Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 56.djvu/97

 Thackeray the 'Irish Sketchbook,' became vicar of Dundalk; and Jane Townley (1788-1871) married in 1813 George Pryme [q. v.], the political economist. The archdeacon's fifth son, Frederick (1737-1782), a physician at Windsor, was father of General Frederick Rennell Thackeray [q. v.] and of George Thackeray [q. v.], provost of King's College, Cambridge. The archdeacon's youngest child, William Makepeace (1749-1813), entered the service of the East India Company in 1766. He was patronised by Cartier, governor of Bengal; he was made 'factor' at Dacca in 1771, and first collector of Sylhet in 1772. There, besides reducing the province to order, he became known as a hunter of elephants, and made money by supplying them to the company. In 1774 he returned to Dacca, and on 31 Jan. 1776 he married, at Calcutta, Amelia Richmond, third daughter of Colonel Richmond Webb. Webb was related to General John Richmond Webb [q. v.], whose victory at Wynendael is described in 'Esmond.' W. M. Thackeray had brought two sisters to India, one of whom, Jane, married James Rennell [q. v.] His sister-in-law, Miss Webb, married Peter Moore [q. v.], who was afterwards guardian of the novelist. W. M. Thackeray had made a fortune by his elephants and other trading speculations then allowed to the company's servants, when in 1776 he returned to England. In 1786 he bought a property at Hadley, near Barnet, where Peter Moore had also settled. W. M. Thackeray had twelve children: Emily, third child (1780-1824), married John Talbot Shakspear, and was mother of Sir Richmond Campbell Shakspear [q. v.]; Charlotte Sarah, the fourth child (1786-1854), married John Ritchie; and Francis, tenth child and sixth son, author of the 'Life of Lord Chatham' (1827), who is separately noticed. Four other sons were in the civil service in India, one in the Indian army, and a sixth at the Calcutta bar. William, the eldest (1778-1823), was intimate with Sir Thomas Munro and had an important part in the administration and land settlements in Madras. Richmond, fourth child of William Makepeace and Amelia Thackeray, was born at South Mimms on 1 Sept. 1781, and in 1798 went to India in the company's service. In 1807 he became secretary to the board of revenue at Calcutta, and on 13 Oct. 1810 married Anne, daughter of John Harman Becher, and a 'reigning beauty' at Calcutta. William Makepeace, their only child, was named after his grandfather, the name 'Makepeace' being derived, according to a family tradition, from some ancestor who had been a protestant martyr in the days of Queen Mary. Richmond Thackeray was appointed to the collectorship of the 24 pergunnahs, then considered to be 'one of the prizes of the Bengal service,' at the end of 1811. He died at Calcutta on 13 Sept. 1816. He seems, like his son, to have been a man of artistic tastes and a collector of pictures, musical instruments, and horses (, Thackerays in India, p. 158). A portrait in possession of his granddaughter, Mrs. Ritchie, shows a refined and handsome face.

His son, William Makepeace Thackeray, was sent to England in 1817 in a ship which touched at St. Helena. There a black servant took the child to look at Napoleon, who was then at Bowood, eating three sheep a day and all the little children he could catch (George III in Four Georges). The boy found all England in mourning for the Princess Charlotte (d. 6 Nov. 1817). He was placed under the care of his aunt, Mrs. Ritchie. She was alarmed by discovering that the child could wear his uncle's hat, till she was assured by a physician that the big head had a good deal in it. The child's precocity appeared especially in an early taste for drawing. Thackeray was sent to a school in Hampshire, and then to one kept by Dr. Turner at Chiswick, in the neighbourhood of the imaginary Miss Pinkerton of 'Vanity Fair.' Thackeray's mother about 1818 married Major Henry William Carmichael Smyth (d. 1861) of the Bengal engineers, author of a Hindoostanee dictionary (1820), a 'Hindoostanee Jest-book,' and a history of the royal family of Lahore (1847). The Smyths returned to England in 1821, and settled at Addiscombe, where Major Smyth was for a time superintendent of the company's military college. From 1822 to 1828 Thackeray was at the Charterhouse. Frequent references in his writings show that he was deeply impressed by the brutality of English public school life, although, as was natural, he came to look back with more tenderness, as the years went on, upon the scenes of his boyish life. The headmaster was John Russell (1787- 1863) [q.v.], who for a time raised the numbers of the School. Russell had been trying the then popular system of Dr. Bell, which, after attracting pupils, ended in failure. The number of boys in 1825 was 480, but afterwards fell off. A description of the school in Thackeray's time is in Mozley's 'Reminiscences.' George Stovin Venables [q.v.] was a school fellow and a lifelong friend. Venables broke Thackeray's nose in a fight, causing permanent disfigurement. He remembered Thackeray as a 'pretty, gentle boy,' who did not distinguish himself either at lessons or in the playground, but was much liked by a