Thackeray | Page 6

of that labour
which for its success especially requires that a man's heart shall be light,
and that he be always at his best,--doubt and despair. If there be no
chance, of what use is his labour?
Were it not better done as others use, To sport with Amaryllis in the
shade,
and amuse himself after that fashion? Thus the very industry which
alone could give him a chance is discarded. It is so that the young man
feels who, with some slight belief in himself and with many doubts, sits
down to commence the literary labour by which he hopes to live.
So it was, no doubt, with Thackeray. Such were his hopes and his

fears;--with a resolution of which we can well understand that it should
have waned at times, of earning his bread, if he did not make his
fortune, in the world of literature. One has not to look far for evidence
of the condition I have described,--that it was so, Amaryllis and all.
How or when he made his very first attempt in London, I have not
learned; but he had not probably spent his money without forming
"press" acquaintances, and had thus found an aperture for the thin end
of the wedge. He wrote for The Constitutional, of which he was part
proprietor, beginning his work for that paper as a correspondent from
Paris. For a while he was connected with The Times newspaper, though
his work there did not I think amount to much. His first regular
employment was on Fraser's Magazine, when Mr. Fraser's shop was in
Regent Street, when Oliver Yorke was the presumed editor, and among
contributors, Carlyle was one of the most notable. I imagine that the
battle of life was difficult enough with him even after he had become
one of the leading props of that magazine. All that he wrote was not
taken, and all that was taken was not approved. In 1837-38, the History
of Samuel Titmarsh and the Great Hoggarty Diamond appeared in the
magazine. The Great Hoggarty Diamond is now known to all readers
of Thackeray's works. It is not my purpose to speak specially of it here,
except to assert that it has been thought to be a great success. When it
was being brought out, the author told a friend of his,--and of
mine,--that it was not much thought of at Fraser's, and that he had been
called upon to shorten it. That is an incident disagreeable in its nature
to any literary gentleman, and likely to be specially so when he knows
that his provision of bread, certainly of improved bread and butter, is at
stake. The man who thus darkens his literary brow with the frown of
disapproval, has at his disposal all the loaves and all the fishes that are
going. If the writer be successful, there will come a time when he will
be above such frowns; but, when that opinion went forth, Thackeray
had not yet made his footing good, and the notice to him respecting it
must have been very bitter. It was in writing this Hoggarty Diamond
that Thackeray first invented the name of Michael Angelo Titmarsh.
Samuel Titmarsh was the writer, whereas Michael Angelo was an
intending illustrator. Thackeray's nose had been broken in a school
fight, while he was quite a little boy, by another little boy, at the
Charter House; and there was probably some association intended to be

jocose with the name of the great artist, whose nose was broken by his
fellow-student Torrigiano, and who, as it happened, died exactly three
centuries before Thackeray.
I can understand all the disquietude of his heart when that warning, as
to the too great length of his story, was given to him. He was not a man
capable of feeling at any time quite assured in his position, and when
that occurred he was very far from assurance. I think that at no time did
he doubt the sufficiency of his own mental qualification for the work he
had taken in hand; but he doubted all else. He doubted the appreciation
of the world; he doubted his fitness for turning his intellect to valuable
account; he doubted his physical capacity,--dreading his own lack of
industry; he doubted his luck; he doubted the continual absence of
some of those misfortunes on which the works of literary men are
shipwrecked. Though he was aware of his own power, he always, to the
last, was afraid that his own deficiencies should be too strong against
him. It was his nature to be idle,--to put off his work,--and then to be
angry with himself for putting it off. Ginger was hot in the mouth with
him, and all the allurements of the world were strong upon him. To find