Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 56.djvu/107

Thackeray doubted whether he would have been as much at home with Henry as with Queen Anne.

In June 1858 [q. v.] published in a paper called 'Town Talk' a personal description of Thackeray, marked, as the author afterwards allowed, by 'silliness and bad taste.' Thackeray considered it to be also 'slanderous and untrue,' and wrote to Yates saying so in the plainest terms. Yates, in answer, refused to accept Thackeray's account of the article or to make any apology. Thackeray then laid the matter before the committee of the Garrick Club, of which both he and Yates were members, on the ground that Yates's knowledge was only derived from meetings at the club. A general meeting of the club in July passed resolutions calling upon Yates to apologise under penalty of further action. Dickens warmly took Yates's part. Yates afterwards disputed the legality of the club's action, and counsel's opinion was taken on both sides. In November Dickens offered to act as Yates's friend in a conference with a representative of Thackeray with a view to arranging 'some quiet accommodation.' Thackeray replied that he had left the matter in the hands of the committee. Nothing came of this. Yates had to leave the club, and he afterwards dropped the legal proceedings on the ground of their costliness.

Thackeray's disgust will be intelligible to every one who holds that journalism is degraded by such personalities. He would have been fully justified in breaking off intercourse with a man who had violated the tacit code under which gentlemen associate. He was, however, stung by his excessive sensibility into injudicious action. Yates, in a letter suppressed by Dickens's advice, had at first retorted that Thackeray in his youth had been equally impertinent to Bulwer and Lardner, and had caricatured members of the club in some of his fictitious characters. Thackeray's regrettable freedoms did not really constitute a parallel offence. But a recollection of his own errors might have suggested less vehement action. There was clearly much ground for Dickens's argument that the club had properly no right to interfere in the matter. The most unfortunate result was an alienation between the two great novelists. Thackeray was no doubt irritated at Dickens's support of Yates, though it is impossible to accept Mr. Jeaffreson's view that jealousy of Dickens was at the bottom of this miserable affair. An alienation between the two lasted till they accidentally met at the Athenæum a few days before Thackeray's death and spontaneously shook hands. Though they had always been on terms of courtesy, they were never much attracted by each other personally. Dickens did not care for Thackeray's later work. Thackeray, on the other hand, though making certain reserves, expressed the highest admiration of Dickens's work both in private and public, and recognised ungrudgingly the great merits which justified Dickens's wider popularity (see e.g. the 'Christmas Carol' in a 'Box of Novels,' Works, xxv. 73, and Brookfield Corretpondence, p. 68).

Thackeray's established reputation was soon afterwards recognised by a new position. Messrs. Smith & Elder started the 'Cornhill Magazine' in January 1860. With 'Macmillan's Magazine,' begun in the previous month, it set the new fashion of shilling magazines. The 'Cornhill' was illustrated, and attracted many of the rising artists of the day. Thackeray's editorship gave it prestige, and the first numbers had a sale of over a hundred thousand. His acquaintance with all men of literary mark enabled him to enlist some distinguished contributors; Tennyson among others, whose 'Tithonus' first appeared in the second number. One of the first contributors was Anthony Trollope, to whom Thackeray had made early application. 'Justice compelled' Trollope to say that Thackeray was 'not a good editor.' One reason was that, as he admitted in his 'Thorns in a Cushion,' he was too tender-hearted. He was pained by the necessity of rejecting articles from poor authors who had no claim but poverty, and by having to refuse his friends—such as Mrs. Browning and Trollope himself—from deference to absurd public prejudices. An editor no doubt requires on occasion thickness of skin if not hardness of heart. Trollope, however, makes the more serious complaint that Thackeray was unmethodical and given to procrastination. As a criticism of Thackeray's methods of writing, this of course tells chiefly against the critic. Trollope's amusing belief in the virtues of what he calls 'elbow-grease' is characteristic of his own methods of production. But an editor is certainly bound to be businesslike, and Thackeray no doubt had shortcomings in that direction. Manuscripts were not considered with all desirable punctuality and despatch. His health made the labour trying; and in April 1862 he retired from the editorship, though continuing to contribute up to the last. His last novels appeared in the magazine. 'Lovel the widower' came out from January to June 1860, and was a rewriting of a play called 'Wolves and the Lamb,' which had been