the elephant-purchasers, and a brisk battle ensued over this little piano, the combatants being greatly encouraged by Mr. Hammerdown.

At last, when the competition had been prolonged for some time, the elephant captain and lady desisted from the race; and the hammer coming down, the auctioneer said, "Mr. Lewis, twenty-five," and Mr. Lewis's chief thus be