Thackeray | Page 3

the year. This was
Timbuctoo, and Tennyson was the victor on the occasion. There is
some good fun in the four first and four last lines of Thackeray's
production.
In Africa,--a quarter of the world,-- Men's skins are black; their hair is
crisped and curled; And somewhere there, unknown to public view A
mighty city lies, called Timbuctoo.
* * * * *
I see her tribes the hill of glory mount, And sell their sugars on their
own account; While round her throne the prostrate nations come, Sue
for her rice, and barter for her rum.
I cannot find in The Snob internal evidence of much literary merit
beyond this. But then how many great writers have there been from
whose early lucubrations no future literary excellence could be
prognosticated?
There is something at any rate in the name of the publication which
tells of work that did come. Thackeray's mind was at all times
peculiarly exercised with a sense of snobbishness. His appreciation of
the vice grew abnormally, so that at last he had a morbid horror of a
snob--a morbid fear lest this or the other man should turn snob on his
hands. It is probable that the idea was taken from the early Snob at
Cambridge, either from his own participation in the work or from his
remembrance of it. The Snob lived, I think, but nine weeks, and was
followed at an interval, in 1830, by The Gownsman, which lived to the
seventeenth number, and at the opening of which Thackeray no doubt
had a hand. It professed to be a continuation of The Snob. It contains a
dedication to all proctors, which I should not be sorry to attribute to
him. "To all Proctors, past, present, and future--
Whose taste it is our privilege to follow, Whose virtue it is our duty to
imitate, Whose presence it is our interest to avoid."

There is, however, nothing beyond fancy to induce me to believe that
Thackeray was the author of the dedication, and I do not know that
there is any evidence to show that he was connected with The Snob
beyond the writing of Timbuctoo.
In 1830 he left Cambridge, and went to Weimar either in that year or in
1831. Between Weimar and Paris he spent some portion of his earlier
years, while his family,--his mother, that is, and his stepfather,--were
living in Devonshire. It was then the purport of his life to become an
artist, and he studied drawing at Paris, affecting especially Bonnington,
the young English artist who had himself painted at Paris and who had
died in 1828. He never learned to draw,--perhaps never could have
learned. That he was idle, and did not do his best, we may take for
granted. He was always idle, and only on some occasions, when the
spirit moved him thoroughly, did he do his best even in after life. But
with drawing,--or rather without it,--he did wonderfully well even when
he did his worst. He did illustrate his own books, and everyone knows
how incorrect were his delineations. But as illustrations they were
excellent. How often have I wished that characters of my own creating
might be sketched as faultily, if with the same appreciation of the
intended purpose. Let anyone look at the "plates," as they are called in
Vanity Fair, and compare each with the scenes and the characters
intended to be displayed, and there see whether the artist,--if we may
call him so,--has not managed to convey in the picture the exact feeling
which he has described in the text. I have a little sketch of his, in which
a cannon-ball is supposed to have just carried off the head of an
aide-de-camp,--messenger I had perhaps better say, lest I might affront
military feelings,--who is kneeling on the field of battle and delivering
a despatch to Marlborough on horseback. The graceful ease with which
the duke receives the message though the messenger's head be gone,
and the soldier-like precision with which the headless hero finishes his
last effort of military obedience, may not have been portrayed with
well-drawn figures, but no finished illustration ever told its story better.
Dickens has informed us that he first met Thackeray in 1835, on which
occasion the young artist aspirant, looking no doubt after profitable
employment, "proposed to become the illustrator of my earliest book."
It is singular that such should have been the first interview between the

two great novelists. We may presume that the offer was rejected.
In 1832, Thackeray came of age, and inherited his fortune,--as to which
various stories have been told. It seems to have amounted to about five
hundred a year, and to have passed through his hands in a year or two,
interest and principal. It has been told