.2. .
a f ..
,. .. 2.3.
E .z:,.:...:

2%.

 

 

 

 

  
 
 

 

mums TRAVELWRITIW

 

 

W 1\\§\\\\\\\m\\\\\\x mum sum m m \1/
RA R Y
Michigan State
University

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

THACKERAY ' 5 TRAVEL WRITINGS
BY

Richard Michael Klish

AN ABSTRACT TO A DISSERTATION

Submitted to
. Michigan State University
in partial fulfillment of the requirements
for the degree of

DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY‘
Department of English

1974

 

 

,\
a” A

i

{z

0 [3%) ABS TRACT

THACKERAY'S TRAVEL WRITINGS

BY

Richard Michael Klish

William Makepeace Thackeray has seldom impressed
subsequent generations as a celebrant of the open road,
but the truth is that he spent nearly one-third of his
fifty two years away from England. His travels began at
age five when he left his birthplace in India for England;
they eventually included trips to North America and the
Middle East, along with several lengthy stays in Continental
Europe. .All this traveling had several causes: foreign
birth, writing and lecturing opportunities, the search for
knowledge, and perhaps simple wanderlust. Most importantly,
Thackeray joined his passion for journeying to his interest
in writing at an early stage of his career, and produced
three major travel books, several minor sketches, and
important travel episodes in each of his seven novels.

As he embarked on travel writing, he encountered a
distinctive literary form that had its own demands and
traditions. The travel narrative-—basically the account

Of a visit to an unfamiliar area-~is an empirical form

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Richard Michael Klish

that places limitations on a writer fictional work does
not, yet still requires great insight and imagination.

In response to those requirements, four major travel
literature traditions had evolved by Thackeray's time;
defined by their main subject matter, they were the humanis—
tic, personal, romantic and picturesque schools.

During the 1830's and early 1840's, Thackeray
reviewed several travel books, and there revealed his own
loose theory of travel writing. In those reviews, he
marked the growing ease of travel and the proliferation of
the guidebook, and accordingly opted for the personal
school of travel literature, recommending that the writer
provide a unique perspective on the land visited rather
than carefully cataloque foreign buildings and customs.

Efis three major travel books are The Paris Sketch Book

 

(1840), The Irish Sketch Book (1843), and COrnhill to Cairo

 

 

(1846); together they show the gradual development of his
technique and his mastery of the form. Thackeray organized
those books around Michael Angelo Titmarshrnan engaging,
cmmpanionable narrator—-and clusters of interconnected
themes; he used a wide variety of devices--expansion,
impressionism, the "multi—media" approach among themweto
impress a fresh, vivid View of foreign lands on his readers.
When Thackeray wrote Vanity Fair in 1847-48, he drew
heavily on his journeying experience and his travel narra-
tives. It is both an "imperial" and "international" novel,

thoroughly conscious of countries other than England. His

 

 

I“

(.01

2171'

fiuV
a\~

Flu

dhl.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Richard Michael Klish

stays in other lands had given him definite views of British
and foreign culture, and he incorporated those opinions into
an extensive thematic contrast between England and the
Continent that is important to the entire novel. His

three travel books served not only as apprentice work, but

as sources for the Vanity Fair puppet-master, and for

 

several of the novel's narrative techniques and patterns.
Thackeray's other six novels are also marked, in varying
degrees, by his travel experience and his efforts to write
about it.

Travel had a significant formative impact on
Thackeray, man and artist. It lent him the opportunity to
stand apart from British society and critically analyze it
according to other standards; it directed him to a travel
writing career. Thackeray's pre-eminent achievement-—
his seven novels-~were importantly shaped by those two

forces.

 

 

 

 

 

 

THACKERAY'S TRAVEL WRITINGS

BY

Richard Michael Klish

A DISSERTATION

Submitted to
Michigan State University
in partial fulfillment of the requirements
for the degree of

DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY

Department of English

1974

 

 

 

 

 

("D

TABLE OF CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION . . . . . . . . .

Chapter

I.

THACKERAY'S JOURNEYS TO FOREIGN LANDS

 

 

 

 

Footnotes——Chapter I . . . .
II. TRAVEL LITERATURE AND ITS TRADITIONS
Footnotes—~Chapter II . . . .
III. THE TRAVEL BOOKS . . . . . .
The Paris Sketch Book . . . .
The Irish Sketch Book . . . .
Cornhill to Cairo . . . . .
Footnotes-—Chapter III
IV. VANITY FAIR AS A MOVEABLE FEAST .
Footnotes--Chapter IV . . . .
V- FOREIGN LANDS IN THE OTHER NOVELS .
Footnotes--Chapter V . . . .
BIBLIOGRAPHY . . . . . . . . . .

ii

Page

. 78
. 105
. 130

155
. 158
. 193
. 195
. 204

. 205

 

 

 

 

 

INTRODUCTION

In the seven years before the appearance of Vanity
Egir, William Makepeace Thackeray published three travel
books and numerous short travel pieces for magazines. The
books appeared in three year intervals, until the arrival
of his great novel in 1847, and then no more appeared——
products, clearly, of those hard formative years When
Thackeray was honing his writing skills to the level of

Hestery that yielded Vanity Fair. Written under the name

 

oijichael Angelo Titmarsh, the travel books were among

the first volumes published by Thackeray; they were joined,
in the early 1840's, by a heavy output of travel sketches
fer magazines like Fraser's and Eungh, Thus, before
becoming a novelist Thackeray was a travel writer of con—
siderable experience and some success.

Such an important, and potentially formative, phase
in a major novelist's career should arouse curiosity, but
not necessarily serious attention. After all, the work
produced might be a holiday from serious writing—-or mere

hack-work--that merits brief perusal and then prompt

dismissal. Or perhaps the books are strictly ancillary to

 

 

 

 

 

(P:

(In

(1'

(u

14’

 

 

 

 

the writer's overall career, involving areas that he
experimented in and lost interest with.
A reading of Thackeray's three travel books—~and

they are The Paris Sketch Book (1840), The Irish Sketch

 

 

Book (1843), and Cornhill to Cairo (1846)—-undermines any

 

hypothesis that they are hastily contrived exercises.
They are clearly the works of a polished, professional
writer who knows What he is about and who has devoted
serious attention to his task. Although these books
appear in a literary genre that is generally not as highly
esteemed as the novel, they are genuine examples of
literary craftsmanship, and invite careful study. Further-
more, an examination of the travel narratives, even casual
in approach, reveals several similarities between them and
Thackeray's novels, correspondences that place the three
books within the mainstream.of the author's life work.

The question of whether the travel books deserve
attention should be answered in the affirmative, then.
But the resolution of this question excites others: What
led Thackeray to travel literature in the first place?
What shaped the travel books? What are these books' themes,
aesthetic patterns, and literary techniques; or, simply,
how do they work? And finally, what is their role in
Thackeray's total literary output, most particularly in
IEgard to his novels? The responses to these questions,

and the exploration of what led to the travel narratives

 

 

 

 

and what flowed from them, has determined the contours of
this dissertation.

Study of Thackeray's letters and his biography help
explain why he became a travel writer. Travel was, quite
simply, a powerful and lifelong interest of Thackeray, one
that he pursued in many ways for over forty years. His
first great trip was at the age of five, taking him from
India to England; he subsequently enjoyed a kind of "Grand
Tour" as a young gentleman, a long stay in Paris as a
struggling family man, lecture tours to America, visits to
Ireland and the Levant for business purposes, and many
Continental pleasure jaunts. His constant rambling gave
him several opportunities-—chances to stand apart from
England and critically analyze it, to broaden his know“
ledge of human life, to grow as a person. Most importantly,
it gave him the chance to exercise another great interest,
vddch was writing. At age nineteen, he hit upon the notion
of writing a travel book about Germany, and although this
project was never begun, a future course had been charted.

When he finally embarked on that course, he con-
fronted a literary genre with definite requirements and
developed traditions. An empirical form, travel writing
places constraints on its practitioners that fictional
novel writing does not, while still demanding considerable
insight and imagination. In response to these demands,
mmito human thought and historical circumstance, four

traditions of travel literature had been developed by

 

 

 

 

Thackeray's time. Defined by their subject matter and
major interest, they were: the humanistic, concerned with
Man and his works; the personal, concerned with the responses
of the writer to the area visited; the picturesque, con—
cerned with a highly stylized treatment of nature as land-
scape painting; and the romantic, concerned, primarily, with
the exotic in foreign life and the beauties of natural
scenery. Thackeray was aware of the demands and tradiw
tions of travel literature, and, when he came to write his
own works, was guided by those forces, just as he was
influenced by his travel experiences.

As a writer, Thackeray opted for the personal mode

of travel literature. The Irish Sketch Bock and Cornhill

 

to Cairo, especially, are personal works, dominated through~
out by their charming and instrusive narrator, Michael
Angelo Titmarsh. Thackeray believed that only by centering
his narratives around a strong storynteller, with a dis-
tinctive point of view, could he make his works interesting
and vital to the reader. His narrator comes to assume the
triple role of companion to the reader, conduit of infor—
nation, and character in the work-—a posture designed, in
part, to bridge the gap between the reader and the subject
of the narrative. ‘While the narrator unifies the work
vflth his personality and viewpoint, thematic clusters
cuganize and relate the travel book's various insights.
Thackeray brings, in short, aesthetic and thematic discipe

line to his travel literature.

 

ab

NHL

 

1 \\|J\

 

 

 

 

When Thackeray turned to novel writing, he invested
the hard won skills of his travel narratives in the new

enterprise. The narrator of Vanity Fair, in his personality

 

and role, is a lineal descendant of Titmarsh of the travel
books; narrative techniques applied in the earlier works
re-surface in the novels. Further, Thackeray's attitudes
toward foreign lands, developed in his travels and enun—
ciated in his letters and travel books, become themes in

vanity Fair-~and an understanding of those beliefs helps to

 

clarify important sections of the novel. What is true for

vanity Fair holds, in varying degrees, for Thackeray's

 

other six novels, all of which contain travel sequences to
foreign lands.

Thackeray's travel books, while not his finest work,
still have considerable intrinsic literary merit, and their
well-written, insightful, and imaginative pages well repay
the attention given them. Substantial, too, is their
extrinsic value. Study of them leads us to focus sharply
on travel and foreign lands in Thackeray's life, and hence
gives us a better understanding of the man. And Thackeray's

most enduring monument—~Vanity Fair and his other six

 

novels--is illuminated and explained in part by an analysis

of the books' themes and.fornu

This dissertation has proved to be a collective
enterprise and I would like to thank those who assisted me

hlit. I owe special thanks to Professor Richard E.

 

 

 

Benvenuto of Michigan State University——a teacher whose
assistance, patience and encouragement were invaluable to
me. Professors James D. Rust and Robert W. Uphaus both
read the work in manuscript and offered very helpful com-
nents and suggestions which I greatly appreciated.

But my greatest gratitude goes to my wife Barbara,
whose support, in ways too numerous to mention, made this

long project a finished task.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

CHAPTER I

THACKERAY'S JOURNEYS TO FOREIGN LANDS

Writing to an American friend in November of 1853,

William Makepeace Thackeray recounted his travels for the

 

past year, and then exclaimed: "What a number of places
and agitation of life! I begin to feel most tranquillity
of mind in a railway carriage now; and retirement in an
inn . . ."1 While these words are cast in their author's
habitual manner, and must be taken ironically, they signal
an aspect of his life and art that must be taken most
seriously. After all, the twelve months preceding this
letter were marked by the almost constant "agitation" of

travel to foreign countries. Thackeray spent November,

1852, to April, 1853,touring and lecturing in the United

 

 

States; returning to England on May 2, he tarried only ten
days in London before rejoining his daughters in Paris.
After a brief return visit to England, the Thackeray
family embarked on a ten-week pleasure swing through Swit-
zerland and Germany that ended in mideAugust. Writing
friends that "our travels are all over for a while"

(Letters, III, 300), Thackeray then spent most of October

 

bi

Mm

I

 

 

 

 

 

 

and November with his step-father and mother in the French
capital, only to migrate south to Rome for a winter's stay
on November 27.2 What a number of places, indeed.
Professor Gordon N. Ray, Thackeray's definitive
biographer, perceptively notes that "the image of Thackeray
most firmly fixed in posterity's mind shows him as he was
during his years of continuous London residence at 36
Onslow Square" from 1856 to 1862.3 However, the picture
of Thackeray as a mature, established celebrity, both sage
and social lion, while accurate for the final years of his
life, does not square with the reality of Thackeray as
struggling aspirant and relentless traveler who spent
nearly a third of his fifty—two years away from England.
In many ways, William Thackeray was a wanderer, a
rootless man who drifted from city to city, from country
to country, from continent to continent throughout his
life-~a British subject but a citizen of the world.
Although he did not circle the globe in his journeys,
Thackeray could be called, with little exaggeration, a
world traveler, having visited four of the world's six
continents. Born in Calcutta, India, he never became com-
pletely attached to England as a homeland (at age 30 he
used to humorously refer to Paris as "home" and London as
"exile"4) and never lost his fascination for travel (at
age 50, tired and infirm, he contemplated a lengthy trip
to St. Petersburgs). Fluent in French and German and

thoroughly accustomed to living out of a portmanteau, he

 

 

 

nu

( L

N

a

a

M

~\~

 

 

 

 

 

 

would impulsively depart England for the Continent on a
moment's notice, skipping breakfast in his haste; or would
leave for a ten—week voyage to Africa and the Levant after
two days' planning and frantic preparation.

Of all the major British novelists of the nine—
teenth century, it is perhaps Thackeray who is least
rooted to a particular place or locale. Dickens's close
knowledge of London enabled him to place much of his fic-
tion there; Thomas Hardy transformed a large sector of
southwestern England into his fictional Wessex; George
Eliot frequently returned to her rural English background
for her novels' settings. Lacking in large part what
William Carlos Williams called a "local"——a physical
environment known intensively and initimatelye-Thackeray
often placed his action in a moral or social environment
such as a Vanity Fair, or a Fable-land, an environment that
would span several different geographical places. Dickens‘s
Iondon, of course, forms a moral and social atmosphere for
its characters, but the reader also perceives the great
retropolis as a concrete entity whose sights, sounds and
smells shape and direct the human beings who populate it.

Cme does not have the same sensation when reading Thackeray:
his London, Brussels, and Brighton are parts of a pervasive

Hmral mileau and much.less importantly distinctive physical

landscapes. Further, in his lack of attachment to a single

Physical locale, Thackeray is less akin to contemporary

Victorians than to later writers like Conrad and Stevenson,

 

 

 

 

ii1l n

 

 

10

to Americans like Henry James, and to the Parisian expat-
riates of post-World War I Europe and America.

The "rootlessness" of Thackeray's fiction was
apparently compounded by his writing habits, for he fre~
quently composed his works while on the move. In 1840,

Thackeray's wife wrote: "To look at all sides of the

 

question the best parts of the Paris book were written

last year under the excitement of traVellingf (Letters, I,

 

462). To Mrs. Brookfield, Thackeray himself acknowledged
the stimulation travel provided him:

I came on hither yesterday, having passed the day
previous at Dover where it rained incessantly, and
where I only had the courage to write the first
sentence of this letter-—being utterly cast down
and more under the influence of blue devil than I
ever remember before but a fine bright sky at five
o'clock in the morning and a jolly brisk breeze,
and the ship cutting through the water at 15 miles
an hour restored cheerfulness to this wearied
sperrit . . . (Letters, II, 406).

This excitement and uplift would contribute to the flowering

of his art. Part of his first novel, Barry Lyndon, was

 

written during a six-month journey to the Near East and
Italy, and much of The Irish Sketch'Book, an 1843 travel
narrative, was drafted while on tour in Ireland.

But perhaps a glance at the composition of‘The
Newcomes would be most revealing in this regard. Thackeray's
longest novel, ultimately appearing in twenty-four segments,
Ehe Newcomes was begun during the pleasure tour of Switzere
land and Germany in the summer of 1853. Finishing four

parts there, Thackeray completed part five in Paris before

—. _-._r

 

 

 

 

 

11

departing for Italy for the winter of 1853-54. In five
nonths at Rome and Naples, he wrote numbers six through
ten; then, summering with the Dickens family in Boulogne in
1854, he composed through number fifteen. Thackeray wrote
the final two numbers in Paris in early 1855. Thus, more
than two-thirds of this major novel had been written
abroad-~in several locales, on several tours. It is no
surprise, then, that The Newcomes has a massive middle
section describing the "Congress of Baden," an important
set piece in Rome, and key passages in Paris.

Travel did not figure merely in the composition of
Thackeray's works, but in their very subject matter: he
wrote three major travel books, several travel articles
for magazines, and included a travel sequence in each.of
his seven major novels, and in several of the shorter
fictional works. For him, then, travel was not wielded as
an occasional artistic device, but became a central concern
informing his life's work.

With all this in mind, I would like to turn to an
outline of the major travel episodes of Thackerays life.
Along with naming names, places and dates, Special emphasis
will be placed on the range of his journeying, his reasons
for it, and the impact these excursions had on his career
am a professional writer, and on his attitudes towards
foreign countries and towards England. Being an outline,
the following narrative does not seek.to exhaust all the

details and ramifications of Thackeray's travels. It

 

 

 

 

 

 

12

seeks rather to establish the central importance of these
travels through vital selected facts.

A child of Empire, Thackeray was born in Calcutta
on July 18, 1811, son of a British civil servant. His first
nmjor journey was departure from India at age five; he left
for England aboard the Prince Regent on December 17, 1816,
accompanied by his brother and a family servant. The 4—1/2
month voyage was interrupted by stopoffs at the Cape of
Good Hope on February 17, 1817, and at St. Helena on March
8. There, the servant led the young man to "a garden where
we saw a man walking. 'That is he!‘ cried the black man.
'That is Bonaparte! He eats three sheep a day and all the

children he can lay hands onl'"7 The party arrived in

England May 4.

Although we have this anecdote of Napoleon and a
few scattered memories of an Eastern childhOod, close
inveStigation need not be visited on these early days as a
source of travel inspiration. The important thing was
Thackeray's immersion in the Anglo-Indian society of that
time, and thus his membership in a distinct social and
cultural group. V. S. Pritchett says of the AnglOQIndians:

Their social position in India was grander than it
was in England and when they came home on retires
ment, they clung together in an exclusive group,
denouncing the home-product as shabby, backward,
and indifferent. The Anglo-Indians themselves

were subject to Thackeray's satire. Their long
years of colonial exile made them out of date in
every generation, and in Thackeray's time they
still lived in the mental climate of the eighteenth
century. Thackeray's own feeling for the eighteenth
century, his habit of retrospect and of seeing the

 

 

 

 

 

13

present as something transient and passive, passing
not into the future, but reflecting on the past,
owes everything to the colonial trauma . . .3
In his fiction, Thackeray depicted several Anglo-Indians
who were homeless, drifting men, divorced from the social
rhythms about theme Jos Sedley is one example, and on
his return from India attempts the life of a gay bachelor
in London-—
But he was as lonely here as in his jungle at Boggley
Wollah. He scarcely knew a single soul in the metro—
polis: and were it not for his doctor, and the
society of his blue-pill, and his liver complaint,
he must have died of loneliness (WOrks, I, 31).

vanity Fair tells us that Jos had been abroad eight years.

 

Another of Thackeray's colonials, Colonel Thomas Newcome,
spent considerably more time in India, and became a victim
of cultural "suspended animation": his manners were out!
dated, and his glowing admiration of eighteenth.century
literature out of phase with the rising tide of Romanti-
cism. In other literature, one might recall Peter Walsh

of Mrs. Dalloway as a figure stamped by the eastern imperial

 

experience.
Pritchett has more to say about the colonials:

Equally important is the intimate side of the Anglo—
Indian story. The climate and diseases of India

were dangerous to adults and disastrous to young
children. The latter were therefore sent home at

an early age to be brought up by relations, strangers,
or boarding schools, and were abruptly taken away

from maternal affection.9

This passage could serve as a thumb-nail sketch of the first
ten years of Thackeray's life, and could eXplain why he

<kweloped little sense of home. Removal from his birthplace,

 

 

f .. .c ..r..

I. y u u“ Y1. H.

 

lo

 

l4

separation from his parents, life at boarding schools and
with relatives until his mother and step-father returned to
England in 1820-—a11 conspired to make the young child
rootless. The rambling habits of the Carmichael—Smyths

(the name is Thackeray's step-father's) until they settled

at Larkbeare in 1824, and their dispatch of young William

to Charterhouse in 1822, could only compound the situation.10

Ideologically, the Carmichael-Smyths were at odds

with much of Regency society, moving toward a firm political

 

radicalism in their dissatisfaction with the state of
England as they returned from the East. Colonel Newcome,
that backward-gazing hero of The Newcomes, was in fact

patterned on Thackeray's step-father.ll So the home of

 

young William (what home there was) in those early English
years was perceived by his parents as an island amidst a
hostile political and cultural sea; it would be difficult
for him to attain the attachment and integration into
English life a native—born and cultural mainstream individual
would. Of course, this should not be pushed too far; in
ins maturity Thackeray could say: "Tell those who would
travel that they may go father and fare much worse than in
the blessed neighbourhood of the Strand . . ." and "How I
long to see the Strand again. It seems to me when I once
QEt to London I shall never be a stranger & wanderer any
more" (Letters, II, 178, 185). But once we make these

Emcessary qualifications, we see Thackeray, born apart from

mkireised against the grain of English society, as

 

 

 

 

15

singularly well—prepared in later life to step aside from
and criticize that society, and to travel about the world
without fear of homemsickness.

From 1822 to 1830, Thackeray was schooled at
Charterhouse and Cambridge. At the end of his initial
university term, he made his first important trip abroad
since childhood, heading for France and Paris in the summer
of 1829 with a fellow student. Then just eighteen years
old, Thackeray was deeply touched by his first sight of
the French port Calais, an enchanting vision he returned
to thirty years later in his Roundabout Papers:

When I come to look at a place which I have Visited
any time these twenty or thirty years, I recall not
the place merely, but the sensations I had at first
seeing it . . . That first day at Calais; the voices
of the women crying out at night, as the vessel came
alongside the pier; the supper at Quillacq's and the
flavour of the outlets and wine; the red-calico
canopy under which I slept; the tiled floor and the
fresh smell of the sheets . . . (Works, XXVII, 225).
The almost Proustian intensity of these sensations is
certainly significant.

Thackeray stayed in Paris until October 22, immers—
ing himself in the city's nightlife, art, theater. Early
in August, he and his friend left one boarding house in
which "all the peOple or almost all were English“ (Letters,
1: 90) to lodge together, and presumably to meet the
foreign culture head on. In spite of the golden picture
0f Calais, France and Paris did not completely please

Thackeray; he was unimpressed with French art ("I am very

greatly disappointed in the pictures here-—I hardly see a

 

 

('-

r1—

! r1“

 

 

 

 

 

 

16

tolerable one," Letters, I, 91) and even in adolescence

could lash out with.John Bullish arrogance:
I took a walk almost round half Paris the other day;
returning from Notre Dame wh as I opine is not so
fine as Exeter Cathedral. The organ there only
plays on particular days; & the whole place hath an
appearance of dirt and decay wb will accord with an
Englishman's idea oftthe great National Temple
. . . I went to that same Tivoli some time ago, but
it is nothing like our Vauxhall (Letters, I, 86).
Perhaps the most powerful single impression left on
Thackeray was the bewitching lure of gambling: "The
interest in the game of Rouge et Noir is so powerful that I
could not tear myself away until I lost my last piece—~I
dreamed of it all night--& thought of nothing else for

several days" (Letters, I, 90—1). Gaming remained a dis—

turbing magnet to Thackeray for many years. Often in his

 

writing, in longer works like BarryLyndon and The'KiCklef

 

burys on the Rhine, and in shorter pieces like "A Caution

to Travellers" and "A Gambler's Death” fromThe'Paris‘

 

§ketch Book, cards and the spinning wheel are prominent
among the allures and pitfalls of Continental life.
Although Thackeray could be coolly critical of
French and Parisian life, he was evidently fascinated by it.
Over his 1830 Easter vacation from Cambridge, he stole to
Paris without his parent's knowledge, leaving with 205
and returning flat broke, guilty, but happy. Perhaps
Spurred on by that further taste of Continental life, he
left in July, 1830 on one of the most important journeys of
ids life——a German trip which culminated in a long winter's

Stay in the duchy of Saxe-Weimar-Eisenach.

 

 

 

 

 

17

The German visit was to be an interlude——Thackeray

had left Cambridge without a degree in 1830, and would travel

before deciding on some profession. The pressures of voca—

tion were not great, however, for William expected to
inherit between 15,0005 and 20,0005 from his father's

fortune. So the Continental sojourn was to be primarily a

pleasure jaunt, with the practical benefit of mastering the
German tongue also weighed in the balance; a sort of "Grand

Tour," although the custom had fallen into eclipse for

some time.12

After a series of German lessons in London, Thackeray

embarked for the Continent in late July, arriving in Rotter-

dam after a twenty~four hour passage. Soon he was cruising

down the Rhine ("almost equal to the Thames") and writing

enthusiastically from Koblentz: "This is a beautiful place,

magnificent old houses, old turrets, old bridges &c!~I have

got one or two sketches: the Moselle & the Rhine here join;

the_grand fortress of Ehrenbreitstein overlooks the town

. . ." (Letters, I, 112). At Godesberg on the Rhine, near

Bonn, he returned to the magnetic charm of his colorful

surroundings: "Every old Castle and Hill has its peculiar

legend & tradition. I long to read German to understand

them or rather I long to understand German to read them

. . ." (Letters, I, 113). Leaving Godesberg, Thackeray wrote

Ins mother in early September from westphalia, announcing he
has on.his way to Dresden—-his originally intended wintering

quarters. .But later that month he decided to settle down

 

 

 

 

 

 

. , .. _ ,,,,,

18

in Weimar instead, telling Mrs. Carmichael-Smyth: "for

though the Society is small it is remarkably_good, & tho'
the court is absurdly ceremonious, I think it will rub

off a little of the rust w? School & College have given

me . . ." (Letters, I, 126).

Located in central Germany, Weimar was then the

capital of the duchy of SaxewWeimar—Eisenach.and the

3
residence of the aged Goethe. The young traveler would

later transform the small duchy into the comic Pumpernickel

 

of Vanity Fair. Staying there from September, 1830 to

Marsh, 1831, Thackeray's weimar time was memorable—she

later called it the "days of youth the most kindly and

delightful" (Letters, III, 442). In the manner of his

Calais memories, he could summon up their vivid and living

 

impression twenty-years later in a letter to G. H. Lewes:

At least a score of young English lads used to live

at weimar for study, or sport, or society; all of
which were to be had in the friendly little Saxon
. The Court was splendid, but yet most

pleasant and homely. We were invited in our turns
to dinners, balls, and assemblies there. Such young
men as had a right, appeared in uniforms, diplomatic
and military . . . Of the winter nights we used to
Charter sedan chairs, in which.we were carried through

the snow to those pleasant Court entertainments . . .
(Letters, III, 442).
weimar also meant romantic infatuation to Thackeray ("Since

 

capital . .

1 have been here I have been twice desperately in love

If

i g 9

Cfiiart/ for on October 20 he was granted a half-hour meet!

(Letters, I, 142) and confrontation with the world

ing'with the eighty~year old Goethe.

 

 

 

 

F"

‘1)

'r1

 

 

19

The six months passed in this tiny country were a

formative period for Thackeray in several ways. Most

obviously, it introduced him to German culture and enabled

him to learn the German language. More importantly, it

encountered him with a culture freer and more open than

England's,l3 a society which placed some stress on Arnold's

'hpontaniety of consciousness" as opposed to "strictness of

 

conscience." This contrast between the freeewheeling

Continent and restrictive England would reverberate through-

out Thackeray's mind and art; one example: the raffish

Bohemian existence the fallen Becky Sharp maintains in

Pumpernickel is a comment on the "moral" facade she feels

compelled to uphold in England. The Weimar time could cer—

tainly broaden his perspective on life and "rub some of the

rust" off his provincial attitudes (although, indeed, the

small society of Weimar was very provincial). But, most

 

importantly to us, he was seized by the impulse to write

about his experiences:

Some day when I have nothing better to do-~I will
return to Germany, & take a survey of the woods and
country of it wh are little known-~I think with a

sketch-book, a note-book, & I fear still a Dic—
tionary I could manage to concoct a book w. would
pay me for my trouble, & wb would be a novelty in

England. (Letters, I, 147—8)
Perhaps following up on this notion, Thackeray wrote his

friend Edward Fitderald in September of 1831, suggesting

they embark on a Continental walking tour the coming

Summer.l Hewever, neither the summer trip or the travel

book materialized .

 

 

 

 

 

W

o—-‘l

 

 

 

20

But travel was becoming part of his blood, and so
was Paris. After making a brief feint towards a law degree
upon his return from Germany, Thackeray left for Paris in
July 1832, and spent four months in the French capital at
its libraries, museums, theaters and gaming tables. The
July visit inaugurated a five-year span in which Paris
was Thackeray's principal home-~a time during which he
lost a fortune, found a career, and wooed and wed Isabella
Shawe.15

Professionally, the Paris years were critical to
Thahkeray; it must be noted that he discovered his life's
calling, and then apprenticed himself to it, while away
from England. He gained his entree into professional

writing in May, 1833. Then, Thackeray purchased the

National Standard, a newspaper of small circulation, and

 

became its Parisian correspondent, issuing four dispatches
to the journal. For about eight months he bustled between
London and Paris trying to keep his concern afloat, but the

National Standard folded in January, 1834.

 

At about the same time this writing experience was
begun, Thackeray also embarked on another schemes-that of
becoming an artist. He tells his mother in October, 1833:

I spend all day now dear Mother at the Atelier &

am very well satisfied with the progress wh I make,
I think that in a year were I to work hard I might
paint something worth looking at . . . The other
men in the Atelier are merry fellows enough, always
singing, smoking, fencing, & painting very indus—
triously besides . . . The artists with their wild
way & their poverty are the happiest fellows in the
world . . . (Letters, I, 266).

 

 

 

 

21

Idke Weimar, this wasarmost pleasant season in his life,
nmoh happier than life in London. Once, when he was forced
to visit the English capital at a moment's notice, he
laments: "I found my chambers damp, my keys half an inch
thick with rust . . . I was very happy at Paris, & when I
got here yesterday to my horrible chambers, felt inclined
to weep . . ." (Letters, I, 269).

Thackeray had other reasons for sorrow during these
years, perhaps prime among them the loss of his private
fortune. In late 1833, his inheritance disintegrated with
the collapse of several investment houses; the young heir
became a strugglingpgentleman.16 He returned to England in
December, 1833 and stayed with his parents for nine months,
devoting most of his time to the study of painting still.
The lure of Paris remained considerable, so he returned to
that city with his grandmother in September, eventually
leaving her to strike out on his own in June, 1835. Around
this time he met Isabella Shawe, daughter of a late Army
officer, who was staying with her family at a Parisian
boarding house; over a year later William and Isabella were
married at the British Embassy, and settled into a small
apartment in the Frenchcapital.l7

In the years between the loss of his fortune and his
marriage, Thackeray began writing for money and out of
necessity, and turned to travel as a means of breadewinning.
In April, 1835, he wrote to John Payne Collier, asking this

:fifiend to vouch for his application for the position of

 

 

 

 

v

 

22

Constantinople correspondent to the Morning'Chronicle——

 

an application which was turned down. Then he hatched a
scheme for writing a travel book:

I propose going from Munich to Venice by what I

hear is the most magnificent road in the world——

then from Venice if I can effect the thing, I

will pass over for a week or so into Turkey,

just to be able to say in a book that I have been

there--after which I will go to Rome, Naples,

Florence . . . then I will go to England book in

hand . . . (Letters, I, 281).
NOthing came of this venture either, but it demonstrated
how the ideas of writing and travel were becoming interwoven
in Thackeray's mind. And there were, to be sure, enter-
prises that proved profitable. In 1836 his stepfather pur-

chased a newspaper, subsequently named the COnstitutional,

 

and Thackeray became its Paris correSpondent. The 300—4005
a year position helped provide Thackeray with the financial
means to get married. When the newspaper went out of
business in 1837, he and his wife moved to London, and the
long Paris episode was over.

In later life, Thackeray tended to View these Paris
days through the magical haze of fond reminiscence. From
the perspective of 1849, the '30's were a carefree, idyllic
era:

I went to see my old haunts when I came to Paris
thirteen years ago and made believe to be a painter~~
just after I was ruined and before I fell in love and
took to marriage and writing. It was a very jolly
time. I was as poor as Job: and sketched away most
abominably, but pretty contented: and we used to
meet in each others little rooms and talk about Art

and smoke pipes and drink bad brandy & water.
(Letters, II, 503).

 

 

 

 

1‘

 

H.“\

 

 

 

23

Ten years after this letter, Thackeray imaginatively
reconstructed the Paris days in his novel Philip. Much of
that work's action centers around the adventures of young
Philip Firmin, who lost his patrimony and eventually became
a.writer, while leading a gay~Bohemian existence in Paris,
a.time that "was the happiest of his life" (ngkg, XV, 492).

When Thackeray departed France in March, 1837, he
closed out not only the "Paris phase" of his life, but also
ended the first stage of his travel experiences. In those
early years, travel and life abroad were generally carefree
and cheerful experiences, pursued to escape the tedium of
home life, the dullness of England. The motif of idyll or
golden age frequently appears in Thackeray's remembrances
of those times. Gradually, however, a new phase of
Thackeray as traveler began. Pressed by the financial needs
of a growing family, stripped of his inheritance, he started
to travel quite deliberately to collect material for books.
This, of course, had been a plan even in his younger days,
but the modest success of his first published volume, Th3
Paris Sketch Book (1840), sparked a round of travels that
were undertaken to put words on paper and money in his
pocket.

The second cycle of his journeys lasted from roughly
1840 through 1846, and consisted of five trips that produced
three travel works. The first was an excursion to the Con—
tinent: Thackeray left for Belgium and the Rhine August,

1840, with plans to make another sketch book. In his wife's

 

 

 

v

 

24

words: "he says he will make a series of articles for
Blackwood . . . he is sure Titmarsh in Belgium will take as
Titmarsh in Paris . . ." (Letters, I, 462).19 (Titmarsh

was Thackeray's pen name for The Paris Sketch Book.) Three

 

weeks later he wrote his mother, claiming to have sold a

 

manuscript to Chapman and Hall for 7OL--"a little book on
Belgium & the Rhine to come out as a guide-book next year"
(Letters, I, 463). The draft never did appear in that form,

however, In the same letter, Thackeray mentioned that he

 

agreed with those publishers to produce a travel narrative
on Ireland; he later told them "unless illness or any domes—
tic calamity sh? intervene I propose to deliver the work to
you before 31 December [1840]" (Letters, I, 470).

That "domestic calamity" struck en route to Ireland
in September, during the first trip designed to collect I
material for the book. Thackeray's wife went insane while
at sea: "the poor thing flung herself into the water (from
the'water-closet) & was twenty minutes floating in the sea,
before the ship's boat even §§w_her . . . in the next night
she made fresh attempts at destruction . . ." (Letters, I,
483). After a brief stop at Cork, Thackeray returned to
Ibndon and then Paris with his wife, his plans for the book
shattered for the time being.

But less than two years after the disaster, from
June to November 1, 1842, Thackeray was back in Ireland,
researching and writing the promised book of Irish travels.

Mbving beyond Cork this time, he swept through the northern

 

 

25

and southern halves of the island, visiting the major towns
and countryside. While working on his book, Thackeray was
thinking about another travel writer--one Charles Dickens,

whose American Notes would be published by Chapman and Hall

 

in October. To his publishers he wrote: "I have been on

a very pleasant journey, and hope to God to give a decent
account of it. Let us pray that you may publish‘EEQ decent
books of travel this year"; and to his mother: "I think

Ifickens's new book w? all the world is talking about will

 

in so far help me, as people who have read that & liked it
will like more reading of the same sort" (Letters, II, 66,

88). Published in March, 1843, The Irish Sketch Book did

 

not enjoy the considerable success of American Notes. In

 

 

later years, Thackeray was a conscious rival of Dickens,

comparing how his Vanity Fair was doing in contrast to

 

Dombey and Son, or his Pendennis against David Copperfield.

 

 

 

Significantly, this habit of comparison began with travel
writing, not novel writing.

Thackeray's fourth trip during this cycle lasted
from August 4 to 30, 1843, and consisted of a jaunt through
Cambrai, Valenciennes, Brussels, Antwerp, Rotterdam, The
Hague and Lille. Melding the impressions of this journey
with those of the August, 1840 excursion, he wrote three
articles on the Low Countries that appeared in‘Fraser's
Magazine in May and October, 1844, and January, 1845.

When later collected, they were entitled "Little Travels and

Roadside Sketches."

 

26

In February, 1844, Thackeray wrote to Chapman and
Hall: "Can't you send me to any other country to travel?
The dullness of this town is immeasurable . . ." (Letters,
II, 162). Betraying its author's great desire to travel,

this comment ironically foreshadowed a very busy year of

 

journeying. Taking a short trip to Belgium in July and
August, 1844, he returned to London. There, on August 20,
he received an offer from the Peninsular and Oriental Com-

pany for a free berth on a voyage to the East. Before he

 

left, Thackeray made hasty arrangements for a travel book
on the journey with Chapman and Hall; he wrote his mother:
"It offers such a chance as I may never get again . . . I'm
to write a book for 2005 for C & H, on the East first, or
that Cockney part w? I shall see . . .“ (Letters, II, 177).
On August 22, just two days after the offer for travel free

passage was tendered, Thackeray boarded the Lady Mary‘Wood‘

 

for a trip of almost ten weeks duration. When Thackeray
traveled on his own, he liked to freewheel: "that is the
best way of travelling, surely never to know where you are

going, until the moment and Fate say Go" (Letters, II, 416).

 

In this respect, the Eastern voyage deserves a special niche
in his experiences, for it was very much like a guided tour,
with a large number of stops guaranteed to give its partici-
pants the East once over lightly. Thus, there were stays at
Idsbon, Cadiz, Gibraltar, Athens, Smyrna, Constantinople,
Rhodes, Jerusalem, Alexandria and Cairo, all before he

completed his tour on October 27. It was "by far the most

 

wJ

«flu

 

1"

H

 

 

 

_ _ . cirrrlll m_

27

ambitious of Thackeray's travels during this period" and
was described in Notes of a Journey frOm cornhill to Grand
SEEEQ! published in January, 1846.20
While Thackeray made five trips to gather literary
materials, the years from 1840 to 1846 also saw him in
almost constant transit between England and the Continent
for family reasons. The prime cause was the mental break-

down of his wife: in November, 1840, Isabella was institu-

tionalized at Jeanne Esquirol's Maison de Sante at Ivry--

 

an outstanding mental hospital for its time. Having
business affairs in London, Thackeray was forced to shuttle
between there and France. In the summer of 1841, he took
Isabella to the Rhine, hoping to cure her insanity by a
series of water immersion treatments administered at Boppart.
This failing, they returned to France and spent the winter
of 1841-42 in Paris before Isabella was placed in the care
of Dr. Puzin in Chaillot. (Mrs. Thackeray returned to
England in October, 1845, and never did regain lucidity: she
outlived her husband by more than thirty years, dying in
1394.)21

The second reason was the new residence of his mother

and step-father: the Carmichael—Smyths moved to France in

 

1838 because of indebtedness growing out of the shipwreck of

the Constitutional.22 Because of Isabella‘s breakdown and

 

Whiliam's business, the Thackerays' two children, Anne and
Harriet, stayed with the Carmichael—Smyths in Paris till

1846. So while professional demands forced Thackeray to

 

 

 

28

maintain a residence in London, compelling family demands
forced him to "commute" to Paris; it was during this time
that he referred to Paris as "home" and London as “exile.“
The final stage of Thackeray's career as traveler
comprised the years 1847 to his death in 1863; his career

as a travel writer, however, ended in 1846 with the publi-

 

cation of Cornhill to Cairo. Why did this vigorous writer
of thirty—four abandon work in a genre he had tilled so
skillfully and profitably? For an answer, one perhaps need

look no farther than VanityfFair, which.began its serial

 

appearance on January 1, 1847. Before that masterpiece,
Thackeray had published only one full-length novel-—§§££y
Iyndon in 1844—45; his efforts had been directed towards
journalism and magazine writing, along with his travel

books. But after Vanity‘Fair, that great divide in his life

 

and fortune, he became predominately a novelist, completing

five other novels besides Vanity Fair before his death. He

 

continued to travel, and the observations he made on those
journeys would find their way into his writing——but in
novels, not travel narratives.23

To be sure, Thackeray still considered writing travel
works after 1847, but tended to dismiss those projects
almost as quickly as they occurred to him. He toured the
Continent in 1852, and mused: "I have been to Vienna Berlin
lumich Hanover--proposing to write a book. But 1'homme

Propose. I found I had nothing worthy to say, and that the

book was best left alone" (Letters, III, 67); in Italy in

 

 

 

 

29

1854 he asks: "If I had to write a book about Rome what on
airth could I say?" (Letters, III, 337). And as time passed,
the notion of another travel book grew more remote——writing
to a publisher he says: “if I do a book of travels I
shall bring it to you but this is hardly likely" (Letters,
III, 471).
Next to his blossoming career as novelist, there
are several other reasons why Thackeray ceased writing
travel books. In the 1850's he uncovered another way to
mingle the pleasures of travel with task of making money——
the lecture tour. He developed two series of lectures,
The English Humourists of the Eighteenth Century and The
Four Georges, and delivered them to audiences in England,
Scotland, and the United States. The tours proved very
profitable (the first in the United States netted 2,5005) ;2‘1
and it is possible that the fatiguing rituals of the lecture
circuit slaked his desires to write travel narratives.
Further, in the years after Vanity Fair, Thackeray lacked
the proper subject. Italy, Germany and the United States
ere the major areas visited, but for various reasons, none
ttracted him as a fit topic for a travel book. A final
eason is given by Thackeray himself in a letter to his
aughters:
Shall I make a good bit of money for you in America
and write a book about it?——I think not. It seems
impudent to write a book; and mere sketches now are
somehow below my rank in the world-—I mean a grave

old gentleman, father of young ladies, mustn't be
comic and grinning too much. (Letters, III, 108—9)

 

 

While these remarks are delivered in a jesting manner, they
perhaps place the judgment on his early travel writings and
sketches as "apprentice" work, and not quite as important

or serious as his novel writing. In any event, after

 

Thackeray became a success and celebrity after Vanity Fair,
his travel writing vein was played out.
Travel itself, however, was his meat and drink.
Phase three of Thackeray's travel experience embraced many'
separate excursions, but can be conveniently reduced to two
main categories: the vacation tour of the Continent with.
his daughters, and the lecture tour to America. The first
became an almost yearly event in the 1850's. After deliver-
ing a series of lectures in London in 1851, Thackeray went
on a six~week tour with Anne and Harriet, visiting Antwerp,
Cologne,.Mayence (Mainz), Frankfort, Baden—Baden and
Switzerland ("the whole of the Swiss week was a series of
wonderful sights and golden days," (Letters, III, 120);25
then to Milan, Venice, Verona and home. And in the summer
of 1852, the trio spent two months on the Continent, travel-
ing and sight—seeing.
But these were pleasure tours over well-trodden

ays, while Thackeray‘s lecture tours in the United States
roke new ground and opened new horizons. Undertaken in
852-53 and 1855-56, the ventures were designed to provide
inancial security for the family:

I must and will go to America, not because I like

it, but because it is right I should secure some

money against my death for your poor mother and
you 2 girls—-And I think if I have luck I may

 

 

 

31

secure nearly a third of the sum that I think I

ought to have behind me by a six month's tour in

the States. (Letters, III, 93)
The trips were indeed financially successful, but they had
the added bonus of introducing the middle-aged author to a
country that stimulated him intellectually and artistically.

On his first transatlantic voyage, Thackeray left

England October 30, 1852, sailing on the Canada with fellow
travelers James Russell Lowell and Arthur Hugh Clough.
Arriving in Boston November 12, he journeyed to New YOrk
four days later and delivered his first lecture on the 19th.
Befriended by the Baxter family of New York City, Thackeray

passed most of December and January in the East, making side

trips to Boston and Providence. He gloated over his money-

winning success: "I have agreed to deliver 3 [lectures] at
Providence . . . for 1805 a pound a minute" (Letters, III,

120); by December 20th, he had netted 12005 and hOped for

another 20005 in the coming months. February, 1853 was

spent mainly around Washington and Philadelphia; March,

in a southern swing which.included Richmond, Charleston,

and Savannah. The 2,5005 made was invested in American

railway stocks, and Thackeray was back in England by April.26
Thackeray formed a favorable first impression of the

N6w‘World. He met "very kind & pleasant peOple" in America

(Letters, III, 149) and enjoyed the great urban centers:

"I have seen three great cities, Boston, New York, Phi1a~

Ckflphia, I think I like them all mighty well . . ." (Letters,

III, 193). And soon observations on America and Americans

found their way into his writings-

 

 

 

32

Before the lecture tour, there were few such
comments. In Vanity'Fair, there was a page devoted to a
scathing portrait of John Paul Jefferson Jones, correspon—
dent to the New York Demagague; in Henry Esmond, the English
hero eventually emigrates to America, but his life there
occupies a small fraction of the narrative. But from brief
allusions in the pre-tour fiction, Thackeray moves to full—
blown, elaborate presentations of Americans and their life
in post-tour works like The Virginians, and to a lesser
extent, Philip. These insights and opinions on America
were cast in the fictional mold of the novel, not the
empirical mold of travel literature; Thackeray refused to
write a travel book, partly for fear of antagonizing the
people as Dickens did in American Notes.

Thackeray's second American tour began October 13,
1855 when he left Liverpool aboard the Africa. Arriving
in Boston twelve days later, he was soon lecturing on TEE
Four Georges. November and December were spent in New ‘
York and Boston, with a trip up the Hudson to Albany (where
e Visited Washington Irving); January, in Philadelphia,
ashington and Baltimore. After lecturing in Charleston

d Virginia in February, Thackeray plunged south to New
rleans in quest of dollars. There, he confronted for the
irst time a ruder, less civilized part of the United
tates-—and much of his enthusiasm for America evaporated.
'A dreary weary half dozen journies from Savannah . . .

he dreariness of this country, everywhere, almost consumes

 

 

OrleaI
lectu:

then 1

"triu

Amen
comf<
But -
f0rm.
46mg

Quee

 

 

33

me . . ." (Letters, III, 574-5). After two weeks in New
Orleans, he cruised up the Mississippi in a riverboat: two
lectures were read in St. Louis, two in Cincinnati, and
then he staggered back to New York City via Buffalo,
exhausted by the brutal grind of traveling in backwoods

. 2
America.

Thackeray was repelled by the "sordid greed" and
"triumphant barbarism" of western and southern America, to
the point where he remained "not near so good an American
as I was after my first visit" (Letters, III, 553, 608).
The first tour, after all, was spent in the large Eastern
American cities, where polished manners and civilized
comforts would please a citizen of SOphisticated old Europe.
But the vital, raw, untamed frontier society would not. The
former was perhaps England in a younger, livelier, more
democratic pitch; the latter, the brutish ignorance of
Queen's Crawley writ large.

Gordon Ray has written:

During the last decade of his life Thackeray was an

established celebrity. Though he made two long

lecture tours in America and travelled a good deal

on the continent, London remained his home. He

spent his leisure hours among his family and inti-

mate friends, in London society, and in the bohe-

mian haunts of the literary and artistic familiars.28
Ray's statement could be diSputed for the years 1853 and
1856, when Thackeray maintained a vigorous travel pace; but
it certainly holds true from 1856 (after his return from

the second Arnerican trip) to 1863 (his death). In 185?},

the Carmichael—Smyths returned to England and settled there

 

 

 

 

D—rJ
n

E:

h

(I)

 

 

34

permanently, thus removing a reason for travel to Paris.
For Thackeray, there were still trips to the Continent with
his daughters—-in the summer of 1858, in September of 1859,
in the summer of 1860. But in these twilight years,
Thackeray's health was not good, and much of his interest
was absorbed in building an elaborate Queen Anne's style
house at 2 Palace Green in Kensington. The beautiful home
seems significant—~a very expensive venture, it possibly
signalled the desire of an aging wanderer to settle down
after a vagabond existence. In August, 1863, he made his
last journey, spending two weeks abroad with his daughters

in Brussels and Paris; in December he was dead.29

What kind of traveler was Thackeray? Possibly it

is best to begin by saying what he was not. First, he was

  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
   
 
  

never an expatriate--an exile alienated from British
society, and therefore living abroad. The impulse for his
traveling stemmed not from displeasure with English life,
but the professional opportunities and considerable amuse-
Rents foreign lands offered; while life abroad afforded him

the opportunity to criticize England, he did not repudiate

 

it. Further, Thackeray was not a bold explorer or a trail-
blazer. Love of creature comforts generally left him deaf
to the call of the wild. So he clung to the safe, well—
eaten roads, and when he departed hhem--as in wilderness
erica—-dissatisfaction was the usual result. Nor could

hackeray be called a full-fledged cosmopolitan. Actually,

 

 

 

 

he st
appre
and a
Becat
expel
like

orbii

 

 

35

he straddled the provincial and the cosmopolitan-~able to
appreciate and blend into foreign ways, yet still a Briton
and approaching them.through that frame of reference.
Because of his Anglo-Indian background and childhood
experiences, he always stood slightly apart from England—-
like the moon to the earth, independent, but still in its
orbit.

To better understand Thackeray as traveler, it is
profitable to study some of the comments he made on other
journeyers. While abroad, Thackeray gave considerable
attention to fellow English travelers, analyzing their con—
duct away from their island home. Those remarks help
define the mileau he moved in while traveling, and some of
his attitudes towards English and foreign society.

In the first place, much of the social life that
Thackeray and his fellow Britons enjoyed abroad was to
them, an extension of home culture: in'The’NeWComes he says
"we carry our insular habits with us. We have a little
England at Paris, a little England at Munich, Dresden,
everywhere. Our friend is anEnglishman, and did at Rome
as the English do" (ngkgj VIII, 171). His most thorough
exposition of this:flea came in Philip:

Aeneas . . . and his select back of Trojans founded
a new Troy, where they landed; raising temples to
the Trojan gods; building streets with Trojan names;
and endeavoring to the utmost of their power, to
recall their beloved native place . . . And do not
British Trojans, who emigrate to the continent of
Europe, take their Troy with them? You all knOW‘

the quarters of Paris which swarm with.us Trojans.
From Peace Street to the Arch of the Star are

 

 

 

 

collecte
We live
our nat:
instruct
breakfa:
Paris, I
of a wa:
Agreat dea.
spent in th
ghettoes.
other times
moved in f0
all; ThaCke
move about
those langu
His Contact
Son
m0 foreig
acCident or
ThaCkeray 6

American of

 

 

 

36

collected thousands of refugees from our Ilium . .

We live for years, never speaking any language but

our native Trojan; except to our servants, whom we

instruct in the Trojan way of preparing toast for

breakfast . . . I am sure there are many English in

Paris, who never speak to any native above the rank

of a waiter or shopman . . . (Works, XVI, 24—5)
A great deal of Thackeray's life in other countries was
spent in these cultural enclaves, these English language
ghettoes. In the Paris atelier, in Weimar, and several
other times, however, he cut himself off from Troy and
moved in foreign circles, to foreign social rhythms. After
all, Thackeray was fluent in French and German, and could
move about with experienced.ease in countries Speaking
those languages, free from any linguistic unbilical cord.
His contacts with foreign lands became close and personal.

Some English tourists could not or refused to enter

into foreign lifeways, and often treated foreigners, by
accident or design, as contemptible inferiors. Frequently,
Thackeray depicted this boorish conduct in his version of
John Bull, a nineteenth century ancestor of the Ugly
American of current travel lore:

That brutal ignorant peevish bully of an Englishman

is showing himself in every city in Europe. One of

the dullest creatures under heaven, he goes trampling

Europe under foot . . . At church or theater, gala or

picture—gallery,1hmaface never varies. A thousand

delightful sights pass before his bloodshot eyes and

don't affect him. Countless brilliant scenes of life

and manners are shown him, but never move him. He

goes to church and calls the practices there degrad—

ing and superstitious, as if his altar was the only
one that was acceptable. (Works, XXII, 127-8)

 

 

 

 

Thackeray r

traveler an
How the
much as
gladly
hate yo
and int
all Eur
the mos
greates
English
XXVII,

attacked th
Similar Che

Whi
John Ellll,
SO castigat
Irish, and
ance rather
on the "She
East. An I
"insular ir
estimate or
frEe frOm t
SuMorin

But

‘W I
m. importar

37

Thackeray realized that the obnoxious behavior of this
traveler angered citizens of host countries:

How they hate us, these foreigners, in Belgium as
much as France! What lies they tell of us; how
gladly they would see us humiliated! . . . They
hate you because you are stupid, hard to please,
and intolerably insolent and air-giving . . . Of
all European peOple, which is the nation that has
the most haughtiness,the strongest prejudices, the
greatest reserve, the greatest dulness? I say an
Englishman of the genteel classes . . . (Works,
XXVII, 460-1)

English tourists were not Thackeray's only target-—he also

attacked the conduct of Americans abroad for displaying

similar characteristics.30

While he could be remorseless in his criticism of
John Bull, Thackeray at times shared some of the traits he
so castigated in others. Many of his thrusts at the French,
Irish, and Easterners seem very unfair, bred from intoler-
ance rather than penetrating insight——such.as his comments
On the "sham" life of France, the "brutish" life of the
East. An American friend of Thackeray mentioned his

"insular intolerance, for he was equaliy unfair in his

estimate of France and her people, and . . . not entirely

free from that common English air of condescension and

SuPeriority to all human beings not born in their country.

But in spite of this occasional rigidity, travel had

an important shaping influence on Thackeray. As a human

being, it gave him a wider knowledge of the human CODdlthnr

and the Opportunity to stand apart from England and View it

. - e
from a Continental (or American, or even Irish) vantag

point, As a young writer, it lent him both subject and

 

 

inspiratior
together tl
that would
and would c
as a mature
incidents,
novels. A;
01' travel l
cuss how '1‘]
travel exp,
literature

(Chapter I

38

inspiration for his craft. At age nineteen he joined
together the notions of travel and writing: a marriage
that would eventually produce three full length travel books
and would dominate a large part of his early career. And
as a mature writer, his travel experience would give him
incidents, characters, and thematic structures for his
novels. After briefly exploring the nature and tradition
of travel literature in the following chapter, I will dis-
cuss how Thackeray, as imaginative artist, related his
travel experience, in either the empirical form of travel
literature (Chapter III) or the fictional form of the novel

(Chapter IV).

 

1T1

Thackeray,—
University
be referrer
Within the

26c
York: MCG]

FOOTNOTES-~CHAPTER I

1The Letters and Private Papers 0f William‘Makepeace
Thackeray, ed. by Gordon N. Ray (Cambridge: Harvard
University Press, 1945-1946), p. 313. This will hereafter
be referred to as Letters; all references will be included
within the text.

 

‘2Gordon N. Ray, Thackeray: The Age of Wisdom (New
York: McGraw-Hill, 1958), pp. 223-225.

3Age of Wisdom, p. 322.

 

4Gordon N. Ray, Thackeray: The Uses of Adversity
(New York: McGraw-Hill, 1955), p. 301 from Letters, II,
139 and manuscript letter to Tom Fraser, March 11, 1844.

5Lionel Stevenson, The Showman of Vanity Fair: The
Elie of William Makepeace Thackeray (New York: Scribner,
1947) I p. 38]..

6Ray, Age of Wisdom, pp. 222—236; and Stevenson,

7Ray, Adversity, p. 65. The quote is from The Works
9§¥William Makepeace Thackeray_(New York: Scribner, 1904):
XXVI: p.‘70. This is the Kensington Edition, hereafter
referred to as Works; references will be included Within the
text. ““"

 

8"Afterword," Vanity Fair: A Novel WithOUt a Hero
(New York: New American Library, 1962), p. 824. Referred
to hereafter as Pritchett.

9Pritchett, p. 825.

10Ray, Adversity, pp. 74—79 discusses the early
movements of the Thackeray family.

 

llGordon N. Ray, The Buried Life: A Study Of the
Bélation Between Thackeray's Fiction and His Personal
EEEEQEX.(Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1952): P;
1077 and Ray, Adversity, p. 77.

39

12R

13R
14L

15L

as Thackera-
1838, p. 76

16R

17F

18F

19F

20F

21F

22E

23,]

The Kicklek
mght be de
this CuriOI

 

 

40

 

12Ray, Adversity, pp. 139-140, 162.

13Ray, Adversity, pp. 143-144.

l4Letters, I, p. 156.

15Letters, I, pp. 221-238. Stevenson regards Paris
as Thackeray's i’principal home" (in Thackeray's eyes) until

1838, p. 76.

16Ray, Adversity, p. 162.

17Ray, Adversity, pp. 167-190.

l8Ray, Adversity, pp. 190el93.

19Ray, Adversity, p. 252.

20Ray, Adversity, p. 297.

2lRay, Adversity, pp. 260-261, 278, 305.

22Ray, Adversity, p. 201.

23There is a possible exception here, and it is

The Kickleburys on the Rhine (1850), a Christmas book that
night be defined as a fictionalized travel narrative. But

this curious hybrid most prOperly belongs to a study of
Thackeray's fiction--especially Christmas writing.

24Ray, Wisdom, pp. 215-221.
25Stevenson, p. 241.

26Ray, Wisdom, pp. 198—206.
27Ray, Wisdom, pp. 258-263.

28Buried Life, p. 117.

29Stevenson, pp. 354, 358, 367; and Ray, Wigggm, pp.
391-393. -

30Works, XXVII, 460—461; and Letters, III, 298.

31James Grant Wilson, ThaCkeray_in the United
States, I (New York: Dodd, Mead, 1904), p. 234. '

 

 

The
foreign la:
travel boo}
works were
the case 0:
Llfluence ‘
and its tr;
Past, I WO‘
understand;
appreciati,
litera’ture

Fi
SCholes an
Persistent
dhatews
jonglellr,"
travel Dar
Oldest lit

£01m Whi Ch

 

CHAPTER II

 

TRAVEL LITERATURE AND ITS TRADITIONS

Thackeray's travel experiences and attitudes toward

foreign lands are certainly the major influences on his

travel books. But like any other literary effort, those

works were also shaped by their genre and tradition~-and in
the case of Thackeray's three travel narratives, the shaping

influence was considerable. As the travel literature genre

and its traditions have not been widely explored in the
past, I would like to discuss them here, using an enhanced
understanding of them as a most valuable entree to fuller

appreciation and comprehension of Thackeray's travel

literature.

First, the travel genre. In The Nature of Narrativg,

Scholes and Kellogg note that "the traveller's tale is a

persistent oral form in all culture . . . in a sense, the

amateur's answer to the professional rhapsodist, skald, or

jongleur."l Although not always strictly truthful, the
travel narrative based on empirical evidence is one of the
oldest literary forms—-and closely related to the oral epic

ferm which is often structured around a “fictional" travel

41

 

 

 

 

experience
narrative's
attracted t
eighteenth
Sterne, Smc
nineteenth
Stevenson,
teenth cen1
and there a
the major ]
Such diver
in Spite o
Narrative
fol’m. altl
been Cliver
W1
the p1
of who
Seen,
Cltie.
monum.
the p
This brie
few addit
emphasiZE

and baSed

W

from Cons

 

 

 

42

If the travel

 

experience (e.g., The Odyssey, Gilgamesh).

narrative's lineage is ancient, it is also noble, having

attracted the talents of many masterful writers. In

eighteenth century British letters, we have Defoe, Addison,

Sterne, Smollett, Fielding, Johnson and Boswell; in the
nineteenth century, Dickens, Hazlitt, Wordsworth, Trollope,

Stevenson, Butler; and in American literature of the nine-

teenth century, Irving, Howells, Hawthorne, Twain and James--

and there are certainly more. The travel motif is one of

the major plot devices of all literature, occurring in

such diverse works as Pilgrim's Progress, MobyeDick,‘Rime
of the Ancient Mariner and The Reivers. But surprisingly,

in spite of its long and notable past, the factual travel

narrative has received very little attention as a literary

form, although individual travel books have, of course,

been given consideration.

What is this literary form? Warner G. Rice says:

the purest examples of the travel book are reports
of what a traveller has actually experienced and

seen, his descriptions of routes traversed, of the
cities in which he has lodged, of the antiquities,
monuments, customs, commodities, and character of

the peOples among whom he has moved.

This brief definition is adequate as far as it goes, but a

few additional comments should be made. First, it must be

emphasized that the traveler's account has to be factual
and based on a real journey, thus eliminating works like

§glliver's Travels (which is in part a parody of the genre)

from consideration. However, a traveler's narrative might

 

 

 

embellish or exag
called "lying") 1
effects-with a v
apossible exampl
material, such a:
people visited bj

Neither '
lands are essent.
need not record -
for example, con
The narrative do
but Simply an ar
in his native la:
narrative can be
series of letter
PGISOn narration

to or Stay in an
aCCUIaIEly deScr

unmade), and it

within t
are confronted w

r0 .

cross' to the l
u

Jon:
%' to the

h .

h .
Cap

43

embellish or exaggerate the bare facts at times (impolitely
called "lying") to achieve certain desirable artistic
effects--with a work like George Borrow's The'Bible'in Spain
a possible example.4 It can even contain patently fictional
material, such as folk tales and legends gleaned from the
people visited by the traveler.

Neither travel itself nor contact with foreign
lands are essential elements of the form. The travel book
need not record the physical act of traveling, but could,
for example, confine itself to a stay in a foreign town.

Phe narrative does not have to deal with a foreign country,
nut simply an area the writer is unfamiliar with, perhaps
Ln his native land. Finally, like the novel, the travel
narrative can be presented in various ways—~as a journal, a
:eries of letters or notes or as straightforward first-
erson narration. So a fuller definition of the travel
iterature form might read: "an account of an actual trip
0 or stay in an area unfamiliar to the author, in which he
ccurately describes his surroundings (whether natural or
an—made), and the peOples and cultures he contacts."

Within the grounds staked out by this definition, we
re confronted with a wide variety of work-~ranging from the
)mantic outpourings of a Warburton in The Crescent and the
gggg, to the lucid, disciplined reports of Bishop Heber's
figggl, to the eccentric humor and playfulness of Sterne's

_§§ntimental Journey. As all literary forms, the travel

 

irrative is capable of embracing God's plenty. Since it

 

 

 

 

takes for its 511'
reflections on t'
human life. Ind
literature may b
6.9., the travel
on commerce, or
tory, or sociolo
Because it is so
various as the a
it."6

But whil
fofm also has it
that can hamstri
JOhnson attacks

It; maYI I t)
dlsaIPPOint t
O travellel
e l nOthinc
Supplied thé
tilters a tOV
lng, and the
gueSSeS at t
eatertaianI
lmself f

 

44

takes for its subject human experience while traveling, and

reflections on that experience, its bounds are as wide as
human life. Indeed, Rice adds: "like other forms, travel

literature may be, and often is, modal rather than generic--
e.g., the traveller's interest may be concentrated chiefly
on commerce, or geography, or archaeology, or natural his—

tory, or sociology, or anthropology, or linguistics."
Because it is so flexible, so open, travel writing is "as

various as the aims and abilities of the authors who produce

it."6
But while it is laden with possibilities, the travel

 

form also has its snares—~presenting demands and limitations

that can hamstring some writers. In an Idler essay, Samuel

Johnson attacks certain travel books, and indirectly points

out some of the restrictions a writer labors under:

It may, I think, be justly observed, that few books
disappoint their readers more than the narrations

of travellers . . . The greater part of travellers
tell nothing, because their method of travelling
supplied them with nothing to be told. He that
enters a town at night and surveys it in the morn—
ing, and then hastens away to another place, and
guesses at the manners of the inhabitants by the
entertainment which his inn afforded him, may please
himself for a time with hasty change of scene, and a
confused remembrance of palaces and churches . . .
[Further there are] those sons of enterprize, who
Visit savage countries, and range through solitude
and desolation, who pass a desart,and tell that it

is sandy; who cross a valley, and find that it
' There are others of more delicate sensi—

18 green.

bility . . . that wander through Italian palaces,
and muse the gentle reader with catalogues of pic—
tures; that hear masses of magnificient churches, and
recount the number of pillars or variegations of the

pavement . . .

 

 

 

Of course, Johns

as a literary fo
it. Still, the
part outgrowths
Superfic
to generalize—t
ceived, and stro
The traveler' s
chronological ,
roughly the 0rd
gical chain int
each link, givi
stays in cities
part of their j
narrator does no
imagination, but
and the facts su
uninteresting, u
and nothing but,
pillars, or the
The rest
even sharper foc
the novel. Beca
travel book cann
like Lord Jim, W
important themat

used in many sub

 

 

45

f course, Johnson is not criticizing the travel narrative
s a literary form, but discrete unsatisfactory examples of
t. Still, the widespread weaknesses that he notes are in
art outgrowths of the form's requirements.

Superficial observation, needless details, failure
0 generalize——these are some of the flaws Johnson per-
eived, and strove to avoid in his own travel narrative.
e traveler's tale is, among other things, factual and
hronological, the writer presenting what he has seen in
oughly the order he has seen it. To keep this chronolo—
ical chain intact, some writers feel compelled to discuss
ach link, giving accounts (no matter how uninspired) of
:ays in cities and trips simply because those incidents are
1rt of their journey. Unlike a fiction writer, the travel
irrator does not generate “facts" or incidents from his
agination, but records and selects them from his memory--
.d the facts surrounding portions of his journey might be
interesting, uneventful. Believing in the whole truth
d nothing but, some are reduced to recording the number of
llars, or the greenness of a valley.

The restrictions of the travel narrative come into
an sharper focus when compared to a narrative form like
a novel. Because of its consecutive chronology, the
avel book cannot readily explOre the vistas of a novel

:e Lord Jim, which jumbles its time sequence to make

 

>ortant thematic affirmations. Point of View has been

rd in many subtle and complex ways in the novel, but the

 

 

 

   
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
 

travel narrative
of the narrator'
have a well-cons
suspense as it In
is plotless, and
And finally, it
of the travel n
theme, while it

All thi
passive--indeed,
restrictions he
and can be over
The Bible in S
same readabilit
plot; Thackeray'
much of. its inci
it must be repea
narrative remair
of having an eni
around in, the r
set of experienn
not be destruct
limiting, but i‘
occahion to cha:

duce memorable

Working

the travel writ

 

 

 

 

46

travel narrative is generally restricted to the simple use
of the narrator's point of view. Nor can a travel work
have a well-constructed plot, which builds interest and
suspense as it moves to its conclusion, for human travel
is plotless, and it concludes when the journey is over.
And finally, it is difficult to unify the diverse elements
of the travel narrative under or around one overriding
theme, while it is easier to do so in the novel.

All this seems to make the travel writer very
passive-—indeed, more submissive than he really is. The
restrictions he confronts are not insurmountable barriers,
and can be overcome with resource and initiative. Borrow's

The Bible in Spain generates the same excitement, has the

 

same readability, of a novel with a well—built, suspenseful

plot; Thackeray's Cornhill to Cairo manages to tie together

 

much of its incident around the theme of religion. But,
it must be repeated, even with these successes, the travel
narrative remains an empirical literary forme—and instead
of having an entire universe for his imagination to play
around in, the writer is restricted to a defined and limited
set of experiences and facts. This greater confinement need
not be destructive; the sonnet form, afterall, is even more
limiting, but its strict boundaries have given writers
occasion to channel their creative energies, and thus pro-
duce memorable literary works.

Working within a narrower radius than the novelist,

the travel writer must turn to options yet available to him

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

in order to fash

interesting and
record, in locks
crossed, old cas
along with opin'
amorphous mass
have utilized
only reason the
together is the
traveler-narrat
There a
can be used to
interesting, or
tor can take on
several qualitie
guise, the narrz
taining companir
literary grace e
lake's m, v
descriptions of
and wit, lumino
pacing make the
Charming storyt
this combinatio

tives, and the

Secondl

tnal observer,

 

 

 

47

in order to fashion his narrative. And to make his tale
interesting and valuable, he must do more than tamely
record, in lockstep chronological order, the rivers he has
crossed, old castles he has visited, inns he has slept in,
along with opinions of such. Something must give this
amorphous mass of data some coherence, and many writers
have utilized the narrator to do just that. Indeed, the
only reason the experiences and ideas of a trip "belong"
together is that they have occurred to one person—-the
traveler-narrator.

There are several ways the character of the narrator
can be used to make the various sensations of a journey
interesting, orderly, or aesthetically related. The narra—
tor can take on several guises-~and each role embraces
several qualities that lend appeal to his work. In one
uise, the narrator of the travelogue can become an enter-
aining companion, winning over the reader with sheer
iterary grace and style. This is the case of A. W. King—
ake's Eothen, where vivid and memorable prose, colorful
escriptions of foreign lands and customs, the play of humor

d wit, luminous anecdotes, and a fine sense of narrative
acing make thejourney a fascinating whole to a reader. .A
:harming storyteller with finely—honed narrative skills--
:his combination has brought interest to all kinds of narra-
ives, and the travel book is no exception.

Secondly, the narrator can become a keen intellec~

ual observer, his work claiming merit through its

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

penetrating ins '

are the virtues
Western Islands
examines life i
sweeping (Yet 9
various details
places its obse
ledgable frame

surface phenome
dents of the tr
life and-~as Jo

Next ,

 

1119 up human in
his personality
eyes, the reader
incidents relate
aperson the res
hOth the outward
0f the narrator,
adventure. Ider
is a common devi

the works of The

Through France 2
Lastly ,

materials of his

hilt by approachi

This is related

 

 

 

48

penetrating insight and wide View of foreign lands. These
are the virtues of Samuel Johnson's A Journey to the
Western Islands: the book carefully records and acutely
examines life in the Hebrides; it illuminates, through
sweeping (yet generally accurate) generalization from
various details, aspects of Scot life and culture; it
places its observations within a highly educated and know-
ledgable frame of reference. Thus, the book goes beyond
surface phenomena, presenting not only the separate inci-
dents of the trip, but an increased understanding of foreign
life and——as Johnson would insist-~of all human life.

Next, the narrator can act as subject or hero, play—
ing up human interest by relating the travel experiences to
his personality. Seeing events through the narrator's
eyes, the reader can become involved in his character; the
incidents related do not then simply happen, but happen 32
aperson the reader cares about. The reader comprehends
>oth the outward events of the trip and the inward spirit
f the narrator, and the journey can be transformed into an
dventure. Identification with or interest in the narrator
s a common device in the travel book: we see it clearly in
he works of Thackeray, or in Tobias Smollett's Travels
Egggh France and Italy.

Lastly, the narrator can give shape and value to the
Lterials of his travel not by assuming a particular role,
t by approaching them with a consistent angle of vision.

is is related to the "modal" nature (as Rice claims) of

 

 

 

the travel narr

be manners and
provide unifyin
only the narrat

(admiration , ir

narrative. But
is perhaps why
subjects, trave

it is the easie

The inf
its “modal" ra ‘
to examine its 1
that Thackeray r
1700 and 1840 (t
travel literatur
bewildering pot};
techniques, all
this welter emez
books were writt
Parsonal, pictur
finished by the s
tic travel book

and his works; t

exPerienoes and

 

 

 

49

the travel narrative, for whether the narrator's concerns
he manners and morals, art and antiquities, those interests
provide unifying viewpoints on the events of the trip. Not
only the narrator's interests, but also his attitudes
(admiration, irritation) and frame of mind can weave
together the strands of his tale.8

Working hard, working carefully, the writer can
find many opportunities for expression in the travel
narrative. But its limitations on him are real, and this
is perhaps why W. H. Auden remarked that: "of all possible
subjects, travel is the most difficult for the artist, as

it is the easiest for a journalist."9

The infinite variety of the travel narrative, and
.ts "modal" rather than "generic" nature makes it difficult
o examine its literary traditions. The many travel books
hat Thackeray read out of the thousands written between
700 and 1840 (the rough boundaries of his knowledge of
ravel literature before he began writing it) reflected a
ewildering potpourri of interests, biases, and literary
achniques, all that resist easy pigeon-holing. But out of
ris welter emerge four major traditions in which travel
cks were written——traditions I choose to label humanistic,
rsonal, picturesque, and romantic. The modes are distin—
ished by the subject matter they deal with: the humanis—
2 travel book is directed toward an investigation of man
1 his works; the personal, toward a description of the

veriences and opinions of the traveler himself; the

 

 

picturesque, to
stylized manner
and the unique

Before
a few comments
appear in trave
of the interest,
whether they be

mountains--were

 

cal factors. Tl
their times, an
be ascribed to

touch on below.

 

literary form,
influence; it is
movement left it

The huma
in Josiah Tucker
book that direct
general Properti
And attend to th
the Nature of Se
Military, and Co
0f Tucker's dire

he studied as th

 

This orientation

r01lrists and eig

 

 

50

picturesque, to depiction of natural scenery in a highly
stylized manner; the romantic, to pursuit of natural beauty
and the unique and exotic in human life.
Before discussing these traditions in more detail,

a few comments should be made. First, the interests that
appear in travel books are, logically, direct reflections
of the interests of travelers. Further, these interests—-
whether they be cities or rolling plains, monuments or
mountains—-were determined in part by cultural and histori-
cal factors. The traditions are therefore products of
their times, and some of the differences between them can
be ascribed to changing circumstances--an aspect I intend to
touch on below. Also, because the travel narrative is a
literary form, it is subject to change through literary
influence; it is clear, for example, that the Romantic
novement left its mark on travel writing.

The humanistic travel tradition finds an advocate

n Josiah Tucker's Instructions for Travellers (1757), a

 

ook that directs the young journeyer to "examine the
eneral Properties of the Soil, the Climate, and the like:
1d attend to the Characteristics of the Inhabitants, and
1e Nature of Several Establishments, Religious, Civil,

.litary, and Commercial."lo

Human life is the focal point
'Tucker's directions—-even the soil and climate were to
studied as they related to man in terms of agriculture.

is orientation was a common denominator among Grand

Irists and eighteenth century travelers, for these people

 

     
   
  
   
   
   
  

and language
taverns and gle
lover of naked

stated the rati
when I say
usually so
that only 0
to apply t
so as to a
knowledge

known by c
of men wer

no office
the diffe

The humanistic
compares and cc
99113 of this 1
Survey man}
Remark eacl
And watch 1
So that a full«
The humanistic
rendering of f
flavored with
The journeyer”
the trip, whil

maid and wide

 

 

 

51

were more concerned with foreign social customs, artifacts
and language than with the natural scenery of mountains,
daverns and glens. Samuel Johnson dismissed "the mere
lover of naked nature,"11 and it was Henry Fielding who
stated the rationale and interests of the humanistic school:
when I say the conversatinn of travellers is
usually so welcome, I must be understood to mean
that only of such as have had good sense enough
to apply their perigrinations to a proper use,
so as to acquire from them a real and valuable
knowledge of men and things; both which are best
known by comparison. If the customs and manners
of men were everywhere the same, there would be
no office so dull as that of a traveller; for
the difference of hills, valleys, rivers; in short,
the various views in which we may see the face of
the earth, would scarce afford him a pleasure
worthy of his labour; and surely it wouldgive him
very little opportunity of communicating any kind
of entertainment or improvement to others.1
The humanistic traveler explores life in foreign lands, and
compares and contrasts it to life in his native place. The
Gals of this type of travel literature are in part to
Survey mankind from China to Peru;
Remark each anxious toil, each eager strife,
And watch the busy scenes of crouded life13
0 that a fuller understanding of human life can be reached.
he humanistic traveler's method is a careful and objective
endering of foreign life--empirical descriptions perhaps
lavored with the traveler's insights and educated opinions.
he journeyer's personal experiences and inward feelings on
he trip, while important, are generally subordinate to a
ucid and widely—embracing outward view of the foreign land.

Two examples of the humanistic school of travel

riting are Joseph Addison's Remarks on Ipaly (1705) and

 

 

 

 

    
     
  
  
 

Dr. Johnson's
(1774). Addie
of the 'Subli
book's preface
points to nat
to be talking
'The greatest
[age was in
been described
the scenes of
of w is
ings of ancien
thoughtful des
ings of Venice
Addison is alsv
selves, giving
some cities, 1:
extended compa:
humanistic cont
technique: in
viewpoint, he
Roman works, h
literature an
Johnso
shumped with '
Serves as a f'

interests and

 

 

52

Dr. Johnson's A Journey to the Western Islands of Scotland
(1774). Addison was one of the earliest English exponents
of the "Sublime" in both writing and nature, and in the
book's preface and in the body of his journey he often
points to natural scenery. But often when Addison seems
to be talking about Nature he is really discussing Man:
"The greatest pleasure I took in my journey from 59mg to
Naples was in seeing the fields, towns and rivers that have
been described by so many Classic authors, and have been
the scenes of so many great actions."l4 And the great thrust
of Remarks is toward human art-—the statues, medals, build-
ings of ancient and modern Italy——and human government, with
thoughtful descriptions and analyses of the political work—
ings of Venice, San Marino and Switzerland, among others.
Addison is also greatly concerned with the peOple them-
selves, giving broad character sketches of the dwellers of
some cities, like Genoa, and, in one passage, engages in an
extended comparison of the Italians to the French. The
humanistic concern encompasses even Addison's narrative
technique: instead of directly picturing Italy from his own
viewpoint, he often quotes lengthy passages from classic
Roman works, his vision thus partly determined by past
literature and human thought.

Johnson's Journey to the Western Islands, while
Stamped with its author's unique personality, nevertheless
erves as a fine example of the humanistic school, its

'nterests and techniques. In the wild and remote Hebrides,

 

 

 

 

Johnson acts mu

'primitive' cul
implements and
anthropologist,
standing, Johns
uncover the val
endeavor, his 1
realities of ti

example, Johnsr

 

kind" at St. K.
into the sweep
nation, by ove
and weakens au
expedients for
ing, comparing-
but also in it:
son, Johnson d:
Predecessor, hi
tuist--as when
the character .
ticing his pre
human life,"

observations a
Scotland, as

uPrompt and pe

infects the Hi

 

 

53

Johnson acts much like an anthropologist investigating a
"primitive" culture, diligently noting the customs, beliefs,
implements and language of the people. Unlike the modern
anthropologist, however, whose goal is scientific under—
standing, Johnson is a moral observer, attempting to

uncover the valuable and constant in human affairs. In this
endeavor, his frequent method is to move from the particular
realities of the Hebrides to general truths about life. For
example, Johnson notes the custom of "payment of rent in
kind" at St. Kilda, then expands this small observation

into the sweeping principle that "money confounds subordi-
nation, by overpowering the distinctions of rank and birth,
and weakens authority by supplying power of resistance, or

expedients for escape."15

Throughout he is sifting, prob-
ing, comparing--he renders Scotish life in its uniqueness,
but also in its significance to all human life. Like Addi-
son, Johnson discusses natural scenery; and like his
predecessor, he often does so with a distinct humanistic
twist-~as when he indicates how mountains have determined
the character of the Highlanders. Johnson is indeed prac—
ticing his preaching "that the great object of remark in
human life," and fills the pages of his Journey with careful
bservations and sharp insights into the inhabitants of
cotland, as when he discusses their manner of speech as

'prompt and peremptory"16 or the "general discontent" that

'nfects the Highlands.

 

 

 

 

Humani

exclusive prod
was carried th
Hazlitt in Not
Frances Trollo
Charles Dicken
other examples
though, humani
reporting, obj
dominant trave
Man c

example--or as
traveler himse
mode of travel
Kinglake blunt

From all h

from all u

disquisiti

the volume

dwelling p

to interes
In the persona
related to aut
cal impulse sl
mining its nan
naon cities a
that would mo:

travel writer

haPinned to i:

 

 

 

— —'— Lin .- - ._.,_fi .fi.., .— - .

54

Humanistic travel writing is certainly not an
exclusive product of the eighteenth century; its tradition
was carried through Thackeray's time by writers like William

Hazlitt in Notes of a Journey through France and Italy (1824),

 

Frances Trollope in Paris and the Parisians (1835), and

 

Charles Dickens's American Notes (1842), with countless

 

other examples possible. Within the eighteenth century,
though, humanistic travel writing, with its disciplined
reporting, objective approach and interest in man, was the
dominant travel tradition.

Man can be studied in a group-—as a nationality, for
example--or as an individual. And it is the individual, the
traveler himself, who is the centerpiece of the personal
mode of travel writing. In the preface to Eothen (1845),
Kinglake bluntly states:

From all historical and scientific illustrations--
from all useful statistics—-from all political
disquisitions--and from all good moral reflections,
the volume is thoroughly free . . . My notion [is]
dwelling precisely upon those matters which happened
to interest me, and upon none other . 18
In the personal tradition, travel literature is closely
related to autobiography and the essay. The autobiographi—
cal impulse shapes the personal travel narrative by deter—
nuning its narrative content. Instead of describing the
major cities and important sights on his itinerary-—things
that would most likely interest a reader--the personal

travel writer might discuss events and things "which

happened to interest" him--like a stay in a small inn or a

 

 

 

 

meeting with a

cularly the in!
content. As a
to be structure
by the associai
Further, the 0;
probably be sui

Johnson to sta1

 

observations .
The pl

travel writer
they relate to
and mountains
inwards, towar
travels. Thus
not be (for in.
Snollett in Fr
Person
egotism or sel
hive form and
the egotis
however sh
convey son
he has pas
referring
sensation,

0f perspec
knows then

He “light furtl'.

luteIlsity , car

 

 

55

meeting with a peasant. Its kinship to the essay, parti—
cularly the informal essay, influences narrative form and
content. As a record of thoughts, the book is less likely
to be structured on strict chronology, but to be shaped

by the association of ideas in the narrator's mind.
Further, the opinions offered by the narrator will more
probably be subjective than, for instance, the attempts by
Johnson to state reasoned, universal truths from his
observations.

The places and peoples visited by the personal
travel writer are not so important in themselves, but as
they relate to him. Instead of looking outwards, to cities
and mountains and customs, the writer's gaze is directed
inwards, toward his emotions and opinions that occur as he

ravels. Thus the true subject matter of this mode would
ot be (for instance) France, but Sterne in France, or
mollett in France.

Personal travel writing should not be considered as
gotism or self-advertisement, but as a way the writer can
ive form and focus to his material. Kinglake continues:

the egotism of a traveller, however incessant——
however shameless and obtrusive, must still

convey some true ideas of the country through which
he has passed, His very selfishness--his habit of
referring the whole external world to his own
sensation, compels him . . . to observe the laws

of perspective;——he tells you of objects, not as he
knows them to be, but as they seemed to him.

6 might further argue that subjective description, in its

tensity, can be just as effective in conveying the

 

 

 

early passage

my travels and
eat cast from
pages realize
subject matter
lofty monument
presents objec
dead ass, a me
in this subjec
perceives is a
categorizes tr
idle, inquisit
Yorick/Sterne
France through
sentiment; the
Spectacles to
0f the book's
t0 Yorick, and
tive, the thin
relate to him.
Sterne
anOther done 1'

ing Smollett 's

 

 

56

reality of foreign lands to the reader as more detached and
objective accounts.

Laurence Sterne's A Sentimental Journey through

 

France and Italy (1768) is a personal travel work. In an
early passage the author admits he is "well aware . . . both
my travels and observations will be altogether of a differ-
ent cast from any of my fore—runners"20—-and subsequent
pages realize this promise. He jettisons the traditional
subject matter of the European trip--famous cathedrals,
lofty monuments, historical battlefields--and instead
presents objects and people that excite his sensibility--a
dead ass, a mendicant friar, a fille de chambre. Working
in this subjective mode, Sterne believes the way a traveler
perceives is as important as what he perceives, and he
categorizes travelers according to their personality traits—-
idle, inquisitive, proud, vain, and splenetic are some.
Yorick/Sterne is the sentimental traveler, and he views
France through glasses colored with playful wit and tearful
sentiment; the reader is forced to use precisely those
spectacles to View that country. The very subjective nature
of the book's attitudes and material naturally call attention
to Yorick, and he becomes, in effect, the hero of the narra-
tive, the things and events in it gaining meaning as they
relate to him.

Sterne's narrative is a response, in part, to
mother done in the same personal tradition. He is attack—

'ng Smollett's Travels through France and Italy (1766):

 

 

 

good deal of

life and works
the book is aw
111 during the
and climate of
being. He als
slashing away
remaining a st
this pervasiv
travel work-~51
personality of
James
(1785) is a t
personal narrz
center stage :‘
responses to S
observer. Ow
for Boswell h.
to watch him
interaction b

features of S

 

57

The learned SMELFUNGUS travelled from Boulogne to

Paris——from Paris to Rome-—and so on—-but he set

out with the spleen and jaundice, and every object

he pass'd by was discoloured or distorted—~He

wrote an account of them, but 'twas nothing but

the account of his miserable feelings.
Whatever the justice of this criticism, Smollett's Travels
emphatically are a reflection of his feelings. While a
good deal of the doctor's attention is directed to human
life and works, the interests of humanistic travel writing,
the book is awash with personal opinions, sharply spoken.
Ill during the journey, Smollett attacks the food, lodgings
and climate of foreign lands as infringements on his well
being. He also addresses cultural and artistic matters,
slashing away at French and Italian civilization and
remaining a steadfast John Bull. This critical spirit,
this pervasive opinionating marks the Travels as a personal
travel work-~an approach to a foreign land through the
personality of the author.

James Boswell's The Journal of a TOur to the Hebrides

(1785) is a twist on the autobiographical pattern of the
personal narrative. It is really a biographical work: at
center stage is Dr. Johnson, and his experiences in and
responses to Scotland; in the wings is Boswell, foil and
observer. Overhanging the book is the aura of experiment,
for Boswell has brought his distinguished friend up north
to watch him interact with foreign surroundings. This

interaction between the personality of Johnson and the

features of Scotland is the true interest of Boswell's

 

 

 

 

@1311. much

nature.

In par
is a reaction
been visited
its great sigh
runners, and i
by repetition—
the interests
lands (which a
(which are not

emphasis on di

Romant
While the othe.
tradition, her:
full bloom in '
addition to th
trace its caus
lead to an und
force is, of c
taste from (in
'romantic"22—-
and rational t
tive. This sw

0f English civ

 

 

Ifi——_—"' ' ' W“ Caz-use- ‘ ’7"
58

Journal, much more so than detailed descriptions of man and
nature.

In part, the personal tradition of travel writing
is a reaction to the humanistic mode. After a nation has
been visited and written about by a host of travelers—~after
its great sights have been exhaustingly depicted by fore-
runners, and its strange, colorful manners made commonplace
by pepetition--many subsequent visitors feel compelled, in
the interests of novelty, to give their responses to foreign
lands (which are unique) rather than factual descriptions
(which are not). Hence, the personal mode, with its
emphasis on distinctive personality, offers a strong alterna—
tive to the humanistic mode, with its stress on universal
truths.

Romantic travel writing offers another possibility.
hile the other two modes have long histories, the romantic
radition, born in the eighteenth century, bursting into
ull bloom in the nineteenth, is a comparatively recent
ddition to the travel family. Because it is recent, we can
race its causes, and a brief listing of these forces can
ead to an understanding of its nature. The first great
orce is, of course, the gradual transformation of art and
aste from (in Walter Jackson Bates's terms) "classic" to

22—--from an interest in the universal, traditional

romantic"
d rational to the unique, personal, intuitive and imagina—
ive. This sweeping movement touched, of course, all aspects

f English civilization, and all literary forms. Humanistic

 

 

travel literat

on its objecti

attempts to pl

romantic lite
Secon
Nicolson's ph
Rugged natura
veniences and
teenth centu
aesthetic ins
of crags and~
into all lite
pictures ofter
religious tone
exciting in it
Final]
political and
of romantic t1
Napoleonic Wa:
1793 to 1815,
much of the C:
decades. But
circuit had b

to the Englisi

 

59

travel literature is basically "classic" in impulse, based
on its objective, factual descriptions, its strenuous
attempts to plumb universal human truths, its concern for
Man as a species rather than as an individual, and its
emphasis of human nature over natural scenery. Personal
travel literature goes against some of those tenets;
romantic literature, as we shall see, against all of them.
Secondly there was the change, in Marjorie Hope
Nicolson's phrase, from "Mountain Glpom" to "Mountain Glory."
Rugged natural scenery and mountains, perceived as incon-
veniences and largely ignored by artists until the seven—
teenth century, gradually became objects of awe and
aesthetic inspiration by the nineteenth. Long descriptions
of crags and caverns, ravines and waterfalls found their way
Iinto all literature, with travel writing no exception—~prose
pictures often fashioned in the intense, solemn, mystical-
religious tones of Romanticism. Nature became valuable and
exciting in itself, not simply in how it related to man.23
Finally, there are historical reasons, bound up in
political and commercial tides, that account for the growth
of romantic travel writing. First, the Revolutionary and

Napoleonic Wars between England and France, stretching from

 

793 to 1815, were a prolonged military struggle that closed
uch of the Continent to British tourists for over two
ecades. But while the fashionable Frenchrltalian—German
ircuit had been out, other European areas were still open

0 the English traveler--Portugal and Spain, Greece and

 

 

 

 

 

Turkey. Host B
and at first g1
tive countries.
through the ei
increased trad
loonsiderable
in contact wi
intercourse sp
and commerce h
familiar, for
the Thames.
From
writing is mar
zest for the
subjective, ra
is not present
during a jourr
excitedly, as
the trip's gre
while the humz
to compare the
as part of an
and understanl
ceives imagin
their uniquen
adventure. I

tion' 5 vital

burton' s pref

 

 

 

 

60

Turkey. Most Britons were not familiar with.these nations,
and at first glance saw them as mysterious, rugged, primi—
tive countries. Further, the Empire steadily expanded
through the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, engendering
increased trade with India, the Middle East, and Australia.
A considerable segment of the British.population was brought
in contact with strange, non-Western cultures, and this
intercourse sparked interest in those societies. Thus, wars
and commerce helped create a taste for the exotic over the
familiar, for the Taj Mahal over Trafalgar, the Niles over
the Thames.

From these roots grow the tree-romantic travel
writing is marked by extensive descriptions of nature, a
zest for the bizarre, and an emphasis on the traveler‘s
subjective, rather than objective, vision. Natural scenery
is not presented casually, as a mere conversation piece
during a journey from city to city, but reverently, or
excitedly, as an important area of interest, or perhaps as
the trip's great object. Man and his works are discussed:
while the humanistic writer views these objectively, seeks
to compare them between nations, and sees his observations
as part of an educational process that broadens knowledge
and understanding of man, the romantic travel writer per~
ceives imaginatively, confronts men and human works in
their uniqueness, and addresses the emotions and sense of
adventure. It is this questing spirit that is the tradi~
tion's vital trait, and we can glimpse this in Eliot War—

burton's preface to The Crescent and'the Cross (1845):

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

the variet
delicious
In the cit
thing secr
curiosity
that envel
life--the

And the prefac
Iberian nation
wonder and mys
opportunities
secrets and pe
individual, 66
Wonder
of the intense
This heightene
travel narrati
Byron's M
Wordsworth's _']_?_1
Well he argued
the entire pro
1312 to 1818,
travelogue, an
of tourists , "
intensively se
romance of the
BYron's influe
or simply casu

Childe Harold-

W

 

 

61

the variety that strikes upon the senses—-the
delicious climate . . . the wild animals . . .

In the cities there is that appearance of some—
thing secret and surpressed, which stimulates
curiosity and adventure-~there is the mystery
that envelopes woman-~the romance of every-day
life—-the masquerading—looking population . . .24

And the preface to The Bible in Spain (1842) speaks of the

 

Iberian nation as "the land of old renown, the land of
wonder and mystery" and of its author as having "better
opportunities of becoming acquainted with its strange
secrets and peculiarities than yet were afforded to any
individual, certainly to a foreigner."25
Wonder, mystery, adventures—all these are aspects
of the intense attitude of the romantic traveler and writer.

This heightened feeling is manifested not only in prose

travel narratives, but in poetic "excursion poems" like

  
  
  
  
  
   
  
  
  
  
  

Byron's Childe Harold‘S‘Pilgrimage, Shelley's'Alastor, and

 

WOrdsworth's The Prelude and The‘EXCUrsiOn.26 It might

 

 

well be argued that Byronfs work laid the ground work for
the entire prose school of romantic travel. Written from

1812 to 1818, Childe Harold is in many ways a metrical

 

travelogue, and "it became the manual for a wholegeneration
of tourists," for "to a generation which was becoming
intensively sensitive to the beauty of nature and the
omance of the past the enchantment was irresistible."27
yron's influence on later works might be direct and major,

I simply casual, but it is certain that many elements of

hilde Harold-~colorful details, fascination witthhe dark

 

 

 

 

 

past, reverenc
are formd in ti

Before
important dist:
personal trave
approach, in t1
opinions of th

their interest

 

the exotic)
world. In to
his personali

romantic res

 

tion of the G
Shelley's "Ode
tion '‘I live 1
around me" wh:
writing, them
which is perc
stands apart
events affect
ing leads to
personal writ
All t
found in Wart
himself in t1

author takes

 

 

 

62

past, reverence for natural scenery, a rapturous attitude——
are found in the travel books of following decades.

Before I discuss some specific romantic works, an
important distinction should be made between them and
personal travel writing. Both are one in their subjective
approach, in the way they emphasize the personality and
opinions of the narrator. They are distinguished in part by
their interests (romantic writing discusses natural scenery,
the exotic) and by the attitude they take to the external
world. In romantic travel writing, the narrator tends to

identify with the people and country visited, to annihilate

 

his personality into their beings. This is a characteristic
romantic response--we see it at work in Keats's contempla—
tion of the Grecian urn, or address to a nightingale, in
Shelley's "Ode to the West Wind,“ in Byron's famous asser~
tion "I live not in myself, but I become/ Portion of that
around me" while brooding in the Alps. In personal travel
writing, there is a greater gap between perceiver and that
which is perceived: the narrator, to a large extent,
stands apart from his environment to show how things and
events affect him. Thus the subjectivity of romantic writs
ing leads to the infusion of the Self into the world; of
personal writing, to the relating of the world to the Self.
All the elements of romantic travel writing can be

found in Warburton‘s The Crescent and the cross. Immersing
I.28

 

imself in the "perpetual poetry of Eastern life, the

uthor takes a lengthy journey down the Nile River, finding

 

 

 

 

adventure on

  
  
  
   
  

shores. Colo
prose style
the sun-shine
granite cliff
silvery river
istic, evocat
market, the h
the exotic.
of Eastern 1i
still leaves
intenser, mor
cmuulative im
a magic carpe
Washi:
The Bible in
with Spain, t
land. Irving
attempting to
tion. The 1c
in Granada, t
sensation of
all in the ea
reality--one
Carefully mar

book deals w:

circulating i

 

 

63

adventure on its waters and fascinating antiquities on its
shores. Colorful natural surroundings are presented in a
prose style that at timesgushes ("Therei flames forth
the sun-shine of the trOpics, flashing over the roseate
granite cliffs, and the dew-diamonded palms, and the

29 and that is constantly impression-

”silvery river . . .")
istic, evocative. Strange noneWestern customs—athe slave
market, the harem—-are cultivated by Warburton's taste for

the exotic. He does commentextensively on ugly aspects

 

of Eastern life--its disease and filth for example—«but
still leaves the reader with the impression that it is an
intenser, more vibrant reality than life in England. The
cumulative impression he leaves the reader with is that of
a magic carpet ride through an enchanted land.

Washington Irving's The'Alhambra (1832) and Borrow's

 

 

The Bible in Spain are both romantic travel books dealing
with Spain, then widely considered a primitive, mysterious
land. Irving's book treats its Moorish past and legends,
attempting to capture the romance of a longmdead civiliza—
tion. The long, adventurous journey to the ancient citadel
in Granada, the meetings with the strange natives, the
sensation of escape from the commonplace to the unusual,
all in the early chapters, form a gateway to an intensified
reality-~one Irving celebrates with his bizarre legends and
carefully manicured patches of poetic description. Borrow's
00k deals with the fantastic exploits he had while

irculating the Bible in "heathen" Iberia. In attempting

 

 

to save Spania.
was Roman Cath
underground ex
"undesirables.
not only feats
the nation's p:
adeep feeling
The fc
is the picture
and narrow in
t0 have some :
writing owes ,
the works of .
the natural w
PictureSque t
lush natural
falls--and th
impalct on the
Series of "SC
would break I
f"regrounds a

PeIhe

travel Writer
Re

W
W

W .. .
0rd Palntim

 

 

64

to save Spaniards from a fate worse than atheism (and that
was Roman Catholicism to Borrow), he leads a dangerous
underground existence, mingling with Gypsy bands and other
"undesirables." His romantic escapades in Spain include
not only feats of derring—do, but a fine appreciation of
the nation‘s physical and spiritual faces, and ultimately,
a deep feeling for the land and its people.
The fourth.mode of travel writing of these years
is the picturesque school-~a tradition minor in influence
and narrow in sc0pe, but important to us because it seems
to have some influence on Thackeray. Picturesque travel
writing owes great debts to landscape painting, particularly
the works of Claude Lorrain and Salvatore Rose; it approaches
the natural world in terms of stylized human art. The
picturesque traveler would avoid cities and men, seeking
lush natural scenes-~forests and meadows, rivers and water!
falls-—and then carefully analyze them for their aesthetic
impact on the human eye. The book.he produced would be‘a
series of "scenes," where, like a studious art critic, he
would break natural tableaus into "vistas and lights and
foregrounds and points of View and side-screens."30
Perhaps the most famous and influential picturesque
travel writer was the Rev. William Gilpin, whose books like
Remarks on Forest Scenery or Observations'on'the'Mountaing
and Lakes of Cumberland and Westmore‘l'and. were filled with

Ord-paintings and aesthetic criticisms of the English

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

countryside.
on a scene nea.
. . . Some
always cat
the trees
shadow . .
in an even
.. whil
the trees,
the darkne
effect of
While the subj
Sbarely differ
or Warburton:
reverence, and
With a critic;
Indeed. it is
nature graduaj
travel Writinr
Viable fOrm t]
Century, it h,-
The t]
althOUgh they
and interest,
£1180 Strike a
time. The hu-
Probing it th
in“ .
1th his Su
Whe - .
re N: is C

romantiCr thr

 

 

65

countryside. As an example, these are some of his comments
on a scene near Lymington:

. . Some prominent part of the woody skreen
always catches the light, while the recesses among
the trees still hold the depth of the morning '
shadow . . . But the effect of light is best seen
in an evening storm, when it rises from the east
. . . while the sun . . . throws a splendour upon
the trees, which, seen to such advantage against
the darkness of the hemisphere, shews the full
effect of light and shade . . .31

While the subject is nature, Gilpin's approach here is
sharply different from that of romantic writers like Byron

or Warburton: they approach glorious scenery with religious

 

reverence, and treat it as a vessel of truth; he views it
with a critical eye, as a connoisseur peruses a painting.
Indeed, it is likely that the romantic attitude toward
nature gradually undermined the assumptions of picturesque
travel writing, and eventually the tradition itself—~a
viable form through the late eighteenth.and early nineteenth
century, it has since passed to extinction.

The three other travel traditions have not. For
although they are defined in part by their subject matter
and interest, which are attached to a particular time, they

lso strike attitudes toward foreign lands which transcend
ime. The humanistic writer stands apart from his subject,
robing it thoughtfully for his reader; and personalist
rings his subject under the domination of his personality,
here it is colored and processed for the reader; the
omantic, through the powers of sympathy and imagination,

ttempts to grasp the inner spirit of his subject, and

hen render it to his reader.

 

 

 

When i
his literary <
culties and he
nature of the
form tends to
Then, there we
Mechanization,
T0ur--these a1
confront an a]
revolution.
With this fluz?
was confrontec
0f travel, anc
Personal angle
he was familia
and even pictl
and in the he:
then and exper
Thackeray made

Shape Of his t

 

66

When Thackeray began writing travel works early in
his literary career, he was confronted with several diffi-
culties and hard decisions. First, there was the very
nature of the travel genre, which as an empirical literary
form tends to be more restrictive than fictional ones.
Then, there was the changing nature of travel itself.
Mechanization, mass tourism, the collapse of the Grand
Tour-—these and other prominent occurrences made the writer
confront an area of human experience in the midst of a
revolution. In some way, Thackeray had to come to terms
with this fluid, rapidly altering situation. Finally, he
was confronted by three major traditions in the literature
of travel, and had to decide which, if any, would suit his
personal angle of vision on foreign lands and travel. That
he was familiar with the humanistic, personal, romantic
and even picturesque schools of travel writing is certain,
and in the next chapter we will consider his analysis of
them and experiments with them. Indeed, the responses that
hackeray made to these difficulties are essential to the

hape of his travel books, which will now be examined.

 

 

 

lRobe:
Narrative (Men

2In t1
AReference G'
Standing exam
as travelers I
and the Liter
m
COlumbia Univ
Howells! Trav

(New York: T

4F. A
1700‘1900’" i
XIV (New York

Rice

6

Hen:
6d- by Hen
The quote is

 

FOOTNOTES-*CHAPTER II

lRobert Scholes and Robert Kellogg, The Nature Of
Nargative (New York: Oxford University Press, 1966),
p. 73.

 

 

2In the category of reference works, Edward G. Cox,

A Reference Guide to the Literature of Travel, 3 vol.
(Seattle: University of Washington, 193551949) is the out5
standing example. Works have dealt with individual authors
as travelers or travel writers: Charles N. Coe, wordsworth
and the Literature of Travel (New York: Bookman, 1953);
John A. Christie, Thoreau as a world Traveler (New York:
Columbia University Press, 1965); and James L. Dean,
Howells' Travels ToWard'Art (Albuquerque: University of
New Mexico Press, 1970).

 

 

 

 

 

3"Introduction," in Literature as a Mode of TraVel
(New York: The New York Public Library, 1963), p. 8.

4F. A. Kirkpatrick, "The Literature of Travel,
1700-1900," in The Cambridge Historyof English Literature,
XIV (New York: #51 P. Putnam, 1917), p. 266.

 

 

  
  
  
   
 
 
  
  

5Rice, p. 8.

6Henry Fielding, The Journal of'a bea e to LiSbOn,
ed. by Henry Pagliaro (New York: Nardon, 1963), p. 7.
The quote is Pagliaro's.

7The Yale Edition of the WOrks of Samuel JOhnson, II,
ed. by Walter Jackson Bate, John M. Bullitt, and L. F.
owell (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1963), pp. 298—
300. Hereafter referred to as "Johnson."

 

8Dean, pp. 1-9 has a very good discussion of the
limitations and difficulties of travel writing to which.I
greatly indebted. Dean's comments about "angle of
ision" were particularly helpful.

9"Introduction," The American Scene by Henry James
(New York: Scribner's, 1946), p. v.

 

67

 

 

 

 

 

10£§§1
under the edit
York: S. P. I
llJohr
Yde Universit

leieE

l3Johr

Milne (New Han

l4The

A.C.Guthk5l}

lsJohi

l6Johi

l7JOhJ

l8 .
Bot.
PP. Vi-vii:__'

19Kin
205_§
b ML Yorick
AIfolitical R
University pr

 

68

loInstructiOnS‘'fO'r‘T'ra‘v'ell‘e‘rs (1757), reprinted
inder the editorial direction of W. E. Minchinton (New
(ork: S. P. Publishing, 1972), p. 4.

 

llJohnson, IX, ed. by Mary Lascelles (New Haven:
{ale University Press, 1971), p. 156.

leielding, pp. 23—24.

l3Johnson, VI, ed. by E. L. McAdam, Jr. with George
nilne (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1964), pp. 91-92.

14The Miscellaneous Works of JoSeph.Addison, ed. by
A. C. Guthkelch (London: G. Bell, 1914), II, p. 95.

15Johnson, IX, p. 113.

 

 

 

l6Johnson, IX, p. 51.
17Johnson, IX, p. 95.

18Eothen, 2nd Edition (London: John Olliver, 1845),
pp. Vi-vii.

19Kinglake, pp. viii—ix.

20A Sentimental Journeyythrough France and Italy
Qy Mr. Yorick to which are added The'Journal'tO'Eliza and
gpPolitical Romance, ed. by Ian Jack (New York: Oxford
niversity Press, 1968), p. 11.

 

 

 

21Sterne, pp. 28-29.

22Walter Jackson Bate, From Classic to Romantic
(Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1946).

. 23Marjorie Hope Nicolson, Mountain GlOom and Moun-
:aln Glory (New York: Cornell University Press, 1959f.

24The Crescent and the Cross (New York: G. P.
’utnam, 1849), I, p. vii}

5George Borrow, The Bible in Spain (London:
. M. Dent, 1907), p. l.

26Nicolson, p. 375.
27Mona Wilson, "The Decline of the Grand Tour," in
rand Tour: A Journey in the Tracks of the'Age of Aris—
ocrac , ed. by R. S. Lambert (London: Faber & Faber[*
935), p. 154.

28

 

Warburton, I, p. 17.

 

 

 

 

29War]

39
Sam1
W
Language A530!

31m
Scenery, and I
Picturesque BI

 

69

29Warburton, I, p. 171.

BOSamuel H. Monk, _'_I‘_1_1‘_e' 'S'Ilb'l'i'm'e: ' A‘ Study" of Critical
Theories in XVII—century‘England (New York: Modern
Language Association, 1935), p. 204.

31William Gilpin, 3d Edition, Remarks on Forest
Scenery, and Other Woodland Views, Relative Chiefly to
Picturesque Beauty (London: T. Carhill, 1808), p. 157.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

If tr
Thackeray's 1
book reviewin
to 1845, for
The London T_i
wrote a serie
900d deal abc
travel litera
Period also 9
beliefs that
Writing itsel

ThUS
should form a
literatUre.
and dislikes
nominations 0
demonstrate T
travel litera

travel Writer

 

CHAPTER III

THE TRAVEL BOOKS

 

If travel writing was a significant part of
rackeray's literary apprenticeship, so was the work of
wok reviewing. And in the apprenticeship years of 1838

, 1845, for Fraser's Magazine, Foreign Quarterly Review,

 

.e London Times and The London Morning Chronicle, Thackeray

 

ote a series of reviews on travel books that reveal a

od deal about his attitudes toward and objectives for

 

avel literature.l Some letters written during this

riod also give explicit shape to some of the values and
liefs that are embedded but not articulated in the travel
iting itself.

Thus a brief analysis of these reviews and letters
>uld form a convenient archway to Thackeray's travel
.erature. They serve as an excellent index to his likes

dislikes and clearly foreshadow some of the major pre—
upations of his travel writings. Further, they
anstrate Thackeray's sure knowledge of the kinds of
rel literature being written, of the difficulties facing

'el writers of his time, and of various strategies used

70

 

 

to overcome t
written appro
the relations
critical form
close and cle
Despi
be exercised
were written
therefore not
terminolOgy.
exPected to l
the beauties
extensive qu<
Wild accord:
direct quota;
transitional
tYpical Thac]
Often compOS¢
fOIth the W0:
of Specific ;
expand On 801
was Concerns.
the bOOks he
principles.
statements 8-
and inferenc.

reserVailions

 

71

> overcome those problems. Because these reviews were
:itten approximately the same time as the travel works,
1e relationship between precept and performance, between
:itical formulation and artistic exercise, should be
Lose and clear.
Despite their considerable value, due caution must

a exercised when approaching these reviews. First, they
are written for popular magazines and newspapers, and are
rerefore not rigidly analytical nor precise in critical
arminology. Reviews for Fraser's or The London Times were
pected to be informal, entertaining, and to amply display
re beauties (or defects) of the book reviewed through
:tensive quotation; reviewers were paid by the page,2 and
uld accordingly produce pieces comprised of lengthy

rect quotations stitched together with brief patches of
ansitional prose. Written within this framework, the
pical Thackeray review was an easy—going production, most
ten composed of a few introductory paragraphs setting
rth the work's major issues, a casual, chatty exploration
specific ideas, long excerpts, and digressions that
>and on some of the book's ideas. Secondly, Thackeray
‘ concerned with making specific critical comments on
books he treated, rather than enunciating general
nciples. The broader framework must be inferred from
tements scattered over several pages and many years,
inferences so made should be accepted with certain

:rvations. Finally, several of Thackeray's views are

 

 

 

thoroughly uni
travel writer
place--and do
writers.
with
reviews. Alt
atic cements
realities of
qualities of
inter-related
Thackeray be]
establishing
By tr
large part tc
early ninetee
Cheap: avail;
A hundrec
very res;
3.19 conf;
tourists.
hardly t]
bElongim
leasté Pi
but by Thack.
EXPEDSG 0f t

saturatiOn 0

for the Writ.

 

72

toroughly unexceptional--for example, a belief that a
:avel writer should be interesting and avoid the common—
.ace--and do little to differentiate him from other
titers.

With these facts in mind, we can turn to the
aviews. Although they are filled with random, unsystem—
:ic comments, two major areas of concern emerge: the
aalities of travel as Thackeray perceives them, and the
1alities of the travel book narrator. These areas are
iter-related, and taken tOgether reveal much of what
rackeray believed travel writing should be, along with
:tablishing the distinctive slant of his thought.

By the "realities of travel," I am referring in
:rge part to the impact of the Travel Revolution of the
rly nineteenth century. Travel had become quick and
eap, available to many; thus:

A hundred years ago a man might have built up a
very respectable traveller's reputation within
the confines of Europe . . . But now the case is
different: EurOpe is abandoned to the mere
tourists--the dimunitives of travellers; and we
hardly think of giving a wanderer credit for

belonging to the latter class until he has, at
least5 passed a fashionable season at Timbuctoo

: Middle East was once an exotic, seldom visited region,
by Thackeray's time it could be toured at a “trifling
ense of time, money and personal fatigue."4 The
aration of the region by travelers created problems

the writer:

 

 

 

 

So many h
journey t
of their
differ fr
hundreds
tour . .
Not only had
travel litera
guidebook. E
century under
books were ex
tourist might
be written at
takingly eXpl
account of ii
legends. The
travel Write]
material fror
reviews, Tha<
of Pirating :
Impl;
9Uideb00ks i:
litEratUre.
Objective de:
visited regi(
exerCiSe. B1
embalmed in I

bOOkS, the c]

(and WOrthwh;

 

73

So many havegone through this simple and easy
journey that the accounts which they bring back
of their travels can hardly be expected to
differ from the personal narratives of the
hundreds of predecessors who have made the same
tour . . .

 

Not only had travel become a mass industry, but so had
travel literature through the agency of the ubiquitous
guidebook. Becoming increasingly popular in the nineteenth
century under the aegis of John Murray and others, guide-
books were eventually written on almost every country a
tourist might visit. And little novel or exciting could

be written about, say, Brussels after Murray had pains—
takingly explored the city and given a copious factual

account of its main sights, history, customs, perhaps even

 

 

legends. The guidebooks did their job so well that many a
travel writer was tempted to borrow (Thackeray says "rob")6
material from them to flesh out his narrative; in his book
reviews, Thackeray accused Grant, Hugo, Dumas and Michaels
3f pirating information.

Implicit in Thackeray's concern over tourism and
[uidebooks is a concern for the value of humanistic travel
.iterature. The humanist writer proceeds by careful and
bjective description of man and his works. For a rarely
isited region, this can be a very valuable and entertaining
xercise. But for an area that has been heavily visited,
nbalmed in previous travel works, cross—indexed in guides
)OkS, the chances of saying something new that is true

Lnd worthwhile) are not good. Style, wit, intellectual

 

 

penetration c
course. But
in his review
travel book I
A pri
it, is the al
vision on the
Lord Lindsay
His Lord:
which an
Egyptian
and acti‘
natural 1
acquaint
lands he
The travel w
of Lord Lind
he Should be
differem; fr
those fresh
fails to mak
Unique backg
"Any grOOm C
ignofant, CC
so little pr
man of SCier
The

link frequel

tends to US(

 

74

enetration could still sustain the humanistic writer, of

.ourse. But Thackeray also explored other alternatives

n his reviews, chief among them the qualities of the

ravel book narrator.

A prime quality of the narrator, as Thackeray sees
t, is the ability to provide a distinctive angle of

ision on the region journeyed in. Thackeray commends

ord Lindsay's Travels in Egypt and the Holy Land:

His Lordship possesses . . . some qualifications
which are rare even among the multitude of
Egyptian and Syrian travellers-—he has enthusiasm
and activity, a fine feeling for art and for
natural beauty; and, above all, an intimate
acquaintance with the book which has made the
lands he visited so especially interesting to us.7

 

1e travel writer need not have precisely those credentials
3 Lord Lindsay, or even the same kind of credentials. But
a should be able to perceive a foreign land in a way
.fferent from his predecessors, and then be able to report

rose fresh perceptions. Dr. Carus, a German scientist,

ils to make his observations distinctive in spite of his
ique background, and is severely rebuked by Thackeray:
ny groom or footman, any person, however stupid or
norant, could not have made a journey and observed to
little purpose as this laboriously imbecile and educated
a of science."8
The relationship of narrator to reader looms large
these reviews, and we find Thackeray discussing this
1k frequently. Whenever he treats this relationship, he

ids to use similar terms——and in three separate reviews

 

 

 

occur the phi
"his reader <
ship."9 Tha<
travel work,
priately for
virtues of a
could enlive:
"gay," "dete:
some of the ,
genial, info;
intense one—.
Student, nor
nan talking .
friends. Th.
also imPlies
the travel m

agreeable p e:

writer, an i]

But i
consequenCe .
Wlthin redSo]

because; u a]

C .
Ollhtry in t]

santly Occup:

this, ThaCkeJ

75

)ccur the phrases: "we find him a most pleasant Compagnon

ie voyage," "he is still a very delightful companion," and
his reader cannot fail to be pleased with his companion—
hip."9 Thackeray is concerned with the subject matter of the
ravel work, and the personality of the narrator. Appro-

riately for travel literature, the narrator should have the

irtues of a good traveling companion, a boon comrade who

 

uld enliven a long, rugged coachride; thus, "active,"
ay," "determined," "amusing," and "good natured" are

me of the qualities Thackeray mentions. This favors a
nial, informal style of narration rather than an astringent,
tense one——not in the manner of a lecturer talking to
:udent, nor even quite (in Wordsworth's phrase) that of a
m talking to men, but rather of a man talking to his
‘iends. Thackeray's repeated interest in "companionship"
so implies that the establishment of a central figure in
e travel work——that of a narrator with a pleasant,
reeable personality—~is a major task for the travel
iter, an important rhetorical strategy.

But while the narrator's personality is of great
nsequence to the travel book, its expression must be kept
thin reasonable bounds. Thackeray attacks one writer
:ause: "amiable egotisms occur at every page, and it is
Ly occasionally that the reader gets a glimpse of the
intry in this book of travels, the writer being inces!
Ltly occupied with the person of Mr. Mohan Lal."10 With

-S, Thackeray limits the role of the narrator, and puts

 

his function
should not be
it should nO‘
the narrator
m infon
and distinct
and the narr
mutually sup;
makes the na
listen to, W
of the trip
Beyo
believes tha
travel Write
but must Com
he is report
the reader n
berates Hugo
from QUidebo
sizes a Germ
manner Somew
"dishonest"
Thac
the natUre 0
Support the
literattire.

perSOIlal mod

76

iis function into a certain focus. While a travel book
should not be a stream of dry facts impersonally related,
t should not be disguised autobiography or a cluster of
he narrator's opinions either. Rather, a narrator should
onvey information, facts, impressions in an attractive

nd distinctive manner. Ideally, the "data" of the journey

 

nd the narrator who relates it are not in conflict but
tually supporting: the information on foreign lands
kes the narrator an informed and interesting person to
'sten to, while the "companion"—narrator makes the details
the trip available in a winning format.

Beyond the qualities of amiability, Thackeray also

alieves that fairness and honesty are important to the

 

:avel writer. His compagnon de voyage must be pleasant,
It must command respect. The reader shoudd believe that
a is reporting accurately, is well-balanced, even though
e reader need not always agree with him. Thus Thackeray
rates Hugo and Michiels for freely borrowing material

om guidebooks without acknowledgement and mildly criti~
zes a German naturalist who "paints English society in a

11-—the first two for being

nner somewhat too flattering"

ishonest" and the latter for being lopsided in his views.
Thackeray's views on the realities of travel and

3 nature of the narrator, when taken together, work to

>port the major assumptions of the personal mode of travel

:erature. As mentioned in Chapter II, the rise of the

rsonal mode of travel literature might be considered a

 

response to t
accounts of i
almost invari
criptions of
the investige
interest and
travel narrat
and it become
throngh the .
is from outw.
narrator‘s m
distinctive
Of that land
it from a di
By t
was Well und
d6cline Unde
literatUre,
of travel Wr
see the ham
Charming, ht
and the fore
bright glow
All
haIratoI.’ ar
reviewed thc

own travel \a

 

77

esponse to the decline of the humanistic mode. The first
ccounts of foreign lands-~those of early explorers--are
.lmost invariably filled with careful and extensive des-
riptions of foreign people, customs, cities, landscapes;
he investigation of the unknown supplies the work's
mterest and value. But after repeated visits and numerous
ravel narratives, the unfamiliar land becomes familiar,

nd it becomes harder for the writer to sustain interest
hrough the depiction of externals. Hence the movement

“ from outward to inward, from external description to the

D

 

arrator's mind. It is the narrator who can give a novel,
istinctive View of a foreign country by filtering scenes
3 that land through his personality, or by approaching

: from a different perSpective.

By the 1830's, the movement from outward to inward
rs well underway. As Thackeray saw the humanistic mode
rcline under the impact of mass travel and mass travel
terature, he turned to the narrator and the personal mode

travel writing as replacements. From his reviews, we

e the narrator as a central figure and major interest——a
arming, humorous personality with an ingratiating manner--
1 the foreign land as something to be seen through the
Lght glow of the narrator's character.

All travel works, of course, have a subject and a
:rator, and Thackeray was conscious of both when he
Viewed those travel narratives. In fact, some of his

1 travel work is but lightly colored by the narrator,

 

 

 

and seems a :
of an exterm-
is not towarr
presented to
companion wh<
implied in h:

in his travel

The :
has a curious

form and nati

letter to put
Will you
Of a boo}
e1ltitled
19y WMT.
1t, hhatl

to be mad
Contract

When
half Years la
Sketch 300k i
throes and pe
changes had 1:
1837 letter
the mm (is

\tl
out, he had a

when he queri

 

78

d seems a fairly straightforward and objective treatment
f an external subject. But the thrust of his opinions
s not toward travel related, but travel narrated--travel
resented to the reader by a highly visible, intrusive
ompanion who comes to dominate the entire work. This is
mplied in his reviews, and, we shall see, is made explicit

n his travel literature.

The Paris Sketch Book

The first book of Thackeray's published in England
\ . . . .
as a curious history that reveals much about ltS final

arm and nature. The first mention of the work comes in a

atter to publisher John Macrone in January, 1837:
Will you give me L 50 20 now for the l$t Edition
of a book in 2 Wollums. with 20 drawings.
entitled Rambles & sketches in old and new Paris
by WMT. I have not of course written a word of
it, that's why I offer it so cheap, but I want
to be made to write, and to bind myself by a
contract or fine.

When Thackeray wrote his mother almost three and a
If years later, in June 1840—-stating "the immortal Paris
etch Book is this instant concluded: after unheard of
roes and pangs of labour" (Letters, I, 448)-~several
anges had been made from the original prospectus in the
37 letter. The title had changed, Thackeray had adopted
: nom de plume of Michael Angelo Titmarsh, and, it turned
:, he had already written some of the finished product

:n he queried Macrone.

 

 

 

When
appeared in
written over
which had ap;
previously . l
the earliest
National Sta]
apparently be
cation in Juj
SPread over 5
great bulk 01
to 1840, afte
Paris. The i
series of mag
Publication w
author had a
the articles

Writt
Show consider

and "Composit‘

the COllectio,
these in the 1
works , that he
the English p1

and originals

SllggQSts a di\

 

 

79

When the two volume Paris Sketch Book first
__________________

appeared in July, 1840, it contained nineteen short pieces

written over a seven year period, at least thirteen of

rhich had appeared in at least five magazines and newspapers

>reviously. 3 "The Devil's Wager," for example, is one of

he earliest works of the Thackeray canon, appearing in the

ational Standard in August, 1833; other pieces were
pparently being completed just a month before final publi—
ation in July, 1840. But while the work's composition was
pread over several years, it should be noted that the

:eat bulk of The Paris Sketch Book was written from 1838

> 1840, after Thackeray had decided on writing a book on

iris. The book, therefore, can not be regarded as a
ries of magazine pieces hastily slapped together for
blication with little connection between them, for the
thor had a vision of collective publication for most of
3 articles while he was writing them.

Written over several years, these nineteen articles
)w considerable diversity in format. On the title-page
ickeray remarks that the volumes are made up of "copies"
l "compositions"——the former works "neatly stolen from
I collections of French authors" (there are three of
se in the book) and the latter "studies of French modern
kS, that have not as yet . . . attracted the notice of
English public."14 This distinction between adaptations

originals borrows the terminology of painting and

. see
gests a division along those lines——but we can also

 

 

several divi
The volumes
art criticis
commentary,
Further, wit
variety, as
sentimental
Peri
its great dj
included TE
Thackeray, t
cellany.15
however, the
is more that
cles" and ii
one. First,
Sequence“ " 3
family jouri
articlES the
impressions
the publish:
to do a gliic
on Ireland 5
Titmarsh in

Titmarsh in

then, Saw ti

and Thacher;

 

80

;everal divisions of the work in terms of literary genre.
The volumes are made up of short stories, book reviews,
art criticism, poetry, informal essays, even political
:ommentary, along with the sketches the title mentions.
‘urther, within the area of the short story there is
rariety, as samples of the devil's tale, rogue's tale, and
;entimental story are found in the book.

Perhaps because of its manner of composition and
ts great diversity of genre, several critics have not

ncluded The Paris Sketch Book among the travel works of

 

hackeray, but have considered this early effort a mis—

15 There is some justification for this viewpoint;

ellany.
awever, there are also good reasons to believe the work

5 more than a "miscellaneous potpourri of tales and arti—
Les" and indeed a travel work, albeit a loosely organized
re. First, the work opens with a very explicit travel
aquence—-"An Invasion of France"--which shows a British
mily journeying from London to Paris. The separate

ticles that follow are clearly to be taken as the reports,
pressions or stories of a traveler/visitor. Secondly,

a publishing firm of Chapman and Hall contracted Thackeray
do a guidebook on Belgium and a series of travel sketches

Ireland soon after The Paris Sketch Book appeared--a

 

:marsh in Belgium and in Ireland to go along with the

marsh in Paris.16

Both the publisher and the writer,
n, saw the Paris work as a kind of travel literature,

Thackeray as a travel writer. Finally, although there

 

 

 

is little no‘
attempt to g:
foreign life
abroad. Thi:
our definitiw
of the book .
Alth
considered u
1% does ha
to Washingto
9911i publis
Thackeray's
Thanh).
even Visited
1855; he one
New World of
the Clearly
bOth Works e
criticiSm ar.
both “Write
Both! final]
which define
VOYage" from
Invasion of
Howe
of the Word

than Irving ‘

 

81

is little movement and physical travel in the work, it does
attempt to give a sustained and comprehensive view of
foreign life through an empirical account of a journey
abroad. This qualifies it as a travel work according to
our definition in Chapter II, even though some segments

of the book are fictional.

! Although the format of Thackeray's work might be
ponsidered unconventional at first glance, The Paris Sketch
|

B293 does have its precursors. It apparently owes a debt
to Washington Irving's The Sketch Book of Geoffrey‘Crayon,
ent. published in 1819-20 (note that the full title of

Thackeray's work is The Paris Sketch Book'of Mr. M. A.

£itmarsh). Thackeray was familiar with Irving's work and

 

even visited the American author at his New York home in
L855; he once called Irving the “first ambassador whom the
Few World of Letters sent to the Old."17 In addition to
:he clearly parallel titles, there are other similarities:
0th works employ personas, both mix short stories, literary
riticism and sketches, both employ daydream sequences,
oth rewrite older tales (what Thackeray called "c0pies").
3th, finally, have early travel sequences or sketches
rich define the works as travel books--Irving's "The
>yage" from America to England, and Thackeray's "An
:vasion of France."

However, it should be pointed that Thackeray's use

the word "sketchbook" is fraught with more significance

an Irving's. Thackery meant "sketch" to be both.a "short

 

 

 

 

literary piec
had studied I:
own works; hi
(1836), was 2
runs throughc
sketches by 1
pieces eithei
articles are
French School
"Caricatures
Thac]
further impl.
called the "1
VieWEd throuv
("Four Imita‘
of Prose for,
Eirtist to em]
trations are
in the text
tice Was to 1
hands (DiCke;
exceptiOn is
litErature b‘
Bo\ok’ WOrd r.
exPands on p
M John Attw.

 

82

iterary piece" and an artistic drawing. After all, he

id studied art in Paris and subsequently illustrated his
1n works; his very first published book, FlOre et Zephyr
L836), was a series of drawings. Drawing is a motif that
ins throughout the Paris book: in addition to the twenty
:etches by the author, and the notion of naming the prose
.eces either "copies" or "compositions," three of the
ticles are concerned with painting and drawing—-"On the

ench School of Painting,‘ "The Painter's Bargain" and
aricatures and Lithography in Paris.“

Thackeray's interest in pencil drawing carries
rther implications, for it underlines what might be
lled the "multi—media" approach of the book. Paris is
ewed through the lenses of pencil sketches, poetry
Tour Imitations of Beranger"), and a very wide variety
prose forms-—a markedly diverse array of tools for one
:ist to employ in one book. The work's prose and illus—
Ltions are the product of one mind, and their integration
the text a fact of considerable import. The usual prac—
e was to have a book written and illustrated by separate
ds (Dickens's novels are an example); the distinct
eption is the writer—illustrator, represented in English
arature by Blake and Thackeray. In The Paris sketch
3, word refers to image, and picture illustrates and
mds on prose. In "A Gambler's Death," Thackeray says
ohn Attwood, "he was lying as I have drawn him, one

on his breast, the other falling towards the ground"

 

 

 

(153) and ad
Dramas and M
Englishman a
a picture of
than embelli
of their own
text. The f
good example
tion: a Carl
figures are
confusing me
Plexity of F
this Opening
exPressed pi
B°U109ne (8)
FrenCh Polit

Whi? the

than the

French b

républic

Slmonian

ad'filrers
fr lends .

Another use
Caution to T
the Baronne
Here, the 11
but a Part 0

ledge of the

 

83

(153) and adds a subsequent illustration; in "French
Dramas and Melodramas," he briefly describes the typical
Englishman as represented in French theater, and then draws
a picture of him. The pencil sketches, however, do more
than embellish the prose statements—-they make "statements"
of their own which are eventually borne out in the prose
text. The frontispiece entitled "Paris Sketches" is a
good example of this latter technique. In that illustra‘
tion, a Carlist, Bonapartist, priest, artist and five other
figures are crowded together on the same page, a rich and
confusing melange that points out the diversity and com-
plexity of French life. In the prose pieces that follow
this opening salvo, Thackeray develops the idea first
expressed pictorially: he notes the "mongrel" nature of
Boulogne (8) and remarks on the complicated welter of
French politics:

Why the Emperor of the French.should be better

than the King of the French, or the King of the

French better than the King of France and Navarre,

it is not our business to inquire; but all the

three monarches have no lack of supporters;

republicanism has no lack of supporters; St.

Simonianism was followed by a respectable body of

admirers; Robespierrism has a select party of

friends. (157)
10ther use of prose and picture might be found in "A
:ution to Travellers," where Thackeray draws a picture of
e Baronne de Florval—Delval and a simpering Sam PogSOn.
re, the illustration is not an ornament to the story,

t a part of it; the picture broadens the reader's know!

ige of the two characters and their relationship, and

 

 

 

 

becomes an 1
story.

"Mul
literary for
Sketch Book
and uses aln
media during
political an
personal ess
also a broad
f1’0If1 the ser
medieval st}
of nNatpoleor
Prose Style,
PEICeiving 6
use of multi
highly apprc
times on Fr;
articles.

Inde
embracing, €
narrow, and
than Centril
instead of 1
with its ma!
W

the humble I

 

84

becomes an integral part of his total understanding of the
story.

"Multi—media" also refers to the plethora of
literary forms and models found in the work. The Paris
Sketch Book grew out of magazine and newspaper writing,
and uses almost every kind of literary piece found in those
media during Thackeray's time--light humorous verse,
political analyses, book reviews, short stories, sketches,
personal essays. In addition to that mixture, there is
also a broad compass of prosesiyles that enliven the work,
from the sentimental prose of "Beatrice Merger" to the mock-
nedieval style of "A Devil's Wager" to the angry broadsides
of "Napoleon and His System." Each literary form, each
prose style, of course, constitutes a different way of
perceiving and discussing Paris and its peOple. And the
1se of multiple aesthetic forms (prose, poetry, drawing) is
lighly appropriate in a work which gives multiple perspec‘

ives on France through nineteen different stories and

 

rticles.

Indeed, this book's thrust is toward the all-
mbracing, expansive, multiple, rather than the restrictive,
arrow, and monolithic; its direction is centrifugal rather
han centripetal, continually exploring new materials
nstead of tightly organizing the materials at hand. Along
ith its many viewpoints and literary forms, The Paris

{etch Book explores the full range of French society, from

1e humble peasant Beatrice Merger to the Sun King, Louis

 

 

XIV, with a
on the socia
revolutionar
containing a
along with p
expansive in
Versailles,
and articles
are taken in
Concomitant
travel werk
in its ninet
Utive narrat
Befo
and Stories,
Examined, 'I
Thackeray's
long Years 1
b00k, and th
and cOmPaCtn
Visit Can,
to the dayrt
travel books

 

85

XIV, with a crowded gallery of characters in between them
on the social ladder-—painters, robbers, British emigrees,
revolutionaries, priests. The work is expansive in time,
containing a medieval story and tales of the Revolution,
along with pieces set in the time of Louis Phillipe; it is
expansive in space, moving from the painter's garret to
Versailles, from the provinces to the capital. The stories
and articles have a panoramic effect, not so much when they
are taken individually, but in their cumulative impact.
Concomitant with the great range and diversity of this
travel work is its loose structural arrangement, represented
in its nineteen separate articles that do not form a consec—
utive narrative.
Before turning to a treatment of those articles

and stories, the reasons for the work's format should be
examined. The first reason is found in the nature of
Phackeray's experience of France and Paris. He had spent
pong years in the country and city when he wrote his travel
ook, and thus his work cannot easily muster the intensity

d compactness that a volume based on a single, two month
dsit can. A stay spread over five years is not conducive
o the day—to—day or city—to—city narrative form that many
ravel books employ, a treatment that gives them a certain
ohesiveness.

Next, there is the diverse, complex nature of

arisian and French life that seems to demand a diverse

anner of treatment. Thackeray's illustration, "Paris

 

 

Sketches ," a
above, indic
plenty confr
infinite var
that it is 1
significant
Novels," he

let a ge
years in
Purpose
sufficie
how much
has . .

Cups of
people,
intimacy
of the I:
Only the qui
Order to mak
SOCietl/“and
is not that
will not he
stay in Pari
Pres
is Michael A
book and als
Thackeray Wr
name of Ti tm
on the narra
this fiQUre'
The
Should be th

 

86

:etches," and his views on French politics, discussed
Jove, indicate his belief that a richly variegated God's
lenty confronts the visiting Englishman. Aside from the
nfinite variety of French society, Thackeray also believes
hat it is largely inscrutable to the traveler;, In a
ignificant passage from "On Some French Fashionable

ovels,‘ he comments:

let a gentleman who has dwelt two, four, or ten

years in Paris (and has not gone thither for the

purpose of making a book, when three weeks are

sufficient)-—1et an English gentleman say . . .

how much he knows of French society . . . He

has . . . seen an immense number of wax candles,

cups of tea, glasses of orgeat, and French

people, in best clothes, enjoying the same; but

intimacy there is none; we see but the outsides

of the people. (117)
nly the quick traveler who sees Paris for "three weeks" in
rder to make a book can pretend to understand French
)ciety—-and by this passage Thackeray announces that he
s not that kind of traveler, and that his travel work
.11 not be similar to a day by day narrative account of a
:ay in Paris.

Presiding over this loosely arranged travel work

Michael Angelo Titmarsh, the purported author of the
ok and also a character in some of its stories. Because
ackeray wrote all three of his travel books under the
he of Titmarsh, and because he places such an emphasis
the narrator in his reviews, it is important to study
S figure's role in The Paris Sketch BOOk.

The relationship between Thackeray and Titmarsh

11d be the first matter to be discussed. Is Titmarsh

 

 

 

separate and
Gulliver or
a voice of 1
personality ,
Yorick in _S_<
the latter :
largely tha‘
character.
narrative m.
Titmarsh in
Titmarsh to
But the iro
and by and
the evidenc
Thackeray.
The
PErsonal li
reSident of
thirtY‘Seve
(23) in a n
(147) and h
from his fr
seems to be
Precisely c
Whi
life is 811

IS QXtenS ill

 

87

separate and distinct from his creator, like Swift's
Gulliver or Thackeray's own Barry Lyndon? Or is he largely
a voice of the author, a manifestation of Thackeray's own
personality, like Irving's Geoffrey Crayon or Sterne's

Yorick in Sentimental Journey? With certain reservations,

 

the latter is the correct assessment--Titmarsh's voice is
largely that of Thackeray and not that of an autonomous
character. To be sure, Thackeray pokes fun at his own
narrative mask at times, showing, for example, a drunken
Titmarsh in "A Gambler's Death," and at others forcing
Titmarsh to speak in a humorous and exaggerated manner.
But the ironic gap between author and narrator is slight,
and by and large the opinions Titmarsh expresses are, on
the evidence of letters and other writings, those of
Thackeray.

The reader can discover few details about Titmarsh's
personal life and history. We learn that he is a veteran
resident of Paris (394); that he lives "up a hundred and
thirty-seven steps in the remote quarter of the Luxembourg"
(28) in a "little garret" where he maintains a sketch~book
C147) and has a servant named Beatrice Merger (203); that
From his friendships with Sam Pogson and Jack Attwood, he
eems to be a member of the lower middle class. It is not

recisely clear whether he is married.

 

While the reader's knowledge of Titmarsh's personal
ife is slim, his information on the narrator's personality

: extensive—-and somewhat confusing. It is extensive

 

 

 

because Titn
cant stamp c
that persona
sketch. In
ironic eleme
"Napoleon ar
bold and hig
in some of t
"The Devil's
ness. Part
due to the r
articles, of
facets of ti.
the Critical
by 1840 Thac
some of his

lice. ThUS,
Panion" Who

COUntry Visi
ofteh become
values Chang

But

of Tithlarshl
hunted page
ready Stock

he sets this

book with a

 

 

88

ecause Titmarsh's personality leaves a deep and signifi—
ant stamp on many of the articles; it is confusing because
at personality seems markedly different from sketch to
ketch. In "A Caution to Travellers," the humorous and
ronic elements of the narrator come to the fore; in

'Napoleon and His System," Titmarsh appears as a serious,

old and highly Opinionated political thinker. Further,

n some of the pieces, like "The Painter's Bargain" and

The Devil's Wager," the narrator fades away into ghostli—

ess. Part of this apparent inconsistency is obviously

ue to the nature of the work——the nineteen separate

rticles, of such marked variety, call forth different

acets of the narrator's personality. However, despite

he critical formulations made in the travel book reviews,

[ 1840 Thackeray was either unable or unwilling to put

Dme of his statements on the narrator into artistic prac—

-ce. Thus, instead of the consistently realized "com—

Lnion" who provides a distinctive angle of vision on the

luntry visited, the Titmarsh of The Paris Sketch Book

ten becomes a rhetorical tool whose personality and

lues change according to the needs of the article at hand.

But despite some limitations, a fairly clear outline

Titmarsh's personality does emerge in the volume's four
1dred pages. He is first of all a humorous man, with a
1dy stock of comic exaggerations and pleasant ironies;

sets this tone very early in the first article of the

»k with a mock—epic simile:

 

 

 

As when
manner,
mother,
ferocio-
screamii
face of
in putt.
After strik.
ironic tone
his discuss.
sinet's fol
rather than
And the hum.
Wifllentert
ening them.
Co-
Personality
He is extre:
any Silbject
emphasis (a
Poetic Plea
NOW in
read of

Count
Write f

 

 

89

As when the hawk menaces the hen—roost, in like
manner, when such a danger as a voyage menaces a
mother, she becomes suddenly endowed with a
ferocious presence of mind, and bristling up and
screaming in the front of her brood, and in the
face of circumstances, succeeds, by her courage,
in putting her enemy to flight . . . (2)

After striking this keynote, Titmarsh maintains a comic-

ironic tone through much of the book. This mood pervades

is discussion of Cartouche's rascality or Little Poin—
inet's folly——it is a genial humor that excites smiles
ather than guffaws, but is not remote or overesubtle.

d the humor makes it clear that Titmarsh is very concerned
ith entertaining his auditors, perhaps even before enlight—

ening them.

Co—existent with the comic facet of the narrator's
hersonality is a marvelous capacity for outspoken bluntness.
e is extremely eager to deliver his opinions on virtually
ny subject, and does so occasionally with ham—fisted

mphasis (and insensitivity); he is a moral observer and

ikes to make moral judgments. Discussing Victor Hugo's

oetic plea to free the criminal Barbes, he heatedly

xclaims:

Now in countries where fools abound, did one ever
read of more monstrous, palpable folly? In any
country, save this, would a poet who chose to
write four crack—brained verses, comparing an
angel to a dove, and a little boy to a reed, and
calling on the chief magistrate, in the name of
the angel, or dove (the Princess Mary), in her
tomb, and the little infant in his cradle, to
spare a criminal, have received a "gracious
answer" to his nonsense? (47)

 

 

i

In “Madame 5
too much vig
writers and

there i:
of poems
preface,
littera:
and bee:
the char
necessi‘

 

In passages
author and :
Stamp Titma.
vehement Op
ment in his
But
Titmarsh‘s .
NOt only is
SUPply of a
61180 can Sp
history, la
apprentice
of Painting
tions of pa
des Beau); A
interesting
legal Syste
these discu
to be an Ed

hlS viewpoi

 

90

In "Madame Sand and the New Apocalypse," he attacks—-with
too much vigor—~current religious movements among French
riters and intellectuals:

there is scarce a beggarly, beardless scribbler

of poems and prose, but tells you, in his

preface, of the saintete of the sacerdoce

litteraire; or a dirty student, sucking tobacco

and beer, and reeling home with a grisette from

the chaumiere, who is not convinced of the

necessity of a new "Messianism" . . . (284—5)
n passages like these, the reader discerns a gap between
uthor and narrative mask. Their overheated rhetoric
stamp Titmarsh as a "character"--a eccentric figure whose
vehement opinions should stir shock, interest, and amuse—
lent in his audience.

But while this humor and bluntness amuse the reader,
itmarsh's wide range of knowledge should win his respect.
ot only is he clearly an old Paris hand, with a plentiful
upply of anecdotes and information about the city; but he
lso can speak with insight and authority on art, drama,
"story, law and politics. Thackeray himself had been an
prentice artist and a law student; "On the French School

Painting" contains thoughtful commentary on the collec-
ons of paintings at the Louvre, Luxembourg, and Ecole

s Beaux Arts, and "The Case of Peytel" contains an
teresting analysis of a crime celebre and of the French
gal system. Titmarsh is never strenuously profound in
ese discussions, but his alertness and poise reveal him

be an educated man who can skillfully expound and defend

s viewpoints.

 

 

0th
mention: h
his flashes
cribed abov
define him
basically s
be on displ
With witty,
Tit
life and CU
analyze Gal
land, Thrc
France to c
t0 broaden
of the rang
With a tree
CIEarly OVe
Tit
Sees it as
five of the
detail Grin
Violence Of
Painting" 3
Violence is
comments:
And, as

Play. t

 

 

91

Other characteristics of Titmarsh also deserve
mention: his sentimental turn, his tendency to moralize,
his flashes of bright gaiety. But the three traits des-
cribed above——humor, outspokenness, broad knowledge——

efine him most clearly; in The Paris Sketch Book, we

 

asically see him as an energetic raconteur who loves to
e on display, dominating his audience and his stories
ith witty, informative banter.
Titmarsh is also an interesting critic of French
Life and culture, and much of the book seeks seriously to
analyze Gallic lifeways and compare them to those of Eng—
.and. Throughout, he uses England to criticize France and
'rance to criticize England, using his travel experience
0 broaden his understanding of both nations. A discussion
f the range of Titmarsh's opinions may well be joined
ith a treatment of the book's themes, for the two areas
learly overlap and are in several cases identical.
Titmarsh finds many things wrong with France. He
es it as a violent nation, a theme that runs through
've of the pieces: "Cartouche" and "The Case of Peytel"
tail criminal violence, "The Story of Mary Ancel" presents
olence of the Revolution, and "On the French School of
inting" and “French Dramas and Melodramas" discuss how
olence is reflected in the art. In the last article he
mments:
And, as the great Hugo has one monster to each

play, the great Dumas has, ordinarily, half-as
dozen, to whom murder is nothing . . . who

 

 

live an

of crnu
England
The robberi
Peytel" sho
sexual immo
adultery st
teen childr
Pope of Rom
his country
make love t
to the day
At least it
as sexual 1
"The Story
and "On Son
behind brut
Titmarsh a!
tion. Sam
natives in
the repeats
dence games
crafty enot
of the Work
developed a
the latter.
Ant

 

 

92

live and move in a vast, delightful complication
of crime, that cannot be easily conceived in
England, much less described. (368)
he robberies of "Cartouche," the murders of "The Case of
eytel" shock the English visitor as does the rampant
exual immorality. The casual French attitude toward
dultery stuns Titmarsh: "We are married, and have four-
een children, and would just as soon make love to the
ope of Rome as to any one but our own wife" he says of
his countrymen, while across the Channel "if you do not
take love to Flicflac, from the day after her marriage
0 the day she reaches sixty, she thinks you a fool" (118).
t least four of the stories detail what Titmarsh regards
5 sexual licentiousness: "A Caution to Travellers,"
The Story of Mary Ancel," "French Dramas and Melodramas,"
nd "On Some French Fashionable Novels." Running close
ehind brutality and debauchery as moral concerns of
itmarsh are French tendencies to sly trickery and decep-
‘on. Sam Pogson, a traveling salesman, is fleeced by the
tives in "A Caution to Travellers," Little Poinsinet is
e repeated butt of his friends' cruel jests and confi—
nce games; Simon Gambouge of "The Painter's Bargain" is
afty enough to outwit the devil. Thus, over the course
the work, a composite picture of an immoral France is
veloped and then contrasted with England, generally to
e latter's benefit.
Another major theme of The Paris Sketch Book can be

roduced with a few sentences from “The Fetes of July,"

 

 

 

 

where a blu:
bring my mi]
it seems to
liberty, sh.
(48). In b:
"rant, tins:
brilliant "
In any even
the work--a
it: Exposin
In "Napoleo
Napoleon, s
breath afte
Speech--whi
other Combi
“The Case c
SYStem; "Me
Louis XIV a
a“ and lit
French effc
other ‘3th
belief that

enact humbt
beat all ti.

Age
abSUrdity,

 

93

vhere a blustering Titmarsh announces: "I can hardly
oring my mind to fancy that anything is serious in France-—
it seems to be all rant, tinsel, and stage-play. Sham
liberty, sham monarchy, sham glory, sham justice . . ."
(48). In brief, a sort oquanity Fair, and the phrase

"rant, tinsel, and stage-play" seems to anticipate the

brilliant "Before the Curtain" section of Vanity Fair.

 

In any event, French folly is a motif that runs through
the work-~and the author zestfully pounces on examples of
it, exposing foibles with a mixture of scorn and humor.
In "Napoleon and His System," he lashes away at Edges

Napoleoniennes, a political treatise by Prince Louis

 

Napoleon, stopping at one point to remark: "Let us take
breath after these big phrases-«grand round figures of
speech-~which, when put together, amount, like certain
other combinations of round figures, to exactly 0" (168).
"The Case of Peytel" vigorously questions the French legal
system; "Meditations at Versailles" shows amusement at
Louis XIV and the homage paid him by the people; the various
art and literary criticisms of the work occasionally regard
French efforts with breezy contempt; and there are numerous
>ther examples. Dominating article after article is the
elief that "in their aptitude to swallow, to utter, to
nact humbugs, these French peOple, from Majesty downwards,
eat all the other nations of this earth-" (42)

Against these French tendencies to diShonesty and
>surdity, Titmarsh finds some genuinely admirable aspects

F French culture. Life in France is much more gay, pleasant:

 

 

 

'\{"
.. kl. '

)Ili'l‘iill‘.

I, for m
feeling.
other 31
that bla
with the
accompar
London--
The opening
bright and I
to those of
Fetes of Ju
pleasing ma
tion of a n
ments on tt
Gives from
bOOIlSh ma]
is a thous.
Th

133% iS a
toward art

ture 0r pa

esPeciall}

 

94

I, for my part, never landed on Calais pier without
feeling that a load of sorrows was left on the
other side of the water; and have always fancied
that black care stepped on board the steamer, along
with the custom-house officers, at Gravesend, and
accompanied one to yonder black louring towers of
London--so busy, so dismal, and so vast. (34)

he opening sketch, "An Invasion of France,‘ notes how
right and lively Parisian street scenes are in comparison
.0 those of London. The volume's third article, "The
'etes of July," takes up this theme, praising the gay and
>leasing manner of the common Parisians during the celebra-
:ion of a national.holiday. And repeatedly Titmarsh com-
ments on the Openness of French life-~and the release it
Jives from the narrow restrictions, gloomy climate, even
>oorish manners of English existence, for in Paris "there
is a thousand times more life and colour" (13).

The other major positive theme of The Paris Sketch
299k is a sincere appreciation of the French attitude
:oward art. Thackeray himself often noted how little
>restige was awarded the English artist (in either litera-
ure or painting), but this is not the case in France,
specially Paris. While Titmarsh can be critical of Gallic
rt, he commends the French people for their good treatment
E artists and their sincere interest in art. For example,
)n the French School of Painting" begins with.a laudatory
:etch on the generally delightful existence of the aSpiring
ung artist ("This country is surely the paradise of
inters and penny—a-liners" (58-9)); the article "Carica-

res and Lithography in Paris” develOps an extended

 

 

 

contrast be1
ciation of a
As e
amore uninl
with more i1
more folly I
As an artis
middle-clas
between tho
bOOk's anal
If
quality of
b0PkS, Thac
British tra
tibIE, fore
this early
Bullish. I
beloud reas
insult,r big
and £01. 811;
the Stateme

Play" PaSSE

abandOns ti

an arrOsant

IS Provincj

In

French CUSt

 

95

:ontrast between British insensitivity and French appre-
:iation of art.

As a social critic, then, Titmarsh views France as
1 more uninhibited, flexible nation than England--a nation
vith more immorality partly because it has more freedom,
more folly because it allows for the liberty to blunder.
is an artist, he welcomes this freedom; as a moral and
middle—class Briton, he is shocked by it. The tension
Jetween those two poles of thought occasions most of the
>ook's analysis of France.

If Titmarsh's attitude is somewhat ambigous, so the
[uality of his commentary is decidedly mixed. In other
>ooks, Thackeray would condemn John Bull--the insolent
iritish traveler who considered foreign nations as contemp—
Lible, foreign peOple as inferiors. Unfortunately, in
:his early work, Titmarsh's views of France are at times
.ullish. In other words, his criticisms occasionally go
eyond reasonable balance and seem the peevish display of
sular bigotries. Other critics have felt the same way,18
nd for support of this View, one need only look at some of
he statements quoted above—-the "rant, tinsel, and stage-
lay" passage, for example. In sections like those, he
Dandons the role of witty, charming observer and becomes
1 arrogant proclaimer of the Law, a visitor whose outlook
3 provincial, whose truth is prejudice.

In his John Bull guise, Titmarsh is intolerantfof

tench customs (such as the fetes of July); of the Catholic

 

 

 

 

..'.4,._ .—
u .....1.) .
1-....ln -
L-‘flfl '- Iy ._......L we...” .14 L.-
,4 lJ...—— —“ '
,f I; ..-..— -
J. ..--.... H... ”J ‘1’“4 ”in."
' r——-v F“ 5
"ML”-.. L ”Hui!" _.,
.J ... —
_, .sl'w' r J. r4.”— "P .-
..J ‘ ”
WI" .,,. _' ”-1
’l or,
...-1- L-..-.-L - I“ ”ILL".
"- . , .4-~~
"fl -._—-~-'
‘ fl . -.1
1,.«w 1..»" -. ‘_ ”“01
I. ,.— . ,1 1. —- _. _,,‘.JJ '
I J- ‘rr—y "
.— r V
.1 .r’ ,- 1.’ .i- I .... a
I” -‘ Jr’i" |,. .
,
.- —‘_ A,
’l’" _- 0""
‘- ‘ I.
’ J I .”wa "
..
" AL J' .- r . 'll.
_: J :4 ;.I:'
. 1w ”1 x
' I
‘ ‘ J l- n‘ ,4 | “
l_j.‘.4 ~’" ' ‘I .‘
n J” l .1 .l. ' :H
“I" , L-— ’ ', .
" , ‘ .. a
. [In "I“ . 1.4
a” ‘ ‘
-. ;.-r I-“ _. .|--
a: L~ 4" ‘ll". ‘ ' ' '
‘ ”J” '1' l’1;'
” l I. .
x.J~ rlu l : ,. . ‘ l
- l
I, 1'1 I: ‘ ,n
. , ‘ J
.,3 . _J ‘ 1,}. ”:J
’1.” t a" I”: ’ I“
J,‘ J"ol . 1‘ ‘ V’J
,- _, «' ng “Ha
... H ,H‘
.. H v. ‘1 ‘
,.. * -.1-.I ‘ H i ”I
,J’ 'IJ’ , ' A g. ’ i
. .- ’
, . I”
x)’ 1 ,. .‘ ‘ I
...
l ‘ . I ,.
”L . ’l x .r " ,0”:
_,.‘ i"' .I' “:1-
. I
l J’ .c:' l .: ' I 1,
. .. '
...F , . .. . 1 IN”
, -..w J. ‘ v
‘ .- J 4 ,l ‘1'.”
l" a ":‘r 11
. . ,
.t’ ‘1,.- ! .v' z. I
.r. ,.. .-
1"" I
, ' '
' J
, "J ‘.
h‘ (I,
a 0’ ll.)
’ ,l

—...- r n
"' --~- »JL v_,. .
' " ""-~-—-— .’._'_.J'.... ,_
I __.,_;__. 4»~....l.-..,_
J.—_ n... ”Mtg“:—
LJL-.. r..'....-.- .. ._.-:
‘ ' ,:...-......) L 1. .-...v.: ..
..- r. "

I._.1 ,.J;.l.-'..... --~r>—«14I ,-

—

religion (he a'
Catholic or Ch;
ence of Cathol.
past Bourbon fill
a smart journe;
not perversely
couple of loui‘
keys") (412);
foolishly they
he seems to s
1315
Dodds very ac
strange blend
tolerance . .
superiority tc
he is aware of
he is a keen,
French. He 3]:
art in one art
common people
Aretz, a Paris
his generosity
culture E319. jw

zGalous in se.

word) , he cer

his negative

 

 

96

ligion (he attacks "this absurd humbug, called the
tholic or Christian art" (68) in one article, the resurg—
ce of Catholic religious practice in another); of the
st Bourbon monarchy (Louis XVI "is said to have been such
smart journeyman blacksmith, that he might, if Fate had
t perversely put a crownon his head, have earned a
uple of louis every week by the making of locks and
ys") (412); and in many ways, about French art. How
olishly they run things on the other side of the Channel,
seems to say-~let us sneer at them.
But that is only part of the truth, for as John

ds very accurately comments: "Here Thackeray is a
range blend of British insularity and cosmopolitan
Lerance . . . He shares the ineffable British feeling of
>eriority to the rest of the world, but not infrequently
is aware of his prejudices . . ."19 And in many ways

is a keen, penetrating-~and flattering-~observer of the
ench. He shrewdly applauds French skill in caricature
. in one article, and compliments the gay manners of the
mon people in another; he dedicates the volume to M.

tz, a Parisian tailor who won Thackeray‘s esteem for

generosity. Further, many of his attacks on French}
ture a£e_justified, and while Titmarsh.might be very

lous in searching for examples of "humbug" (a favorite
1), he certainly found valid examples of it and many of

negative statements are not outgrowths of provincialism

 

 

 

 

—

or bigotry, bl:
mankind everyu
If the
considerable 1'
presentation .
understanding
monolithic and
ence and visio
The book shoul
give his resp
and people by
narrator of t
based on year
his impressio
a short stay.
in the volume,
the mood, the
To cap
through its cu
and geography.
1831 letter:
There are
buildings,
but the Pe
hugland, &
interestin

and Nation
abounds .

Years later, '1

France, large]

 

97

r bigotry, but of a satiric, perhaps pessimistic, view of
ankind everywhere.

If the narrator of The Paris Sketch Book bears
>nsiderable investigation, so does the work's method of
:esentation. Faced with the complexity and difficulty of
iderstanding French life, Thackeray breaks away from a
>nolithic and empirical narrative and relates his experi-
.ce and vision of France in nineteen discrete segments.

e book should be considered an attempt by a writer to
ve his responses to and understanding of a foreign culture
d people by a kaliedoscopic, perspectivist method. The
rrator of the work presents his comprehension of France
sed on years of residence there, and instead of recording
5 impressions based on physical sensations gleaned during
short stay. Although many physical descriptions appear
the volume, Thackeray is ultimately trying to capture
a mood, the "feel" of a foreign land.
To capture this mood, Thackeray approaches France
ough its culture and people, not through its buildings
geography. This is foreshadowed in the words of an
1 letter:
There are plenty of dry descriptions of public
buildings, pictures views armories & so forth-—
but the People of Germany are not known in
Bngland, & the more I learn of them the more
interesting they appear to me—-Customs, & costumes——
and National Songs, stories &c with wh the country
abounds. (Letters, I, 147-8)
rs later, Thackeray was to do this for the people of

woe, largely avoiding "dry descriptions" of the outward

—

husk of a nati
appears in fol
immerses himse
fiction, stage

(all popular f

each of them.
Novels" contai
a nation throu
he admits "tha
more knowledg
observation" (
himself from a
and viewing Fr
tion“) and sho
through imagin
This a
short stories,
in his book.
with a lengthy
latter being n‘
are, in fact, :
places . . ."
him, Titmarsh
tIUth of a nat
Dickens's Pi___g_k
State and ways

any more pompo

 

 

 

sk of a nation and focusing on the inner spirit as it

ears in folkways. To grasp this inner spirit, Titmarsh

erses himself in the country's art forms-~popu1ar
tion, stage plays, painting, caricatures and lithography

1 popular forms in France)~—and devotes an article to

h of them. The article "On Some French Fashionable

els" contains Thackeray's justification for approaching
ation through popular art forms—aof the French novels
admits "that we borrow from these stories a great deal
e knowledge of French society than from our own personal

ervation" (117). In this way, Titmarsh,is separating

elf from a strictly empirical mode of travel writing

viewing France ("dry description,"'personal observa-

n") and shows a willingness to deal with that nation

Jugh imaginative works.
This attitude also explains the inclusion of many
it stories, some of them "copies" of French originals,

.is book. "On Some French Fashionable Novels“ commences

a lengthy contrast of real and sham histories (the

er being novels), arguing that the "real histories . . .
in fact, mere contemptible catalogues of names and

as . . ." (115). Like other imaginative artists before

Titmarsh believes empirical history cannot render the

1 of a nation or an age as well as fictional "history“——

ans's Pickwick Papers "gives us a better idea of the
e and ways of the people than one could gather from

tore pompous or authentic histories“ (119). If

 

—

fictional his1
"fictional“ t1
country and pe
strictly factt

The ir.
book apart frc
appearance in
development fr
fiction), the

of short stor'

  
 

Dickens's Pic
into the loose
not a usual co
remember that
of modern shor
titioner of the
tor in short ft
book, welding
analysis of om
is an example i
insights into 2
The p11
commercial tra‘
for the first ‘
"Baroness" de 1

he travels to I

Bfineness ' s husj

 

 

 

99

tional history can be superior to empirical history, so
'ctional" travel writing—~works of imagination about the
try and people visited-—has its advantages over

ictly factual travel accounts.
The inclusion of short stories sets this travel

k apart from most others in terms of method. Their

earance in The Paris Sketch Book is due to the book's
elopment from magazine writing (which featured short
tion), the impact of Irving's Sketcthok, with its blend

short stories, essays, and sketches, and perhaps even

ens's Pickwick Papers, which freely intersperes tales

the loose narrative. Aside from Irving, fiction was

a usual component in travel books, and one must further

amber that 1840 marked an early stage in the development

modern short fiction. Thus Thackeray was an early prac—

.oner of this form, and while he was not a major innova-

in short fiction, he used it skillfully in his travel

, welding fiction to penetrating social comment. An

sis of one of these stories, "A Caution to Travellers,"

example of how Thackeray's fictional method develops

hts into French life and culture.

The plot of the story is simple. Sam Pogson, a

rcial traveler and friend of Titmarsh, visits France

he first time. Arriving in Calais, he meets a

ness" de Florval—Delval--and, enchanted with the woman,

avels to Paris with her. There, he falls in with the

ess's husband and Tom Ringwood, son of a lord, and is

 

—

thrilled with '
night, Pogson :
gambling with ‘
amount. P0950]
Titmarsh enliS'
military man.
Ringwood retur
Thacke
fable of Briti
characters are
people. For
fellow, not In
and simpler t
exactly the 5
British youth
mentions "the:
continent of E
indicates he i
Throug
gives flesh tc
is in the merc
and very conf:
0f the upper .
While ignoran
is quite know
arrogance—”t

and, French 8

 

100

iilled with the friendship of "nobility." Then, one
:ht, Pogson is swindled of over six hundred pounds when
cling with those friends and gives them IOU's for that
-unt. Pogson cannot pay, so he turns to Titmarsh, and
marsh enlists the aid of one Major British, a retired
itary man. British confronts the swindlers and makes
gwood return the IOU's to Pogson.
Thackeray cleverly turns this simple story into a
»le of British culture confronting the French. The
.racters are clearly meant to represent whole classes of
ple. For example, Sam Pogson is described as "a young
low, not much.worse, although perhaps a little weaker
simpler than his neighbours" who visits "Paris with
ctly the same notions that bring many others of the
tish youth to that capital" (18). Of Major British, he
tions "there are many likenesses now scattered over the
tinent of Europe" (34), and, of course, his surname
icates he is to be considered a symbol.
Through Pogson, the typical young Briton, Thackeray
s flesh to many traits of English life and manners. He
'n the merchantile business ("a city man"), working hard
very confident of his own abilities. Slavishly admiring
he upper class, he is easily contemptous of foreigners.
e ignorant of foreign life and culture, he believes he
uite knowledgable about them and comments with ready
9ance-—"there was no such thing as good meat in France,"

French soldiers are "whipper-snappers" (20). When

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

this young man
wily older won
The Baroness (
claims she is
a worldly wome
shrewd--also c
greater numbei
be found in at
easily manipul
an actress.
The f
as English in
ence, a Cleve
BritiSh confi
fits the stor
is the retire
and defeats t
Further. it i
wish“ a min
"He Passed ej
and is thus C
he has mainta
Pride, love (
man who is 81
their OWn te;
represents a

and confide”

 

 

101

his young man visits France, he immediately confronts a
ily older woman who embodies many aspects of French life.
he Baroness (actually a former actress on the Boulevard)
laims she is thirty, but is actually forty five. She is

worldly woman, attractive, colorfully dressed, charming,

hrewd--also deceitful and immoral. Representative of a

reater number of native and exotic swindlers than are to
e found in any other European capital" (18), the Baroness
asily manipulates the youthful merchant with her art as
n actress.

The first half of the story, then, might be read
.5 English innocence waylaid and seduced by French-experi-
nce, a clever swindle that is made possible by blind
ritish confidence and sly French charm. Into this equation
its the story's third central figure, Major British. It
s the retired officer who eventually saves his countryman
nd defeats the crafty Frenchwoman (with her Britishally).
urther, it is Major British who is clearly intended to
eflect a mixture of English and Continental cultures.
Te passed eight months a year, regularly, abroad" (34)
id is thus conversant with France and its people. While
3 has maintained many British.characteristics~~natinnal
ride, love of rank—-he is also a worldly, sophisticated
in who is supremely capable of dealing with.the French on
ieir own terms. Major British, although far from perfect,
:presents a strong combination of British level—headedness

d confidence with French.polish and cleverness.

 

 

 

 

"A Ca
simple allego
characters re
The Paris Ske
characters, h
culture, givi
fiction and t
process is at
Thackeray tak
fully develop
elsewhere, Th
than merely r
person or eve
it. By expan
in cultural t
ing; it is po

This
with wider In
this book.
description ,
color rather

of “Meditati

directly, wi

journalist .

 

‘ , q'i___ .._._ - r

 

102

"A Caution to Travellers" should not be read as a
mple allegory. Still, treating the wider meanings of its
aracters reveals a good deal about Thackeray's method in

Paris Sketch Book. Using fictional incident and
racters, he is able to expand them to make statements on
ture, giving the reader both the pleasures of lively i

ction and the insights of social analysis. A parallel
cess is at work in "Meditations at Versailles," where

ackeray takes a historical figure (Louis XIV) and care-

 

Lly develops him as French folly incarnate. There, as
sewhere, Thackeray's art and imagination transform rather
in merely record, presenting the wider significance of a
rson or event instead of simply and accurately describing i
By expansion of meaning, the separate event is viewed
cultural terms rather than as a discrete, unique happen—
; it is portrayed in terms of its "Frenchness."
This technique of expansion, of investing things
h wider meaning, is only part of Thackeray's method in
3 book. For example, he frequently does employstraight
cription, relating scenes and customs to convey local
or rather than symbolic overtones; the Opening sections
"Meditations at Versailles" and "An Invasion of France“
instances of this, and throughout the work are scattered
2f, insightful mentions of French customs and scenery.
>ther words, at times the reader is presented France

ictly, with.Thackeray acting as a recorder, or a

 

—

Anoth
soopic approa
France throug
the angles of
mentary, past
and venality,
abundant vari
ture of the f
visitor, and
horror, fear,
wit and senti:
plicity of Be
with the cyni
the caricatur
art"; the shrn
devil (in “Th«
Little Poinsi
There are nin
appears in on
but what Thac
of himself:
contradict my
The Paris ske
unity into le

The P

its opening a

the interveni

   

 

103

Another method employed in the work is the kaleido—
scopic approach, an attempt to capture the richness of
Trance through many different perspectives and moods. From
the angles of folk tales, political analysis, social com-
nentary, past history, France is revealed in all its glory
and venality, beauty and ugliness, wit and knavery. The
bundant variety of French culture, indicated in the pic-
ure of the frontispiece, arouses mixed emotions in a
isitor, and accordingly the work varies in mood from the
orror, fear, disgust and anger of some pieces to the humor,
it and sentiment in others. There is the purity and sim-
licity of Beatrice Merger, the peasant girl to contrast
ith the cynical immorality of the Baroness; the wisdom of
he caricaturists against the pretentiousness of "Catholic
rt"; the shrewdness of Simon Gambouge, who can trick the
evil (in "The Painters Bartain"), and the utter naivete of
ittle Poinsinet, victim of the baldest practical jokes.
lere are nineteen pieces, and the image of France that
tpears in one might directly contradict that of another-—
t what Thackeray says of France is what Walt Whitman says
himself: "Do I contradict myself?/Very well then I
itradict myself,/(I am large, I contain multitudes)".

r Paris Sketch Book acts as a prism, breaking a complex

 

ty into less complex fragments.

The Paris Sketch Book has a "framework" structure‘—

 

opening and closing pieces draw rough boundaries around

intervening segments. The curtain-raising sketch, "An

 

 

 

 

Invasion of 1
rite--the na.
French cultu;
which is the
segment of 1:]
an entirely <
a person very
changes in F]
has become a
zenith of the
Louis XIV. '1
prehension, 1
(although The
the Sun King)
T233
must be ultin
inequal piec
ranging from
to the polis
Caution to T
Vanity Fair.
varies from
chatty Titma
narrator who
the traditio

to pinpoint.

0f the tales

 

 

104

Invasion of France," very clearly celebrates an initiation
rite--the naive and gullible Briton being introduced to
French culture, the Visitor contacting the foreign land,
which is the basis of all travel literature. The final
segment of the volume, "Meditations at Versailles," adopts
an entirely different tone, for it speaks in the voice of
a person very familiar with France, lamenting, for example,
:hanges in French transportation over the years. The naif
ias become a sophisticate, and accordingly explores the
zenith of the Ancient Regime-—the rule and residence of
.ouis XIV. The work thus moves from introduction to com—
)rehension, from workaday France to majestic France
although Thackeray certainly questions the "majesty" of

he Sun King).

The Paris Sketch Book's unity is a loose one; it

 

ust be ultimately regarded as a mosaic of uneven and

nequal pieces. The stories are decidedly mixed in quality,
anging from raw and weak apprentice work ("A Devil's Wager")
3 the polished play of style and keen observation (”A
aution to Travellers") that was the mark of the author of

20 The attitude and presence of the narrator

inity Fair.
tries from sketch to sketch, from the highly intrusive and
Latty Titmarsh who speaks directly to the reader, to a
.rrator who largely recedes into the background. Even

e tradition of travel literature it arises from is hard

pinpoint. There are elements of the romantic in some

the tales which are marked with Gothic overtones; the

 

 

humanistic e2
popular art;
pieces where
of French lii

In cc
be considered
bound by idea
book reviews,
avenues than
there are cle
the establish
of many piece
angle of visi
the reviews p
narrated rath

transforms Fr

Thac
March, 1843;
YEars before
mentioned his
Chapman and H
to publish a
0f the size

and I shall b

(Letters, I,

 

 

105

imanistic element is strong in his treatment of French
:pular art; the personal mode comes into play in the

eces where Titmarsh freely'offers his opinions on aspects

 

French life.
In conclusion, Thackeray‘s first travel work must

considered an experimental effort. He was not even

d by ideas he had previously articulated in travel
k reviews, developing his own work along different
enues than many of his criticisms might suggest. But
are are clear continuities from those reviews, especially
a establishment of a narrator (Titmarsh), his domination
many pieces through his personality and distinctive
rle of vision, and his "companionable" nature. Thus, as
: reviews portend, Thackeray's work is subjectively
'rated rather than objectively presented, and his art

nsforms France rather than recording it.

The Irish Sketch Book

 

Thackeray's second travel book was published in
h, 1843; like its predecessor, it had been planned
5 before it was eventually published. The writer first
ioned his new project in a letter to the publishers
man and Hall in a September, 1840, message, "I propose
ublish a couple of volumes called Titmarsh in Ireland
he size and somewhat of the nature of my Paris Book,
I shall be glad to make arrangements with.you . . ."

ters, I, 470). Ironically, Thackeray noted later in

 

 

 

 

the letter:
intervene I p
31 December."
insane during
work's comple
The n
the first wee
traveled he v
months he wrc
work through
home--I have
material for
composition,
an imediacy
impressions.
of it the ne:
much for all
scenery and
intention of
Giant's Caus
chapter tho
So '

claim that

in non—sequ

in France;

 

106

the letter: "Unless illness or any domestic calamity sh?
intervene I propose to deliver the work to you before the
31 December." Ironic, because his wife Isabelle went
insane during the passage to Ireland, and delayed the

work's completion.

The writer's second visit to Ireland lasted from

 

the first week of July, 1842, until November 1. While he
traveled he was composing The Irish'Sketch Book; after two
months he wrote from Dublin: ". . . I will make quick

work through the north of Ireland and complete the book at
10me--I have a volume written within a score of pages: and
naterial for some more" (Letters, II, 74). This method of
:omposition, one akin to maintaining a daily journal, gave
in immediacy to his writing, a concern with capturing vivid
.mpressions. "Unless in going through the country I write
if it the next day I find it is not near so well done-~80
uch for all infamous memory" (Letters, II, 76). Further,
cenery and cities were approached with the very deliberate
ntention of writing about them for a travel book; of the
iant's Causeway, Thackeray says: "It will make a capital
hapter though, and that's something" (Letters, II, 85).

So in spite of the similarity in title and an early
laim that the Irish book would be "somewhat of the nature"
f his Paris work, Thackeray's first two travel books have
ifferent backgrounds. The first was written over years,

n non-sequential segments, and was based on long residence

h France; the second was composed over a period of months

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I

 

as a consecu'
through the t
titles21 shor
proposed two
Ireland" as I
Cockney in I]
remonstrances
The 1
indicators 01
hame--for whe
book's main 1'
observed that
more interest
sees"; and Ge
travels and c
is also a kin
author for be
In se
making it cle
vision and pe
explains:

well: thi
ave no n
hOpe to d

 

 

107

s a consecutive narrative, based on a four month journey
rough the country. The deceptive verbal echo of the
't1e521 should be qualified by the fact that Thackeray had
oposed two other tentative designations: "Titmarsh in
eland" as mentioned in the 1840 letter, and later "The
ckney in Ireland" which was changed "through the pathetic
emonstrances of the publishers" (Letters, II, 106).

The two discarded titles are really more accurate
idicators of the major thrust of the work than its given
me—-for whether it is "Titmarsh" or "The Cockney," the
ok's main interest is the narrator. Gordon Ray has

served that the reader of The Irish Sketch Book "is far

 

re interested in the narrator than in what the narrator

es"; and George Saintsbury admits that "it is a book of

avels and one of the best," but goes on to contend "it

also a kind of novel, or at least biography, with its

:hor for hero."22
In several passages, Thackeray confirms this bias,

ing it clear that Ireland is being presented through the

ion and personality of his Titmarsh. At one point he

lains:

Well, this is no description of Shannon, as you

have no need to be told . . . All that one can

hope to do is, to give a sort of notion of the

movement and manners of the people; pretending

by no means to offer a description of places,

but sémply an account of what one sees in them

3r he re-emphasizes this point: "This is not a descrip—

l of the Giant's Causeway . . . but of a Londoner there

." (425).

 

 

 

 

 

 

If T}
Irving's wor}
in its treatr
Sentimental £
between the 1
the two write
writings, am
I admire, dis
Although he 1
a Charming R<
he conducts a
the Calais i:
erhY'S prose
in terms Of .
indebtedness
and Parallel;
Center Of int
relationship
est him ins t‘
it Clear the

Personality .
Tr

i
W

Use of Titmai

Ihave u]
.lfe’ bui
“19 that
What kim
You a be.|

 

 

108

If The Paris Sketch Book shows similarities to
Irving's work, Thackeray's Irish Sketch Book, particularly
._________________

in its treatment of the narrator, has echoes of Sterne's

 

Sentimental Journey. Saintsbury acknowledges the similarity
between the two works,24 and there are other links between
the two writers. Thackeray often alluded to Sterne in his
writings, and the relationship was love-hate--"I think how

I admire, dislike, and have abused him" (flgrkg, XXVII, 347).
Although he Violently denounced Sterne's "immorality" in
English Humourists of the Eighteenth Century, he later wrote
1 charming Roundabout Paper entitled "Dessein's" in which

1e conducts a dialogue with Sterne's ghost (Dessein's being

:he Calais inn where Sentimental Journey begins). Thack-

 

Eray's prose style has been considered in debt to Sterne's.25
n terms of their travel literature, the question of
ndebtedness is a slippery one, but the problem of similarity
nd parallelism is not. In both works, the narrator is the
enter of interest; he is intrusive and establishes a direct
elationship with the reader; he treats events that inter—
St him instead of the traditional travel itinerary7he makes
t clear the country he pictures is colored by his own
arsonality. And it is a statement Sterne makes in
:istram Shandy that is reflected, in part, in Thackeray's
3e of Titmarsh in the Irish narrative:

I have undertaken, you see, to write not only my

life, but my opinions, also: hoping and expect—

ing that your knowledge of my character, and of

what kind of mortal I am, by the one, WOuld give
you a better relish for the other.

 

 

 

Sterne is ta
and Thackera
travel liter
not only in
about them,
better relis
Ster
ture, and th
in The Irish
narrator of
establish th
Irish rambli
the Personal
Coekney (the
British, urh
Hi5 Persona]
Paris book..-
a firm mold.
his Opinions
an impartial
though dirti
those in Lon
ridicUlOus a
the Irish ne
agreat appr

toward it

adept at Cha

 

 

109

terne is talking here about "my life," about biography;

nd Thackeray is interested in "travel experience," in

ravel literature. Thackeray wants to interest the reader

at only in his travel experiences, but in his opinions
)out them, so that an interest in one "would give you a
:tter relish for the other."

Sterne wrote in the personal mode of travel litera-
lre, and that, in the main, is the path Thackeray follows
, The Irish Sketch Book. Unlike the sometimes elusive
arrator of the Paris sketches, Thackeray takes pains to
tablish the centrality of Michael Angelo Titmarsh in his
ish ramblings, the narrator being of vital importance to
e personal mode. And the narrator here is an unblushing
ckney (the word appears several times in the text):
itish, urban, Protestant and proud of being all three.

3 personality is largely similar to the Titmarsh of the

:is book—-Thackeray's narrative mask is thus setting into

firm mold. The Irish Titmarsh is opinionated, and gives

: opinions with surpassing bluntness; yet he strives for
impartial air at many junctures (e.g., "The people,

tugh dirtier and more ragged, seem certainly happier than
se in London" (472)). He has a keen eye for the

iculous and is quick to pounce on it, as when he examines
Irish newspapers in the first chapter; but he also has

reat appreciation of beauty and a reverant attitude

ard it. Most of all, he is full of talk, a raconteur

- -~ I '
9t at charming surprises and fresh.1n5ights. Thackeray s

 

 

 

 

critical pre
the need for
the angle of
against the
perspectives
supremely en
In b
the Irish sk
observer of
outside of i
noted in the
Irish DGWSpaI
In the M

somethifi
im: YO
hOW the .
Secrated
Rome, by
SOUfidS q
CQuntry’
country?
Since 1800,
Was part Of

was Irish.)

and institut.
of non~reCogl
detachment o:
Titmarsh vis:
reads Irish ‘.

cements On ~:
it.

 

 

110

ritical premises of the need for an angle of vision and
he need for a "companion" are realized in his Titmarsh:
he angle of vision of a London Protestant strikes sharply
gainst the Irish grain and is sure to produce interesting
arspectives, and the personality of Titmarsh is that of a
1premely entertaining and interesting fellow journeyer.
In broader terms, the outlook Titmarsh embodies in

1e Irish sketches is that of the "marginal man"‘-the
>server of a culture or nation who can stand both in and
.tside of it, holding a double perspective. This is key-
ted in the first chapter, where Titmarsh is examining the
ish newspapers:

In the Morning Register, the Englishman will find

something to the full as curious and startling to

him: you read gravely in the English language

how the Bishop of Aureliopolis has just been con-

secrated . . . by—-the Holy Pontiffl-—the Pope of

Rome, by all that is holy! Such an announcement

sounds quite strange in English, and in your own

country, as it were: or isn't it your own

country? (11)
ice 1800, Irish members had sat in Parliament, and Ireland
5 part of England politically. (Indeed, Thackeray's wife
: Irish.) But while Titmarsh understands the language
1 institutions of "your own country," there iS a ShOCk
non-recognition at the people and their culture-—the
achment of a person encountering a totally foreign land.
marsh visits Irish homes, delights in Irish paSttlmeS:

ds Irish literature, but he remains a Sojourner who

ments on the culture from a viewpoint developed OUt51de

 

 

J

The .
assures cont.
and a good (1:
“marginal ma:
Accordingly ,
and affectio
gence" in or
across the C
judicious an
that shed li
eSpecially i
EIlglish-spea

But
the British,
largely €Xpr
repeatedly a
Strange, ali
After Visiti
have as much

WOmen in the

(101) . His

"monkeryn Se
conununity of

try" (70) he

restriCted t

thUlar Prov
Pa

W

 

 

111

The double focus implicit in Titmarsh's viewpoint
sures continual comparison between England and Ireland,
d a good deal of flexibility and sensitivity, for the
arginal man" is generally cosmopolitan in outlook.
cordingly, he compliments the Irish on their "heartiness
d affection" (112) and their "brightness and intelli—
nce" in crowds (168-9) as opposed to their neighbors
ross the Channel; throughout the work he makes other
dicious and balanced statements about the two cultures
at shed light on both of them. Thackeray himself was,
pecially in his earlier years, a participant in two
glish—speaking cultures: English and Anglo-Indian.

But the marginal man gives way to John Bull, and
e British, Protestant and urban viewpoint Titmarsh
rgely expresses can be often intolerant. Catholicism
peatedly aroused his ire-—at times he treats it as a
range, alien creed, almost like Voodoo in its mysteries.
er visiting a convent, he exclaims: "I think . . . we
e as much right to permit Sutteeism in India as to allow
en in the United Kingdom to take these wicked vows . . ."
1). His religious views are also harsh toward a Quaker
nkery" set up close to Carlow—-"We may soon get a

unity of Fakeers and howling Dervishes into the coun—.
" (70) he quips. Hard words like those are not

tricted to religion in Ireland, but extend to folk manners,

toms, and politics. In them, we see the steely glint of

1ar provincialism that appeared in the pages of The

's Sketch Book.

 

 

Thac
sent Ireland
are already
"description-
sees in then

if any t
should t
or fifty
of comme
be prett
work amo
from the

 

At another p

A Plague
cover af
0f Pater
and ruin
1egends

Thackeray ce.
guidebooks h
thEiI‘ tactic

After de;
features
m0untain
to the r.
reader 0;
giVen hi1
that he i
perUSing
e has t<

Throughout t]
with the Iris
of an area, a
Stilted, 111ml
badly With T}

112

  
  
 

Thackeray uses his idiosyncratic narrator to pre—
ent Ireland because straightforward descriptive accounts
e already in the guidebooks. He does not offer a

escription of places, but simply an account of what one

es in them" because:

if any traveller after staying two days in Limerick
should think fit to present the reader with forty
or fifty pages of dissertation . . . upon the state
of commerce, religion, education, the public may

be pretty well sure that the traveller has been at
work among the guidebooks, and filching extracts
from the topographical and local works. (190)

1 another point, his protest is half-comic:
A plague take them! what remains for me to dis—
cover after the gallant adventurers in the service
of Paternoster Row have examined every rock, lake,
and ruin of the district, exhausted it of all its
legends . . . (326)
ackeray centers interest on his narrator not only because
idebooks have exhausted possible discoveries, but because
air tactic of precise natural description is defective:
After describing, as accurately as words may, the
features of a landscape, and stating that such a
mountain was to the left, and such a river or town
to the right . . . it has no doubt struck the
reader of books of travels that the writer has not
given him the slightest idea of the country, and
that he would have been just as wise without
perusing the letter-press landscape through which
he has toiled. (67)
oughout the work, Thackeray carries on a running dialogue
h the Irish guidebooks, openly quoting their description
an area, and then making commentston his own. The
lted, lumbering style of the quoted works contrasts
ly with Thackeray's sprightly, alert prose, and this

trast is made deliberately. The clear implication is

l

 

 

that while a
country accu:
focus; but t]
reality impi:
reality avai
Chap'
good example
how he proce
of his perso
Glengariff t
between the
is a self-co
Producing th
and may ever
meet with th
calls attent
The
gariff to Re
along the We
it as it s tr
to the trave
stretch arou
“re“ the
immense W006
beautiful st
turns to des

gives only h

113

!at while aguidebook—descriptive approach can picture the
ountry accurately, it cannot bring it to life, to vivid
.cus; but the narrator, in revealing how the outward
-ality impinges on his consciousness, makes it a living
-ality available to the reader.

Chapter 10 of'The‘IriSh‘SketChiBook can serve as a

.0d example (there are many others) of Titmarsh at work,
'w he proceeds, how he swallows Ireland up in the penumbra
his personality. The title of the Chapter is "From
engariff to Killarney," and the real topic is not Ireland
:tween the two cities, but Titmarsh. To begin with, he
a self-conscious narrator who makes it clear that he is
oducing the book the reader is perusing (e.g., "Amen,
d may every single person who buys a copy of this book
at with the same deserved fate" (149). This in itself
lls attention away from Ireland and to the narrator.

The Chapter commences with a coachride from Glen!
iff to Kenmare. Instead of describing the countryside
ng the way in objective, precise terms, Titmarsh presents
as it strikes his sensibility, as a blur of impressions
the traveler on a moving coach: "Rock, wood and sea
etch around the travelleru—a thousand delightful pic-
es: the landscape is at first wild without being fierce,
ense woods and plantations enriching the valleys!—
utiful streams to be seen everywhere" (144). Then he
ns to describing his fellow travelers on the coach, and

s only brief mention to Kenmare when they arrive there.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Only what 51
mentions the
and excellex
shilling" a1
detail carri
itself. The

Beca
is little 5}
when he pleg
into a disse
he notes, a:
i:Ol'ward or k
and draw a 3
t0 Killarney
he saw. But
Chapter, and
event of Che
What Titmars
on those act

Thee
in the narra
in his inter
philosophies
shown Irelan
must be cond
The narrator

VdSt bills m0

114

nly what strikes and impresses Titmarsh is rendered-—he
entions that "a splendid luncheon of all sorts of meat
nd excellent cold salmon may sometimes be had for a

billing" at the Kenmare hotel (146), and that trivial

 

tail carries more narrative weight with him than the city
self. The Irish universe spins around Titmarsh's person.
Because he writes about what appeals to him, there

a little system to the narrative. He feels free to digress

Len he pleases ("here would be a good opportunity to enter

ltO a dissertation upon national characteristics" (151)

: notes, and promptly seizes the chance), and to slide
rward or backward in time. One can go back, of course,

d draw a rough itinerary of this journey from Glengariff
Killarney, and there itemize what Titmarsh did and what
saw. But that would only depict what Occasioned the

apter, and not explain the chapter itself. The real

ent of Chapter 10 (and of the entire book) is not so much

ht Titmarsh did and saw in Ireland, as his own musings
those actions and sights.

Those musings are everywhere apparent in the chapter—-

the narrator's literary, musical and historical allusions,

his interjections into the flow of the narrative, in the
losophical generalizations he makes. The reader is

wn Ireland, but mainly told about it, and his response

t be conditioned by the response that Titmarsh makes.

narrator will take a sight like “the famous lake and

t blue mountains about Killarney" and then give his own

L—

 

 

 

reactions to
Freischutz"
that the rea
blur into a
Thac
Titmarsh. I
desired by t
a strong app
face, a seri
second trave
give a panor
unity to it
land and re;
depicting tc
and Private
see agricult
vents and cc
the C0ufltrys
The Irish p5
traveler, an
Ursulihe nur

Duhdalk. T}

Selecting de

tlon’ 30 the

thorouthESg

edifiCe is _
C

 

115

reactions to it-~"I think of that diabolical tune in "Der
Freischutz" . . ." (148); he repeats this pattern so often
that the reality of Ireland and Titmarsh's response to it
blur into a single shade.

Thackeray also has a Structural purpose for his

Titmarsh. In The Paris Sketch Book, the panoramic effect

 

desired by the use of nineteen different perspectives gives

a strong appearance of disunity to the works-on the sur-

face, a series of pieces rather than a whole. But in his

second-travel work, Thackeray enlists his narrator to

give a panoramic View of Ireland while giving a certain

unity to it all. For the narrator travels throughout Ire-

land and reports on almost every aspect of Irish.life,

depicting town and countryside, north.and south, public

and private life. Through his mobility, the reader can

ee agricultural shows, horse races, the insides of con-

ents and colleges and schools, the beautiful scenery of

he countryside, the politics and business of the cities.

he Irish peOple too, in their relationships with.the
raveler, are dramatically brought into focus, like the
rsuline nun of the Blackrock convent or the Vicar of
undalk. The artist's hand is behind all this, carefully
lecting details and avoiding (as much as possible) repeti~
'on, so that the panorama has a thoroughness~~an unobtrusive
oroughness. Speaking of a coach—house, Titmarsh jokes:
everal of the arch—stones are removed, and the whole

ifice is about as rambling and disorderly aSH—as the

 

 

 

arrangement
trifle decep
appear as a
sojourn in I
purpose and

Ther
nant and cen
wishes to em
works, parti
products of
by visiting
carefully dr
travel itsel
hillTIdrum real
as a means t
Product Over
“1&1 of s
where the pr
a Camel, bei;
book, the re.
and are give:
English travq
rainy eVenin.
man 0n the n
ings, along ‘
backbone 0f 5

add Belfast.

 

 

116

rrangement of this book, say" (114). This statement is a
ifle deceptive: while the book might superficially
pear as a casual, unstructured journal of a four month

journ in Ireland, it actually proceeds with controlling

rpose and selective art.

There is another reason why the narrator is domi—
nt and central in this work-—it is because Thackeray
shes to emphasize the process of travel. Many travel
rks, particularly of the humanistic mode, emphasize the
oducts of travel-—the understanding of the land gained

visiting it, the insights into customs and manners,

refully drawn descriptive sequences. The process of

avel itself—~the coach rides, the stays at inns, the
ndrum realities of living out of a portmanteau-«is seen
a means to those products. The general emphasis on
Jduct over process has its exceptions: the Sentimental

1rney of Sterne is a clear example27

and there are works,
are the process is unusual or exciting (e.g., riding on
:amel, being robbed on the highway). And in the Irish
>k, the realities of daily travel fall into sharp focus

. are given considerable space: the rudeness of three

lish travelers in a Glengariff inn, the tedium of a
y evening in Galway, a conversation with a Temperance

on the route to Blackrock. These unspectacular happen-

, along with many others like them, are as much the

bone of The Irish Sketch Book as descriptions of Dublin

Belfast.

 

 

 

 

Joh
monotonous
through the
the various
the work, an
For there i:
rides throug
0f drab vill
process of 1
Irish experj
10119 blocks

Thus
Companion, a
as a Charact
going the pr
this first_p
goes the moo
itself elict.
for example,
the Coach, t1
whiskey and (
almOst as mm
KenIHare and F
that the grow
(”00688) a
viewing IrEIa

enrichens the

 

—=——‘ -7

117

John Dodds notes of the work: "If it is more

pnotonous than the later Cornhill to Cairo, it is perhaps

 

hrough the repetition of much the same kind of scene in

28 There is a tedium in

he various towns and counties."
he work, and it is related to the emphasis on process.
3r there is the tedium of travel—-the long dull coach
Ldes through dull towns, the monotony of viewing scores
5 drab Villages. The occasional boredom involved in the
rocess of travel was an important part of the narrator‘s
'ish experience, an aspect he conveys to the reader in
ng blocks of repetitious sequences.

Thus, while Thackeray employs his Titmarsh as a
mpanion, and as a conduit of information, he also uses him
a character in the work--an individual who is under-
ing the process of travel. Through identification with
Ls first-person narrator, the reader vicariously under-
as the moods, experiences and emotions that travel
:elf elicts. On the journey from Glengariff to Killarney,
' example, Titmarsh tells of the jovial companionship of
coach, the dangers of falling off it, an evening of
skey and cigars in his lodgings, and these are granted
ost as much space and attention as his observations of
mare and Killarney. Ultimately, Thackeray's point is
t the growth and understanding gained by travel itself
acess) are of sure value and on par with that gained by
ling Ireland and its culture. This use of Titmarsh

chens the reader's vision: he sees not only Ireland,

 

 

 

 

 

.—__————.—l

but the P1"
Instead of
sented to II
ticipates 1'
I It
simple reas
Irish Sketc
matter; his
All discuss
presence su
attention t
in Chapter ,
between the
The powerful
to oscillate
attention t
places, the
reinforces
title" (vii)
identical,
Thackeray's
While autob'
sonal essay
the other (1'

are numerous

from nationa

Of Ireland (

 

 

118

but the precess that leads to the vision of Ireland.
Instead of passively observing a series of scenes pre—
sented to him by the narrator, the reader vicariously par-
ticipates in the making of those scenes.

I have dwelt on the narrator of this book for a
simple reason—-that, to a great extent, Titmarsh is the

Irish Sketch Book, and his observations are its subject

 

matter; his prejudices, its themes; his moods, its tone.
All discussion must begin with this ubiquitous figure whose
presence suffuses every page, this dominant figure who calls
attention to himself like Gulliver in Lilliput. I have said
in Chapter II that travel literature stands somewhere
between the autobiography and the essay as a literary form.
The powerful tug of Titmarsh's person forces the Irish book.
to oscillate between those two poles. With its generous
attention to detailed itinerary and specific names and
>laces, the book swings tOWard autobiography, and Thackeray
reinforces this notion by calling Titmarsh his "travelling—
;itle" (vii). With author and narrative mask virtually
dentical, the book can be largely read as an account of
hackeray's stay in Ireland from July to November, 1842.

hile autobiography is a record of one's actions, the per—
)nal essay is a chronicle of one's thoughts, and this is

ie other direction Titmarsh leads to. Spicing the book

‘6 numerous one— and two—page vignettes on topics ranging

om national characteristics (151—2) to English management

Ireland (317—8) to education (451). In the essay,

 

 

Titmarsh u:
“A Caution
then erecti
it. In the
the travel
and this is
in Th_e_I£i§
than this n
will turn f
the organiz
narrative.
The
graphical, <
single citii
travel routi

Dublin appez

   
 
  
  
   
   

ter, in Cha

appearance

the island.

discussed 1

Chronicle fo

0f precise,

 

119

Titmarsh uses the technique of expansion so prominent in

“A Caution to Travellers," seizing an observable fact and
then erecting a superstructure of thought and opinion atop
it. In their own ways, then, autobiography and essay lead
the travel work from focus on the observed to the observer;
and this is both the intent and result of Thackeray's work

in The Irish Sketch Book. But there is more to the work

 

than this narrator, and for the balance of this essay, we
will turn from the teller to the tale, from Titmarsh to
the organization, patterns and themes of this travel
narrative. /

The book's organization is chronological and geo—

graphical, divided into thirty—two chapters labelled by

 

single cities (Chapter VII is "Cork") or a group along a
travel route (Chapter XIII is "Tralee—-Listowel——Tarbert").
Dublin appears three times in the book: in the first chap-
ter, in Chapter XXII, and in the concluding chapter. Its
appearance in Chapter XXII marks the divide between the
first two-thirds of the journey, taken in southern Ireland,
md the final third, which explores the northern part of

he island. The split has thematic significance, to be
iscussed later.

Organization by place and time is logical in a work\
rat proclaims itself a "journal" (412), and indeed, there
e other clear outgrowths from the book's genesis in daily
ronicle form. As a journal, the book embraces a wealth

precise, sharp detail that was recorded when memory was

 

 

 

 

120

fresh and uncluttered, as the picture of "a great, wide,
lank, bleak water-Whipped square" beneath Titmarsh's

indow in Galway. Pictures like this give the travel book

spontaniety, a Vivid immediacy that a summarizing narra—

ive would not have. But it seems to pay the price for

his exactness by its loose, disconnected, repetitious

ormat. Strictly speaking, a journal is a series of daily

arratives, bound together loosely by the flow of time
ather than cause and effect; hence, a certain formlessness
hat a retrospective, summarizing narrative should not

ave. This was what Thackeray had in mind when he called
is book "rambling and disorderly." Further, a summariz—
ig narrative prunes away repetition, but a journal begins
1 page one many times; thus Titmarsh's admissions that

i think this sentiment has been repeated a score of times"

712) or even "for the hundred and fiftieth time" (282).

The journal format is adhered to with a pair of

ceptions. The first is found in Chapters XV and XVI,

ost the exact midpoint of the volume, where Titmarsh

Cotes almost sixty pages to quoting and commenting on

e books of Irish popular fiction. Dubbed Galway Nights'

the tales and plays are clearly an inter—

The

ertainments,

e, an island of fiction in a sea of empirical fact.
0nd break in the prose narrative occurs in Chapter XXX,

re fifteen stanzas of light, humorous verse are devoted

an Irish maid named Peg of Limavaddy. Both of these

artures serve well as pleasant diversions from the

ness that the journal form can foster.

 

 

 

 

121

On the book's final pages, Titmarsh acknowledges
that his journal's "aim . . . was to look at the manners
and scenery of the country" (476). Scenery is here given
a prominent position, one that is fully merited by its
importance in the entire work. For while the personal
mode of travel literature certainly dominates The Irish
Sketch Book, very strong elements of the picturesque mode
are evident also. As mentioned in Chapter II, the pic—
turesque mode approaches, and then describes, natural
scenery in terms of landscape painting—-composition,
perspective, use of light and shade, etc. Moreover, the
impulse of picturesque travel literature is primarily
aesthetic rather than religious or philosophical——nature
is approached with the critical (and appreciative) eye of
an art connoisseur rather than the reverential perceptions
of a Wordsworth.

In addition to his training as a painter, Thackeray
had written several articles of art criticism for Fraser's
Magazine ("On the French School of Painting" was one, which
subsequently appeared in The Paris Sketch Book) and other
periodicals. From references in his works, it is obvious
that he was familiar with landscape painters Claude
Lorrain, Kareerujardin and others. The relationship
between Thackeray's knowledge of painting and his prose
descriptions has not been widely examined in previous
criticism, but the Irish work makes it clear that such a

relationship does exist. For example, at Glengariff he

 

 

122

self—consciously slips into picturesque natural descrip—
tion:

the yacht, island and castle looked as if they had

been washed against the flat gray sky in Indian-

ink . . . at a few hundred yards most of the

objects were enveloped in mist; but even this, for

a lover of the picturesque, had its beautiful

effect, for you saw hills in the foreground pretty

clear, and covered with their wonderful green,

while immediately behind them rose an immense blue

mass of mist and mountain that served to relieve

(to use the painter's phrase) the nearer objects.

(138)
Of all Thackeray's works, this might be the one most con—
cerned with natural scenery, and throughout he waxes
enthusiastic over the Irish landscape. In Cornhill to
Cairo, his View of nature stirs religious longings, but
in the Irish travels it leads him to draw sketches with
his pen and penci1--to put a frame around nature and
present it to his reader. Like the description quoted
above, Thackeray frequently attempts landscape paintings in
words, using the printed page as a canvas to group objects,
describe vivid colors, discuss foregrounds and vistas.
Although Thackeray admits more than once that "it is vain
to attempt to describe natural beauties" (349), his des—
criptions of Westport and the road from Inniskerry to Bray
are monuments to this "Vanity.“ In Spite of his doubts
about the value of careful outward description in travel
Literature, he nevertheless turned to the pictorial land-

scape mode when confronted (and by his account, overwhelmed)

rith Irish scenery.

 

 

 

 

123

This picturesque mode must be considered part of
the "multi-media" approach that Thackeray employs in his

work as he did its predecessor. As in The Paris Sketch

 

Eggk, he uses both pen and pencil sketches, and writes in
different literary forms—~prose, poetry——and he even

quotes parts of an Irish play. Over thirty drawings are
spread throughout the book, and repeated references in the
text to the drawings make it clear that they are integral
parts of the work, not afterthoughts or mere embellishments.
As expressive art, they make "statements" of their own

which substantially enrich the entire work: as, for example,
the picture of the waterford courthouse on page 65, which

deftly comments on four peOple involved in the court pro-

 

ceedings; or the sharply critical drawing on page 182,
which attacks a Roman Catholic religious celebration in
Tralee. Perhaps Titmarsh turns to drawing because he feels
that words are inadequate in pictorial description——a
complaint that rings throughout the book in passages like:
"what is the use of putting down all this? A.man might
describe the cataract of the Serpentine in exactly the
same terms, and the reader be no wiser“ (175). So where
words fail, or where impulse demands, Titmarsh is ready to
draw.

Another artistic pattern Titmarsh uses to good
effect in the volume is his technique of expansion—~of
developing a simple empirical observation into a broad

comment on culture. He does this overtly in the first

 

 

 

 

 

124

chapter, when, after observing a window of a Dublin inn
propped up with a broom, he humorously comments:

Is it prejudice that makes one prefer the English

window, that relies on its own ropes and ballast

(or lead if you like) and does not need to be

propped by any foreign aid? or is this only a

solitary instance of the kind, and are there no

other specimens in Ireland of the careless,

dangerous, extravagant hearth—broom system? (25)
Titmarsh embeds his values, opinions, insights about
Ireland in his rendering of scenes and incidents of daily
life, often in a more subtle manner than the "hearthrbroom"
passage, but generally quite explicitly. This technique
might be called symbolic or allegorical, and that would be
true to a point. But the real essense of expansion is not
the stark presentation of the symbolic person or event,
but of Titmarsh's careful cultivation of it through his
commentary so that it acquires additional meanings only
through his statements. When he visits the Ursuline
convent in Blackrock, he shows the reader the constrictions
of convent life in the routine of the nuns there, and then
goes on to directly comment on “that infernal, wicked,
unnatural altar" (99), to develop its significance through.
overt judgements, and to conclude with:

I came out of the place quite sick; and looking

before me,--there, thank God! was the blue spire

of Monkstown church.soaring up into the free

sky——a river in front rolling away to the seam-

liberty, sunshine, all sorts of glad life and

motion round about . . . (100)
The reader, then, is always aware of Thackeray's expansion,

always knows what he is about. Indeed, at one point

Titmarsh.feels it necessary to warn the reader he is not

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

125

expanding: “Let the above passage . . . simply be under-
stood to say, that on a certain day the writer met a
vulgar little Scotchman—wnot that all Scotchmen are vulgar
. ." (151).
Both the "multiemedia" and expansion techniques

were used in The Paris Sketch Book, along with the use of

 

thematic motifs that connected and related the different
pieces. Thackeray appropriates this latter method for his
Irish book, giving some unity to what might have been a
formless empirical narrative by employing a series of
contrasts and polarities that shape his vision of Ireland.
He sees that country divided into opposing camps, for "to
have 'an opinion about Ireland,‘ one must begin by getting
at the truth; and where is it to be had in the country?
Or rather, there are two truths, the Catholic truth.and
the Protestant truth. The two parties do not see things
with the same eyes“ (476). The contrast between Catholic
southern Ireland and Protestant northern Ireland runs
throughout the work, and is the basis for many of its
observations.

The bulk of Titmarsh's travels are in the southern
area, and he perceives it paradoxically: a place where
people are "starving yet healthy" (35), "poor yet cheer-
ful" (34), "rosy in their rags“ (3l4) with their"forlorn
gaiety" (312). Time and time again he writes of hordes
of beggars, mired in poverty and rags. The Irish.feel

this horrible misery should be "laid upon that tyrant of

 

 

 

 

 

 

126

a siSter kingdom," England, but Titmarsh counters that
"kings or law don't cause or cure dust and cobwebs, but
indolence leaves them to accumulate, and imprudence will
not calculate its income, and vanity exaggerates its own
powers" (107). Laziness, ignorance and vanity heavily
imbue Irish culture, and causes the land's difficulties.
Beyond this, there is the disturbing criminality of the
country, a motif mentioned in the first chapter, which
contains newspaper accounts of violent crimes; developed
in a mention of vitriol-throwers of Cork "who are Chris%
tians as we are; but interfere with their interests, and
they will murder you without pity" (121); repeated in
Chapter XVII, devoted to an account of Roundstone petty
sessions. At the basis of all these problems, perhaps, is
the feeble educational system and religious conflict that
saddle the people. Titmarsh peppers his reader with obsere
Vations of this dirt and hunger and ignorance, and yet——
here is the paradox--the people are generally cheerful
and bright, their manners pleasant and winning.

The Galway Nights' Entertainment of Chapters XV and
XVI is a clever fictional distillation of these themes
adumbrated in previous pages. Titmarsh summarizes and
quotes directly from some books purchased at Ennis, con-
centrating mainly on the "Adventures of Mr. James Freeny,"
the "Battle of Aughrim" and three stories from "The Irish-
and Hibernian Tales." This large fictional bloc takes

Up about one—eighth of the entire work and recapitulates

 

 

 

 

—>—___ r -. ...._.,-,i_fl,, _ _.

127

the dishonesty, violence, grandiloquence, and ignorance
of the people. One is left with the conclusion that
southern Ireland is a cultural wasteland, albeit a cheer-

ful one.

After leaving Dublin in Chapter XXIV, Titmarsh
moves northward, eventually crossing into modern day
Ulster by Chapter XVII. In this phase of the journey,

a new bundle of themes about northern Ireland-~setting it
sharply apart from the sotthern section-~are articulated.
He begins by expanding on a scene at the end of a common

near Drogheda:

a score of golden ricks were in the background, the
churches in unison, and the people (typified by the
corn-ricks) flourishing at the feet of both. May
one ever hope to see the day in Ireland when this
little landscape allegory shall find a general
application? (362)

The prosperity and neatness that "little allegory" implies
is fulfilled in northern Ireland. Where the south was
tortured by filth, poverty, disease, laziness, the northern
town of Newry comes as antithesis and revelation to

Titmarsh:

Such a sight of neatness and comfort is exceedingly
welcome to an English traveller . . . driving
through a plain, bustling clean street, landed at

a large plain comfortable inn, where business seems
to be done, where there are smart waiters to
receive him, and a comfortable warm coffee—room
that bears no traces of dilapidation. (389)

In the north, there are several "neat" towns where industry
is booming, where the people seem well-dressed and pros—
perous, where things are orderly and work well. Even the

Physiognomy of these northerners is different: "sharp and

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

128

neat, not broad, lazy, knowingelooking" like the people of
the south (394). Northern Ireland reminds Titmarsh of
his native England, and his repeated contrast of those two
places against the "alien" south structures most of the
cultural themes of the book.
Amazed by the contrast between the two Irelands,

he asks:.

What is the cause of this improvement? Protestan—

tism is, more than one Church—of-England man said

to me; but, for Protestantism, would it not be as

well to read Scotchism?-—meaning thrift, prudence,

perserverance, boldness, and common sense: with

which qualities any body of men, of any Christian
denomination, would no doubt prosper. (395)

 

 

Titmarsh the Protestant parries the original assertion
because he is distressed by the religious intolerance that
haunts the land, and wishes not to fuel it. Indeed, he
feels that "the Protestant of the North is as much priest-
ridden as the Catholic of the South" (429) despite his own
doctrinal beliefs, and even—handedly condemns the religious
bigotry that oppresses both factions.

Writing to his mother at the very end of his tour,

Thackeray said: "I have become bitten with.a mania for'edHCa~
tion . . ." (Letters, II, 88). Although the book does not

present a "solution" to Ireland's problems of poverty and intol-
erance, the pictures of Dundalk Infant-School, Dundalk Insti-
tution, and Templemoyle School are very suggestive. Their organ-
ization, tolerance, eminent_good sense would seem to lay the
foundation for a better future. As many before and after

him, Titmarsh hopes that well-educated future generations

 

 

129

will shuck off benighting traditions, and embrace more
civilized values.

But the book's overriding polarity may not be North
vs. South, or Protestant vs. Catholic, but the ugliness
of human conflict played out against the dazzling beauty
of the Irish landscape. The Irish people are damned in
the midst of paradise: living often in disease, filth,

and poverty against the backdrop of stunning lakes, bays,

 

mountains and cascades that Titmarsh writes of with heated
admiration. The picturesque mode celebrates the natural
beauties, while many of Titmarsh's loose observations deal
with poverty and sectarian warfare; although.the contrast
between nature and man is never made explicit, it rever—
berates through scene after scene. The glorious scenery on
the road from Ballinahinch to Roundstone, for example, forms
a muted, ironic contrast to the inglorious human conduct

at the petty sessions in Roundstone. This contrast, along
with the others, helps rescue the travel book from the
formlessness of simple chronology, and one incident follow—

ing another without meaning or relationship. Instead, the

 

contrasts serve to connect those incidents on another level
aside of chronological--namely, the thematic-—and give-»
them the shaping force of an artistic vision.

In conclusion, The Irish Sketch.Book has continui-
ties and departures from its predecessor. Like the Paris
work, it employs the "multi—media" approach, uses the

technique of expansion, is unified by repeated thematic

   

~’———————4 l l 4.. A . 44 A A u

 

 

 

 

130

motifs, and is dominated by roughly the same Titmarshian
personality. But instead of employing a perspectivist
method, Thackeray relies on a continuous narrative in the
Irish book. And the narrator, in his triple role as com-
panion, conduit and character, has a more complex and
dominant role than the Parisian Titmarsh did. Because
Thackeray follows, in large part, the critical pronounce—

ments of his reviews in the Irish narrative, one feels he

 

is now speaking in his most considered voice as a travel

writer.

Cornhill to Cairo

 

 

from Cornhill to Grand Cairo, is his finest effort, bearing

 

the stamp of a mature artist who knows what he is about.
Published January, 1846, it appeared just one year before

the first segment of Vanity Fair reached the public in

 

January, 1847.

As was mentioned in Chapter I, this book.was con—
ceived in a moment of impulse. Attending a dinner on
August 20, 1844, Thackeray was offered a free passage on
the Peninsular Oriental Company's "Lady Mary WOod" for a
voyage to the Middle East. He accepted the offer, and
before departing on August 22, he had arranged to write a
book about the journey for the publishing firm of Chapman

and Hall.

 

 

 

4

 

 

 

131

The trip took nine and a half weeks, from August 22
to October 27: Malta, Athens, Smyrna, Constantinople,
Jerusalem and Cairo were some of the places visited. As

with The Irish Sketch Book, Thackeray composed the book as

 

he traveled, using the long hours of ocean Voyage to write

his travel book along with his first novel, Barry Lyndon.

 

By January, 1845, he wrote his publishers from Rome: “I
hope the Eastern book will be successful--it is all but
done" (Letters, II, 185). However close to completion it
seemed then, Thackeray was still laboring on the book in
July and August, complaining to Charlotte Ritchie "I have
been bothering my brain for a fortnight over a chapter
about Jerusalem" (Letters, II, 209). Thackeray was paid
2005 for the book; it was finally published fifteen months
after the voyage was completed.

The book shouldered its way into a crowded publish!
ing market.29 Seven years before, Thackeray had noted that
accounts of Middle Eastern travels had become commonplace;
in 1845 A. W. Kinglake's Eothen and Eliot Warburton's The

Crescent and the Cross--two top-notch works-—had appeared.

 

Running into such heavy competition, he jokingly sets
humble goals for himself; not a "great genius" he says:

This quill was never made to take such flights;
it comes of the wing of a humble domestic bird,
who walks a common; who talks a great deal (and
hisses sometimes); who can't fly far or high, and
drops always very quickly; and whose unromantic
end is, to be laid on a Michaelmas or Christmas
tablegoand there to be discussed for half—an—hour

 

 

 

 

 

 

132

In brief, Thackeray is falling back on his tested strategy
of providing a distinctive angle of vision by "filtering
his impressions through the consciousness of an idio-
syncratic narrator."31
Michael Angelo Titmarsh is that narrator, and he

is the same figure that dominates the pages of The Irish
Sketch Book. Thackeray wrote that his book would be "on
the East . . . or that Cockney part w? I shall see" and
smiled at "this little cockney voyage" (Letters, II, 176,
180). The Cockney in Ireland has become the Cockney in
the Levant, and he freely admits to the perspective he
brings to bear:

This, as an account of Cairo . . . you will

probably be disposed to consider as incomplete

. . . Well, it isnit a good description of Cairo;

you are perfectly right. It is England in Egypt.

I like to see her with her pluck, enterprise,

manliness, bitter ale, and Harvey sauce. (458—9)
Titmarsh's personality-~with its humor, wit and bluntness-—
carries over from the two previous sketch books; and it is
clear, at this stage, that Thackeray has grown accustomed
to his narrative mask. Likewise, as before, Titmarsh
discusses what interests him, based on his English, urban
background and his own preoccupations, and offers this as
an alternative to the banal indices of major tourist
attractions offered by guidebooks and some other travel
works. At Athens, for example, Titmarsh first discusses-—

not the Parthenon—~but the brutalities of the classical

education he received as an English schoolboy; his account

 

 

 

 

133

of the city is colored and prejudiced by past disappoint-
ments. Titmarsh admits his viewpoint is limited: "to a
skilled antiquarian, or an enthusiastic Greek scholar, the
feelings created by a sight of the place of course will be
different" (321). But in this limitation is a kind of
strength—~the reader gets a fresh, frank and piercing View
of the Greek capitol. The chapter on Lisbon takes up the
same theme in a different way: Titmarsh spends a dreary
day visiting the "chief lions of the city" (the major
tourist attractions) and then concludes:

Well, it is these state lies and ceremonies that

we persist in going to see; whereas a man would

have a much better sight into Portugese manners,

by planting himself at a corner . . . and watchs

ing the real transactions of the day. (276)
And indeed, Titmarsh does plant himself in a corner-~that
of his British background and distinctive personality—~and
sees the world from there.

While Titmarsh is the same personality as before

and dominates the narrative with that personality, his

overall narrative method is somewhat different. Generally,

the narrative structure of Cornhill to cairo is hybrid-—

 

an improved strain crossing the "set pieces“ of The Paris

 

Sketch Book with the mobile, day-to-day narration of The
Irish Sketch Book. The first employs long, stationary
viewpoints in discussing French society, and movement-—
actual travel--is minimal. The second book, concerned as
it is with the process of travel itself, is largely kinetic,

detailing the traveler's motion through physical space,

 

 

 

 

134

and even though there are many pauses when long, stable
perspectives are taken, the book's narrative VieWpoint is
often like that of a moving camera. Further, it is a
journal and thus favors immediate, fragmented, rather than

summarizing, narrative. Cornhill to Cairo skillfully com-

 

bines both patterns in its view of the Levant. The long

 

set pieces are chapters that relate stays in cities like
Jerusalem and Cairo; in them, the pace slows and Thackeray
deliberately explores Eastern lifeways. These reflective
segments allow the narrator to penetrate and analyze

Eastern culture with anecdote and observation. Between these
set pieces are the kinetic parts of the travel work,

depicting the movement from city to city, whether by ocean

 

vessel or desert camel, where Titmarsh tells of travel in

 

the East as the set pieces tell of life in the East.
Chapter V, "Athens," is a good example of this
narrative method at work. One of the book's set pieces,
it smoothly summarizes the thoughts and impressions of his
visit there on September 10 and 11. It begins, as is
Titmarsh's habit, on a personal note: “Not feeling any
enthusiasm myself about Athens, my bounden duty of course
is clear, to sneer and laugh heartily at all who have"
(313); and the chapter proceeds to tell how Athens relates
to Titmarsh and acts upon his consciousness. Accordingly,
the early pages of "Athens" begin with his anger at the
infelicities of classical education that he suffered as a

child. Then he moves into an account of his arrival in

 

 

135

Athens, discussing his movement from harbor to hotel,
followed by another essay on classical learning. Finally,
there are some reflections on the major Athenian tourist
attractions. The progress of his narrative must be con-
sidered psychological, moving with the flow of thoughts
in Titmarsh's mind, rather than chronological or spatial,
that is, depending on movement through time or space. A
personal narration: yes; a random, haphazard one: no.
Skillfully interwoven into the stream of observations is
a reasonably inclusive overview of Athens, presenting the
government of Greece and its ruler, a physical description
of the people and their dress, a discussion of past his—
tory, and a mention of its chief sights for visitors. This
overview is effected in Titmarsh's usual manner of evalu—
ating all before him——the "shabbiness of this place" and
"yonder dirty, swindling, ragged blackguards" (318)——and
directly addressing the reader:

And so, my dear friend, you who have been

reading this last page in wonder, and who,

instead of a description of Athens, have

been accommodated with.a lament on the part

of the writer . . . excuse this momentary

outbreak of egotistical despondency. (323)
Thus the finished product stands somewhere between the
informational, objective approach of the guidebook and the
subjective method of the personal essay-—closer to the
latter, but an indication that Titmarsh's set pieces take
a bow to the outward description of the humanistic mode.

In Cornhill to Cairo, Titmarsh becomes reflective

 

about his art as well as himself, and the book therefore

 

 

 

136

proves the forum for some important pronouncements on the
art of travel writing. One of his dicta is an attack on
the romantic mode of travel writing. Titmarsh begins by
finding Greek women unattractive, and then proceeds:

give me a fresh, dewy, healthy rose out of
Somersetshire; not one of those superb, tawdry,
unwholesome exotics, which are only good to
make poems about. Lord Byron wrote more cant
of this sort than any poet I know Of. Think
of the 'peasant girls with dark blue eyes' of
the Rhine-—the brown-faced, flat-nosed, thick-
lipped, dirty wenchesl Think of 'filling high
a cup of Samian wine' . . . (321)

Romantic travel writing is marked chiefly by love of the
exotic and of natural scenery, joined with a mood of

emotional intensity and awe. In parts of cornhill‘tO‘Cairo,

 

like the visit to Smyrna or the ride on the plains of
Sharon, Titmarsh excitedly confronts the strange lifeways
of the East. But those flights of rapture are brief—-the
one at Smyrna last but two hours-—and Titmarsh rapidly
resumes the frank, hard-headed manner of the cockney
traveler. The Byronic (and romantic) mode of travel liter—
ature does not easily harmonize with the personal mode of
Thackeray, which places a premium on direct, honest report-
ing of impressions; the personal travel writer is not bound
by literary convention or tradition, but by his own eye-
sight. Since he is frankly unimpressed with several
wonderworks of the mysterious East, he becomes a debunker:

The palace of the Seraglio, the Cloister with

marble pillars, the hall of the ambassadors,

the impenetrable gate guarded by eunuchs and

ichoglans, have a romantic look in print; but

not so in reality . . . The place looks like
Vauxhall in the daytime. (362)

 

 

 

 

9|:

 

 

137

So much for Constantinople--and after landing at Alexandria,
he shrugs: "You might be as well impressed with Wapping
as with your first step on Egyptian soil" (445).

Titmarsh, in an admission of his own limitations,
gives another reason why he avoids the romantic mode. That
type of travel literature demands elaborate and evocative
description--poetic description, But Titmarsh.isn't a
poet, just "a humble domestic bird" who "can't fly far
or high" (488). In a mock conversation with his conscience,
Titmarsh compares himself to Tennyson, considering that
poet an eagle soaring into the sun and himself a humble
sparrow that stays close to the ground. So he must go his
own way, working on a medium that welcomes his prose style
and artistic personality.

But while this plain—dealing, blunt narrator avoids
romantic description, he also asserts a method he believes
most Viable. Sailing into the little bay of Glaucus on
September 26, he says: "The effort of the artist, as I
take it, ought to be, to produce upon his hearer's mind,
by his art, an effect something similar to that produced on
his own by the sight of the natural object" (383). This
statement is made about art ingeneral, but it defines and
defends a most important part of Titmarshis narrative
method in his travel works. He adds to that statement that
"only music, or the best poetry, can do this,“ but his
attempt in that venture is embodied, to varying degrees,

in all his travel writings, including Cornhill to Cairo.

 

 

 

 

 

138

First, emphasis is placed on the artist/narrator,
for the effect that "natural objects" produce upon his
mind is primary. His view of the natural object (not the
natural object itself) is the stuff of travel literature.
Hence, what the reader eventually learns is based on the
product of narrator interacting with object. But the
narrator is not a passive force—~he does not simply pass
on to the reader objects colored by his vision. Rather,
he proceeds as an artist, shaping his impressions "by his
art," so that the reader's mind recapitulates the product
of narrator and object. Schematically, this might be

presented in two equations:

Natural Object + Narrator = Effect on Narrator's Mind

Natural Object + Narrator's Art = Effect on Reader's Mind

The effect on the narrator's mind is "something similar"
(as far as art permits) to the effect on the reader's mind.
To see these equations in action, one might look
at the opening pages of Chapter VII. On his first sight of
Constantinople, Titmarsh is struck with wondrous admiration.
But instead of carefully describing the city for the
reader, he immediately reaches for a simile: "the View of
Constantinople is as fine as any of Stanfield's best
theatrical pictures, seen at the best period of youth" (337).
The example, drawn from Drury Lane and the stage, is
Titmarsh's artistic attempt to impress the reader with "the

effect which Constantinople produces on the mind" (338).

 

 

 

 

139

Leading the reader's mind to elicit this feeling of wonder
is the best way to convey the reality of the Turkish city:

For, suppose we combine mosque, minaret, gold,
cypress, water, blue, caiques, seventy-four,
Galata, Tophana, Ramazan, Backallum, and so
forth, together, in ever so many ways, your
imagination will never be able to depict a
city out of them. Or, suppose I say the
Mosque of St. Sophia is four hundred and
seventy-three feet in height . . . Has your
fancy, which pooh-poohs a simile, faith.enough
to build a city with.a foot-rule? (338e9)

There, Titmarsh.makes his technique of impressionistic

 

direction explicit. V. S. Pritchett has called Thackeray
"above all a superb impressionist" and the first British
novelist "to catch visually and actually life as it passes

32

in fragments before us." He uses this tactic to superb

effect in Cornhill to Cairo, finding it a way to involve

 

the reader in the work and to give him the "feel," the
sensation of traveling in a foreign land. In chapters on
Spain and Smyrna, we see this method at work: Titmarsh care—

fully selects vivid impressions from the stream of reality

 

as it passes him by, hOping that, through.the reader's
identification with him, the reader will undergo the same
feelings as his. To tell the reader about Gibraltar, he
shunts aside methodical description to feature pregnant
images of "dark Spanish smugglers in tufted hats, with gay
silk handkerchiefs round their heads" or of "a ragged fat
fellow, mounted on a tobacco-barrel with his hat cocked on
his head" (296,298). Dubious about large—scale descriptive

sequences, he nevertheless believes a series of pointed

 

 

 

 

140

images might produce in the reader's mind a sensation
similar to that in the narrator's.

Turning now from the ominipresent Titmarsh and his
narrative strategies, the thematic organization of COrnhill
to Cairo, much more harmonious and compact than its prede—
cessors, calls attention to itself. Thackeray's first two
travel books operate with loose thematic clusters that form
contrasting pairs——beauty/art/freedom vs. violence/trickery/

immorality in The Paris Sketch Book, for example. But the

 

Eastern travels are dominated-—and to some extent unified-—
by one ascendant theme, that of religion and worship. (In
Vanity Fair, Thackeray used vanity as the central theme

that would tie together diverse materials, so the device

 

obviously attracted him.)

The religious sentiment is keynoted in the first two
paragraphs of the first chapter when a seasick Titmarsh
comes on the ship's deck at two in the morning. After sure
veying the "noble scene" about him, he exlaims that
"contemplating this vast, magnificient, harmonious Nature“
arouses in him, along with other things, "inexpressible love
and reverence towards the Power which created the infinite
universe blazing above eternally" (265-6). Starting a
travel book with a religious invocation is unusual, and the
intensity of the opening passage is startling in itself.

But it becomes less surprising when one realizes that
Jerusalem—-a Holy City for three of the world's major

religions-~is one of the stops on his voyage, and that the

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

141

trip is, at least incidentally, a religious pilgrimage.
Emphasizing that city's importance, Titmarsh calls it "the
centre of the world's past and future history" (414).

The chapter on Jerusalem is, of course, the center-
piece of the religious theme, but Titmarsh discusses
religion and worship throughout the work. The first stops
of the "Lady Mary Wood" were in Portugal and Spain, and
the narrator visited the churches, cathedrals and convents
there, among them a small church in Cadiz “crowded with
altars and fantastic ornaments, and lights and gilding,
where we were told to look behind a huge iron grille, and

beheld a bevy of black nuns kneeling" (284). Then come the

 

Islamic nations, and Titmarsh makes many comments on the

Moslem religion in visits to its mosques and observations

 

on the holy month of Ramadan. As with the Catholics, he
finds their practices exotic, colorful--add perhaps a
trifle absurd. He is convinced Moslem congregants are
seeing through the "folly" of their religion, wondering
whether "the scepticism prevalent amongst the higher orders
must descend ere very long to the lower; and the cry of

the muezzin from the mosque become a mere ceremony?" (363).
Other religions are presented also: during the sailing

to Jaffa, comment is made on Polish Jews making a pilgrimage
to Jerusalem; the desert passage from Jaffa to Jerusalem
introduces the American Consul General of Syria and Jeru—
salem, an earnest chiliast who "expects to see the

Millennium in three years, and has accepted the office of

 

142

consul at Jerusalem, so as to be on the spot in readiness"
(406).

Doctrinal questionings led to difficulties in com—

 

posing that Jerusalem chapter. Writing to his mother in
July, 1845, he says: "I am gravelled with Jerusalem, not
wishing to offend the public by a needless exhibition of
heterodoxy: nor daring to be a hypocrite. I have been
reading lots of books" for aid in writing the chapter

(Letters, II, 204). The original chapter contained some

 

"unorthodox remarks" and was cast aside when his pious

 

mother objected to what Thackeray lightly called "my awful
heresy." The final version of the chapter is not contro-
versial, but the writer struggled over it.

Jerusalem aroused deep emotions in Thackeray, emo—
tions that lingered months after his visit there, and he
remarks that "the impression I have of it now is of ten days
passed in a fever" (440). The stark desolation of Jerusalem,
when coupled with its past history of Violence and murder,
makes Titmarsh a much more serious figure than usual. But
still the chapter is the culmination of many religious
viewpoints expressed in the book, prime among them anger at
religious fakery and conflict. Throughout, Titmarsh
expresses contempt for the "disgusting mummery" (416) that
surrounds holy places such as the Church of the Sepulchre.
Superstition, ignorance, and deceit envelop this shrine

and others, figured in bogus relics like the thicket where

 

Abraham caught the Ram, or the Tomb of Adam; he sees this

grovelling before these false momentos a perversion of

 

 

 

 

 

 

143

religion. The petty animosities between various believers
anger him--"And so round this sacred spot, the centre of
Christendom, the representatives of the three great sects
worship under one roof, and hate each other!" (430).
Titmarsh, meanwhile, attacks Jews and Catholics, speaking
of a believer in the latter religion: "it is difficult
even to give him credit for honesty, so barefaced seem

the impostures which he professes to believe and reverence"
(427). Titmarsh's religious faith, as expressed throughout
the book, runs counter to what he sees in Jerusalem. As
the opening passage and other comments indicate, Titmarsh
believes in a simple and direct relationship with God,
based on common sense, uncluttered with gaudy buildings,
elaborate rites, complicated beliefs; he seems to indicate
that man can worship God beneath the sky as well as beneath
a church, temple or mosque roof. He remains, however, an
Anglican, and in Jerusalem commends “the decent and manly
ceremonial of our service" (421) and 9the sheer force of
good example, pure life, and kind offices" the English
religious colony at the city exhibits (436). Plain faith,
good works—-this is the yardstick he repeatedly measures
other religions by in Cornhill to Cairo.

As a cautionary note, it should be mentioned that
this work is as much about religion as about the East and
Thackeray's voyage there: indeed, much of the travel book
is not concerned with this religious theme. But the open-

ing passage, the chapter on Jerusalem, and the network of

 

 

 

 

144

incident and detail tie together the work on a level other
than narrative continuity. And the very final lines of
Titmarsh's musing reassert the religious theme: mentioning
his visionscf an Islamic priest and Jewish rabbi in
worship, he says:

those figures come back the clearest of all to the
memory, with the picture, too, of our ship sailing
over the peaceful Sabbath sea, and our own prayers
and services celebrated there. So each, in his
fashion, and after his kind, is bowing down, and
adoring the Father, who is equally above all.
Cavil not, you brother or sister, if your neigh-
bor's voice is not like yours; only hOpe that his
words are honest (as far as they may be) and his
heart humble and thankful (490-1).

The reason religion looms so large in COrnhill to

 

Qairg_is not the religious speculation or doctrinal inter-
ests of Thackeray. Worship is central because it arises
naturally from the trip itself, and because it illuminates
cultural aspects of the lands Visited, not because the
writer wishes to proclaim his Anglican faith. Rather, he
used human belief as a means of probing and understanding
the lifeways of the East, for he saw (quite correctly)
religious articles and practices as shapers of culture,
whether it be Judaic, Islamic, or, in the case of the
travelers, Christian. Religion is therefore not treated in
the abstract, as a body of beliefs, but in the concrete, as
it impinges on daily life--in the Arab priest's cry and
the Rabbi's study of his book.

Despite the tolerant words of that last chapter,
Titmarsh could be brutally unfair to other religions. In

The Irish Sketch Book, anti-Catholic sentiments were in

 

 

 

 

145

plain evidence, and the Eastern travels bring his religious
prejudices into full bloom. Titmarsh's treatment of Islam

is harsh, more than slightly contemptuous. As to Judaism,

the portrait is negative to an extreme. Take, for example,
the description of the Jewish pilgrims at Jaffa:

The dirt of these children of captivity exceeds
all possibility of description; the profusion

of stinks which they raised, the grease of their
venerable garments and faces, the horrible messes
cooked in the filthy pots, and devoured with the
nasty fingers, the squalor of mats, pots, old
bedding, and foul carpets of our Hebrew friends,
could hardly be painted by Swift, in his dirtiest
mood, and cannot be, of course, attempted by my
timid and genteel pen. (366)

Nevertheless, the "timid and genteel" pen would return to

the Jews several times following, almost obsessive in its

 

continual references to filth, odor, and Jewish treatment
of money. These powerful dislikes were not only true for
Cornhill to Cairo, but were apparently lifelong loathings,

cropping up in novels like Vanity Fair and'The‘Virginians.

 

While Dickens could balance off the evil Fagan with the

admirable Mr. Riah of Our Mutual Friend, Thackeray's Jewish

 

figures are almost invariable cast as vicious stereotypes:

 

malodorous money-changers whose filth—incrusted hands

twitch for gold.

 

However, Titmarsh's anti-Jewish sentiments are
rooted in racial, as well as religious, prejudices, perhaps
chiefly so. Indeed, to understand fully Thackeray the
travel writer, one must be aware that Thackeray the man
was a racist, that is, a firm believer in acute racial

differences, particularly regarding the superior qualities

   

 

 

 

 

146

of his own race and the inferior traits of others.33

Thackeray was, after all, a son of the great British
Empire, born in Calcutta and tended by native servants
there in childhood: his assumption of white superiority
was not uncommon among his contemporaries, and was evidenced
in the works of later Imperial writers like Kipling and
Conrad. While he shows a good deal of contempt for Jews,
generally Thackeray's racial attitudes are characterized
by a smug feeling of superiority, and not hatred of other
races; a confidence based in part on greater European
technology and “progress":
The paddle—wheel is the great conquorer. Wherever
the captain cries "Stop her!" Civilization stOps,
and lands in the ship's boat, and makes a permanent
acquaintance with the savages on shore. (334)
On the whole, these racial notions are implicit in COrnhill
to Cairo, for at no point does Titmarsh flatly assert the
superiority of his race, and it is difficult to tell whether
comments made on Arabs or Turks are motivated by racial,
cultural, or even religious considerations. Most accurately,
the racial issue is in the undercurrents of the book,
silently shaping values and comments; we are sure of its
presence because it has surfaced in other prose works and
letters. His treatment of members of the black race he
meets on his Eastern journey is fairly representative.
Seeing blacks in Constantinople and Alexandria, he regards
them as happy, grinning and simple children, thoroughly
pleasant people who are (by fair inference on the reader's

part) incapable of serious thought. This attitude is

 

 

 

147

confirmed by letters written during an American trip in
which he commends slavery in the South, finding it a
basically benevolent institution-~the noble assumption by
the white man of his burden; also, by his rather cruel

portraits of blacks in VanityfFair and Philip.

 

Cognizant of Titmarsh's religious and racial atti-
tudes, we can now discuss his overall View of life in the
Levant, that is, the countries of the Eastern Mediterranean
Sea. To be sure, this is his most cosmopolitan travel
work, investigating two EurOpean countries (Spain and
Portugal) and the island of Malta, along with the countries
of the Levant. But since his remarks on the European
countries are limited and difficulty to generalize from,
and since four-fifths of the book is devoted to the Levant,
the following discussion will emphasize his views on the
Middle East.

Not surprisingly, his value judgments on that area
reflect statements made about France and Ireland. For he
sees the Levant, in part, as he saw those two countries!-
divorced from British restraint and sobriety, the Eastern
nations are brighter, freer but also more violent and
immoral than England. On the positive side, there is the
exotic color and poetry of life in the East:

There is a fortune to be made for painters in
Cairo, and materials for a whole academy of
them. I never saw such a variety of architec«
ture, of life, of picturesqueness, of brilliant
colour, and light and shade. There is a picture

in every street, and at every bazaar stall.
(474)

 

 

 

148

At Smyrna, on the plains of Sharon, Titmarsh thrills to the
vibrancy and uniqueness of the Eastern tableau before him,
significantly comparing both to the magical moment when he
first saw France from Calais pier. Day to day living also
seems more lively; he asks: "Is there no ennui in the
Eastern countries, and are blue-devils not allowed to go
abroad there?" (400). In short, the mystery, color and
activity of the East seem a pleasant refuge from what Tit—
marsh calls “the great stalwart roast—beef world" (272)
that symbolizes drabness and care.

All this makes the East a charming place to Visit,
but to extend the cliche, Titmarsh does not want to live

there. The magical rapture of Eastern life lasts for a

brief time--"A person who wishes to understand . . . the
East should come in a yacht to . . . Smyrna, land for two
hours, and never afterwards go back again“ (326). There is

the dirt and decay that lurks behind the Oriental facade,
mentioned numerous times; there is the objectionable
Islamic religion, which Titmarsh scoffs at; there are the
sneaking manners of many of its people. But what seems to
outrage Titmarsh the most is Eastern immorality and lust:

The great aim of woman [a young Egyptian told
Titmarsh] in the much-maligned Orient, is to
administer to the brutality of her lord; her
merit is in knowing how to vary the beast‘s
pleasures . . . Do not be led away by German
writers and aesthetics, Semilassoisms,
Hahnhannism, and the like. The life of the
East is a life of brutes. The much-maligned
Orient, I am confident, has not been maligned
near enough; for the good reason that none of
us can tell the amount of horrible sensuality
practised there. (463-4)

 

—’—==—————i7 _ pvt-WWW 1.,

149

Titmarsh, writing in the ninth year of Victoria's rule,
does not deign to supply examples of this "horrible
sensuality" but his strenuous shudder fixes a strong
impression on the reader's mind. When it comes to the
violence and brutality of the Levant, however, specific
instances are plentiful. As noted above, he recounts the
bloody past of Jerusalem--the Romans conquering the city,
the wars of the Crusaders—~that culminate in the "Great
Murder" of Christ. On the road from Jaffa to Jerusalem,
he discusses the fear of robbery; in Cairo, he tells
anecdotes of the vicious robber band called the Arnaoots,
and of one "Bluebeard Pasha" threatening the life of his
British tutor. In addition to this cruelty, Titmarsh
disapproves of the political systems of the Levantine
nations, ridiculing King Otho of the Greeks and the
Turkish Sultan, finding in Egypt that "the government moves
in a happy circle of roguery" (468). And so the image of
the East he conjures is of a region with exterior flash
and excitement, also beseiged by poverty, dirt and disease,
raked by flagrant criminality, and misruled by selfish,
corrupt leaders.

Just as Titmarsh's analysis of the East roughly
parallels his view of France and Ireland, so do many of

the techniques, patterns and attitudes of Cornhill to Cairo

 

find ample precedent in the two sketcthooks. While
earlier works show a willingness to experiment, the Eastern

travels break little new ground. In his fifth year of

 

 

 

150

travel writing and third travel book, the author was content
to refine techniques he had used before, to practice hard
won skills with greater confidence and mastery.

The "multi—media" approach, the notion of giving
pen and pencil sketches of a visited nation, is employed

in Cornhill to Cairo. Sixteen sketches, integral parts

 

of the text, enliven its pages and throw special light on
the people of the East, their appearance and dress. Fur-
ther, the book employs multiple literary forms, its normal
prose varied with the poem "The White Squall" that com—

prises Chapter IX, just as the Paris book has "Four Imita—

tions of Beranger" and the Irish travels the poem "Peg of

 

Limavaddy."

Titmarsh himself is essentially the same figure we
have seen in previous books: his personality a little
more somber, but basically unchanged; embodying the view—
point of a detached observer, British, Protestant, and
urban; relating virtually everything in the narrative to
his interests and shaping almost all by his Opinions. To
Thackeray, Titmarsh came to represent not only a personality
or mask, but a certain style of narration; when he wished
to relate his experiences of foreign lands in a different
way, he would not modify Titmarsh's character, but create
a different narrator. Titmarsh's appearance in COrnhill to
Qgirg is Thackeray's signal that things would be as they

were before.

 

 

 

151

But Cornhill to Cairo was not his only account of

 

the Eastern trip, for between August, 1844, and 1847 a
series of short articles appeared in Pungh that were signed
by the Fat Contributor and written by Thackeray. The Fat
Contributor embodies a different narrative viewpoint, a
comic one in which irony sharply separates writer and
narrative mask. The Fat Contributor is physically clumsy,
morally deficient and absurdly provincial. During his
wanderings through southern England, continental Europe and
the Levant, when he cheats a tailor, gets sea sick, and
pastes a Pungh handbill on a pyramid, the reader laughs

at him as much as with him. By revealing this character's
conduct in foreign lands, Thackeray satirically attacks

the arrogant John Bull whose rude manners so disturbed him——
as Ray comments, "Thackeray's target here is the preten—

34 These minor sketches,

sions of the English abroad."
in fact, have little interest for us except as they demon-
strate the Vital link, in Thackeray's travel literature,
between narrativegoals and narrator. When his aim is
satire, and not the revelation of a foreign land, he
employs the buffoon Fat Contributor rather than the "com—
panion" Titmarsh.

Other continuities of the Eastern travels from the
two earlier sketch books suggest themselves: the interest
in the process of travel along with its products ("Indeed,

what is travelling made of? At least half its pleasures

and incidents come out of inns" (297)); the beginning of

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

152

the book with a ship voyage; the use of expansion to create
broad cultural comment from limited empirical observation;
the labelling of the work as a "Journal" (489). Indeed,
even the major new develOpments of this work-~its tighter
thematic organization and narrative mixture of set pieces
with travel sequences--are extensions of previous practices
rather than clean departures.

As a final note, an unfortunate contradiction that

lies at the heart of Cornhill to Cairo should be recognized.

 

The book makes several professions of benevolence, based

on a religiOus viewpoint, such as:

 

The Maker has linked together the whole race of

man with this chain of love. I like to think

that there is no man but has had kindly feelings

for some other, and he for his neighbour, until

we bind together the whole family of Adam. (312)
But Titmarsh himself cannot live up to this aspiration, and
too often denigrates other religions and races with low
quips and basically unfair attacks. Thackeray wanted his

narrative mask to be that of a gay companion, but sadly,

it could also be that of a bigot and a boor.

Early in his career, as a reviewer, Thackeray evolved
some ideas about travel writing. Some of them he discarded-—
such as the need to have extensive knowledge of a land
before writing about it--but he maintained a special grip
on two, those being the notions of a companionenarrator
and of a distinctive angle of vision. Welded together in

the heat of endeavor, the two notions became Titmarsh, the

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

153

talkative traveler who would provide a unique, entertaining
and unconventional View of foreign lands.

The figure of Titmarsh comes to dominate Thackeray's
travel literature and places it clearly in the personal mode
of writing. His presence, however, varies slightly from
work to work, for Thackeray was willing to shape Titmarsh
to the needs of the book. In The Paris Sketch'BOOk, for
example, Titmarsh becomes a shadowy figure in some of the
pieces which do not really require his presence. In'Thg

Fat Contributor Papers, on the other hand, Thackeray does

 

not wish to modify his old narrator, so he creates the Fat
Contributor in his stead. There is definite interaction,
then, between the narrative materials and the narrator him—
self—-they shape each other.

In The Irish Sketch Book and cornhill to Cairo,

 

Titmarsh achieves his greatest dominance and importance.

For in those works Thackeray uses his narrator to‘enve10p‘
the reader in a complex experience of the foreign land.
Titmarsh "speaks" in three voices: poetry, prose, and
drawings, surrounding the reader with his presence in the
various forms. Through identification with the first—
person narrator, the reader vicariously experiences the
process of travel. The reader sees the foreign land through
the narrator's eyes; and through the narrator's art, the
effects of foreign objects on the narrator's mind are

reproduced in that of the reader. In brief, the narrator

 

 

 

 

 

 

. _l"_

154

experiences the foreign land, and the reader learns about
it by "experiencing" the narrator.

In his last two books, Thackeray had developed his
early notions into highly sophisticated and effective art,
capable of rendering complex insights through a variety of
techniques, of transforming the raw data of travel into
meaning and significance. Although this art emphasizes
the narrator and proceeds in the personal mode of travel

writing, it is heterogenous art. Elements of the picturesque

 

and romantic modes appear in the works, for Thackeray was
pragmatic and flexible, never doctrinaire, and would write

according to the perceived needs of the separate work.

 

 

 

 

 

 

FOOTNOTES -- CHAPTER I I I

1A list of Thackeray's reviews of travel books
follows: In The London‘Times: "City of the Czar," August
30, 1838; "City of the Czar," September 7, 1838; "Lord
Lindsay's Travels in Egypt and the Holy Land," September
25, 1838; "Elliott's Travels in Austria, Russia and Turkey,"
October 2, 1838; "Elliott's Travels in Austria, Russia and
Turkey," October 4, 1838; "How to Observe," October 9,
1838; and "Fraser's Winter Journey to PerSia," November
16, 1838.

 

In The Morning_Chronic£g: "Ireland," March 16,
1844; "Egypt Under Mehemet Ali," March 27, 1845; "Carus's
Travels in England," March 16, 1846; "Travels in the
Punjab," April 6, 1846.

 

In The Foreign Quarterly Review: "The Rhine,"
April 1842;’“Extracts from the Travelling Journal of a
German Naturalist," July, 1842; "Excursions on the Shores
of the Rhine," October, 1842; "Angleterre," July, 1844;
“New Accounts of Paris," January, 1844.

In Fraser's Magazine: "Grant in Paris," December,

 

1843.

 

2Ray, Adversity, p. 322.

 

3nEgypt Under Mehemet Alik" in Thackeray's Contri-
butions to the Morning Chronicle, ed. by Gordon N. Ray
(Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1955), p. 65.

4"Lord Lindsay's Travels in Egypt and the Holy
Land," London Times, September 25, 1838, p. 2.

5

 

"Lord Lindsay's Travels,‘ p. 2.

6"The Rhine," Foreigngguarterly'Review, 29 (April,
1842), p. 80. The precise term Thackeray uses is
"robberies."

7"Lord Lindsay's Travels," p. 2.

155

 

 

 

 

 

8"Carus's Travels in England," in Thackeray's
Contributions, p. 107.

9"Fraser's Winter Journey to Persia," London
Times, November 16, 1838, p. 3; "The Rhine," p. 86; and
"Extracts from the Travelling Journal of a German
Naturalist," Foreign Quarterly_Review, 29 (July, 1842),
p. 205.

 

10 . . . .. ..... ,.
I
butions, p. 120.

11"Extracts from the Travelling Journal of a
German Naturalist," p. 211.

 

lzggttgrs, I, p. 328. Subsequent references will
be identified within the text.

13The publication history of previously printed
articles of The Paris Sketch Book follows; taken from
Harold Strong Gulliver, ThackerayLS‘Literary'Apprentice~
ship (Valdosta: Southern Stationery, 1934), pp. 107-108.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Article Original JOurnal Date
The Devil's Wager* National Standard Aug. 1833
Four Imitations of

Beranger Fraser's Magazine May 1834
The Story of Mary Ancel The New‘MOnthlnyagazine Oct. 1838
The Painter's Bargain Fraser's Magazine Oct. 1838
Caricatures and Litho- London and westminster

graphy in Paris Review Apr. 1839
An Invasion of France The Corsair Aug. 1839
Madame Sand and the 8

New Apocalypse The Corsair Sept. 1839
The Fetes of July The Corsair‘ Oct. 1839
Cartouche** Fraser's Magazine Oct. 1839
Little Poinsinet Fraser' 3 Magazine Oct. 1839
On the French School '

of Painting Fraser's Maggzine Dec. 1839

*In a different form than that of The Paris Sketch Book
**Also published in The Corsair

l4Works, XVII, p. 117. All other references to The

 

*-

Paris Sketch Book will be identified within the text.
15

 

This has been done more by omission than commis-

Sion. Ray and Dodds, for example, do not deny it as a
travel book, but do not group it among his travel writings.
Saintsbury calls it a "miscellany.' All feel, however,
that the work attempts to give a View of foreign life, but
do not label it a travel Work. This might simply be a
matter of terminology and definition. The quote following
is from Dodds, p. 47.

 

 

 

 

 

A or __..

157

16Ray, Adversity, p. 253.

17Letters, III, pp. 511-512; and Perry Miller,
"Afterword," The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent. (New
York: New American Library, 1961), p. 373. Irving's
Sketch Book was very popular and had many imitators; thus
it is difficulty to determine whether Thackeray's indebted-
ness was first— or second-hand;

 

18See Ray, Adversity, p. 245; John Dodds, Thackeray:
A Critical Portrait (New York: Russell & Russell, 1963),

p. 50.

 

 

19Dodds, Thackeray, p. 47.

 

20George Saintsbury, A Consideration of Thackeray
(London: Humphrey Milford, 1931), pp. 37-41.

21

 

 

Saintsbury, p. 80.

22Ray, Adversity, p. 310; and Saintsbury, p. 83.
Ray's discussion of the narrator in Thackeray's travel books
is very enlightening, and I am indebted to it.

23Works, XX, 189. All other references to The Irish
Sketch Book will be identified within the text.

24

 

 

 

Saintsbury, p. 84.
25John Loofbourow, Thackeray and the Form of Fiction
(Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1964), pp. 78-79.w

26Tristram Shandy, ed. by James A. Work (New York:
The Odyssey Press, 1940), pp. 10—11.

27See Northrop Frye, "Towards Defining an Age of
Sensibility," ELH, 23 (1956), pp. 144-152.

28

 

 

 

Dodds, p. 65.

29Ray, Adversity, pp. 315—316.

 

30Works, XXI, pp. 488-489. The subsequent references
to Cornhill to Cairo will be identified within the text.

31

 

 

Ray, Adversity, p. 316.

 

32Pritchett, p. 823

33See Joseph E. Baker, "Thackeray's Recantation,"
PMLA, 77 (1962), pp. 586—594. Baker points out the
cruelties inflicted on Woolcomb in Philip in this article.

34

Ray, Adversity, p. 352.

 

   

 

 

CHAPTER IV

VANITY FAIR AS A MOVEABLE FEAST

 

If the travel writings show Thackeray as a literary

apprentice, his novels represent him as a literary master,

 

and accordingly hold the greatest interest for the critic
and scholar. The two writing phases overlap-—during the
Levant voyage of 1845, he was working on both his first

full length novel, BarryLyndon, and his last travel narra—

 

tive, Cornhill to Cairo. This act of simultaneous composi—

 

tion is significant, for despite the marked qualitative
difference between the travel works and novels, both share
the same insights, opinions, and interest in foreign lands

and travel. Those two subjects had become part of Thackeray's

 

blood and artistic personality; his thoughts on them could
be rendered in the empirical mold of travel writing, or the
fictive mold of the novel.

The previous chapter concentrated on the empirical
efforts; this examines the other sidecof the coin. Although
travel sequences occur in all seven novels, I do not intend
to treat all of them in great detail, for that would involve
considerable repetition and sharply diminishing returns.

Instead, I will embark on an extended discussion of one—a

158

 

159

Vanity Fair-~that deserves lengthy treatment because of its

 

paramount significance in the Thackeray canon, and its
thick, rich substratum of travel material. Chapter V will

breifly treat the others. "Vanity Fair is a fully repre-

 

 

sentative novel, and a discussion of it will touch on all

the major issues relating to travel and foreign lands.

 

Without entirely losing his insular notions, he had
become more cosmopolitan than his rivals; he knew
France as intimately as England, had lived many
months in Germany, had thoroughly explored Ireland
and the Near East. If great fiction needs to be
based on wide knowledge of mankind, he was equipped
to produce it.1

Lionel Stevenson's assessment of Thackeray on the eve of

producing Vanity Fair is an accurate one. My first chapter

 

details much of that experience--a part of the author's

life that he drew on easily and copiously in his great
novel. Indeed, the travel motif is adumbrated in his
"Before the Curtain" tableau, where the Manager of the
Performance introduces his traveling road shew; it is picked
up in the novel's very first sentence, when “a large family
coach, with two fat horses in blazing harness, driven by a
fat coachman in a three-cornered hat and wig, at the rate
of four miles an hour" steps before a Chiswick Mall academy
in June, 1813.2

A better place to start discussion of this motif

might be Thackeray's own beginnings. Born in Calcutta,

 

 

 

160

India, he was an imperial child, and it therefore should

not surprise us that Vanity Fair is, in many ways, an

 

"imperial" novel. The great literary era of Empire is
usually considered the late Victorian period-—the time of
Kipling, Conrad, and Stevenson—~extending possibly to the
early twentieth century, to E. M. Forster and others. But
Thackeray's work, with its scenes in India and host of
colonial figures, shows a real awareness of the British
imperial system.

The novel does not seriously attempt to analyze or
evaluate that system, but rather to present the people who
run it, and to show how their lives are interwoven with the
vast web of English society. The two major branches of
colonial rule-—the merchantile/administrative and the
military—-are represented by wanderers through the Fair.
In the first group, the prime figures are Joseph.Sedley
("in the East India Company's Civil Service . . . as
collector of Boggley Wollah" (I, 27)) and Colonel Rawdon
Crawley, who becomes governor of Coventry Island through
the machinations of Becky and Lord Steyne. The military is
depicted in William Dobbin and other figures of the
redoubtable~“::th Regiment," all of whom served in the
garrisons of India and the West Indies. But while Jos,
Rawdon and Dobbin are all major characters, the book
supports them with several minor people and details that
broaden the base of the imperial motif. Miss Swartz, the

wealthy West Indian heiress; the Lady Emily Southdown, of

 

 

 

 

161

Cape Horn and sundry places; and the Reverend Silas Horn-
blower "who was tattoed in the South Sea Islands“ (II, 156)
appear for brief minutes on the Vanity Fair stage, but
help flavor the entire novel.

There seem to be two reasons for the book's

beguilement with colonial Britons. The first is simple

 

historical fact--England was a farflung Empire in the
1840's, and any writer attempting a panoramic view of its
society would certainly touch on its overseas satellites.

The second reason is bound up withivanity'Fairfs theme.

 

Thackeray wants to show the Fair as a moveable feast, as
a condition of mankind not confined by geography or climate,

but borne everywhere that two or more are gathered in

 

society's name. In the garrison of the'y_th.Regiment in
India, Glorvina O'Dowd and Dobbin "were each exemplifying
the Vanity of this life, and each longing for what he or she
could not get" (II, 330)—-the same folly and futility that
is common coin in the great society of London. Further,
England's hold on her Empire illustrates Vanity on a vast,
national scale--a rich and powerful nation filled with
unhappy people and beseiged with problems wealth cannot
solve.

The characters who populate this imperial nation in
this imperial novel are, not surprisingly, very travel
conscious, freely moving from place to place, from country

to country. Besides the colonials, there are travelers

 

for pleasure, people of foreign descent who live in England,

 

 

 

 

 

162

and with Lord Steyne and his circle, something like a
nineteenth century jet set. All this movement is, of
course, Vanity in another of its innumerable guises-~doomed
attempts to find happiness in this world through changes
of scenery.

No character (with the possible exception of
Steyne) is more widely traveled, more restless than that
elusive and bright butterfly, Becky Sharp. From birth

she "was of a wild, roving nature, inherited from father

 

and mother, who were both Bohemians" (III, 310nl); her
upbringing stamped her as Anglo-French, and separated her
from the British cultural mainstream. She remains in
almost constant motion throughout the novel, and is
labelled a "wanderer" and a "vagabond" (III, 298, 300).
Lord Steyne, likewise, roams abroad in his dour and
relentless search of pleasure, at one point exiling himself

from England to live in Naples. And besides these two

 

heavy, or perhaps even compulsive travelers, there are many

other characters in Vanity Fair who visit foreign lands

 

for extended periods. Pitt Crawley had served for ten
years as Attache to the Legation at Pumpernickel; old Miss

Crawley "had been in France . . . and loved, ever after,

 

French novels, French cookery, and French.wines" (I, 136);
old Osborne visits Belgium to see hissson's tomb; even the
colonials——Dobbin and Jos-—take pleasure tours on the
Continent. Also Amelia, despite her extreme devotion to

home and child, despite her utter domesticity, manages to

   

 

 

 

163

make two trips to the Continent. With her as a traveler,
every major3 figure in the novel leaves England for an
extended period-~and the book takes on an "international"
cast as well as an "imperial" one.

Vanity Fair is international not only in incident
and character, but in theme also. Years before James,
Thackeray uses his novel to develop an elaborate contrast
between two societies and ways of life (England vs. the
Continent in his case), utilizing geographical place to
determine characters' actions and to symbolize larger value
systems and approaches to life. This "international theme"
is closely integrated with the novel's overall thematic
and structural patterns; thus, the framework those patterns
provide Thackeray's theme should be mentioned.

Although Vanity Fair's structure is certainly loose,
it does exist--it might be a loose, baggy monster, but it
has some bones. As has been widely noted, its arrangement
is dialectical, relying on an extensive series of parallels
and contrasts between Becky Sharp and Amelia Sedley. The
novel begins as these two young women first face the world,
and its two strands are their careers in life. Becky
starts her life as a governess, marries a young Army
officer, has a son, and rapidly rises in the world until a
Sudden collapse; Amelia starts high on the social scale,
marries a young Army officer, has a son, and sinks into
Poverty until being rescued by Dobbin. Throughout, the

two lives comment on each other, and reinforce each other;

 

 

 

 

164

twice they converge after Becky leaves the Sedley house in
the book's early chapters-~and both meetings are on foreign
soil. The first meeting is before and during the Waterloo
campaign of 1815, the great bulk occurring in Belgium,
although the women do meet in Brighton beforehand. Their
second rendevous is also on the Continent, when a tattered
but ever buoyant Becky meets Amelia in Pumpernickel in
the summer of 1829. Thus, the two encounters are very
important to the overall structure of the novel, merging
as they do the two central story lines and focusing on
them with clear and undivided attention.

The double-stranded narrative structure is echoed

in the novel's thematic organization. Becky and Amelia

 

(along with their respective circles) come to represent two
styles of life, two approaches to happiness and human ful—
fillment. Their philosophies are in basic opposition, and
just as incident contrasts with incident in the narrative,
so value opposes value in the thematic framework. I
believe the two life styles might be labelled, with some
qualification, Apollonian and Dionysian, or, the world of
order and the world of energy.

The terms come from Friedrich Nietzsche's discus-

sion of Greek drama in "The Birth of Tragedy"; they were

 

adopted, with some changes, by theanthropologist Ruth
Benedict in her Patterns of Culture. Because Benedict has

so skillfully applied the concepts to life style and cule

 

ture (the areas I am concerned with),the terms will be

 

 

 

 

165
treated from her viewpoint. She says of the Apollonian
value system:

He 'knows but one law, measure in the Hellenic
sense.‘ He keeps the middle of the road, stays
within the known map, does not meddle with dis—
ruptive psychological states. In Nietzsche's fine

phrase, even in the exalatation of the dance he
'remains what he is, and retains his civic name.'4

As an example of Apollonian culture, Benedict cites the

Zuni Indians of New Mexico, a Pueblo tribe whose lifeways

are characterized by order, lack of emotional excess,

restraint. "In the pueblos . . . there is no courting of

excess in any form, no tolerance of violence, no indulgence
in the exercise of authority . . ."5 Virtually all
channels to vent hostility and aggression are closed, and
a premium is placed on stable, balanced human relationships.
Opposed to this is the Dionysian figure, who seeks value;
through 'the annihilation of the ordinary bounds
and limits of existence'; he seeks to attain his
most valued moments in escape from the boundaries

imposed upon him by his five senses, to break
through into another order of experience .

Some cultures structured around such.goals are those of the
plains Indians of the United States, the Dobu tribesman

of Melanesia, the Kwakiutl tribe of the Northwest Coast

 

Indians. In these cases, aggression, self-exaltation, and

intense, bitter competition are ways of lifen-violence is
commonplace and the emotions are continually stimulated to
frenzy.

Benedict applied Nietzsche's terminology to certain

"Primitive" or pre-technological cultures. I will not use

 

 

 

166

it in precisely the way she does, so that the terms, when
designating nineteenth century Europeans, are meant to be
broadly suggestive rather than rigidly definitive.

This division, which proves to be so important to
Vanity Fair, is not a product of Thackeray's reading.

While his classical education gave him a firm knowledge of
Greek and Roman mythology, and while his books are laden
with classical allusions, he did not employ the Apollonian/
Dionysian distinction in his writing in a consciously
literary way. Instead, he developed the pairing through
his experiences and his world view.

For the realm of experience, foreign travel was
crucial. In Chapter III, I discussed Thackeray's responses
to France, Ireland, and the Levant, and those reactions?-
although considerable in range and variety-«generally fell
into a rough pattern. Thackeray saw foreign lands as open
and flexible, as energetic, as artistic--as a riot of color,
in brief, which is the Dionysian configuration. Further,
this travel experience gave him a perSpective on England,
and in the travel works we find repeated references to the
cautious, safe, and pragmatic British way of life, which
seems to follow the Apollonian model. These attitudes would
seem to date back to the early travels: to Thackeray's
happy times at Weimar, to his apprenticeship to painting in
Paris, to his pleasant days as a young married man in the
French capital. But if these ideas took root early, they

were also sustained for a long time, shaping his attitudes

 

 

 

 

 

167

toward foreign cultures through the productive decades of
his artistic career. To be sure, many of those separate
insights were hardly unique to Thackeray: the notion that
sinning is something that one does while abroad seems to

be shared by a majority of his contemporaries. But the
broad sweep of his views on foreign lands, and the ubiquity
of his Apollonian/Dionysian division, bears the personal
stamp.of his individual travel experiences.

They also bear the stamp of habitual patterns of
thought. Brought up in a strict religious household,
Thackeray was exposed at an early age to a world view which
placed the flesh against the spirit, pleasure against
piety, freedom against restraint. V. S. Pritchett believes
that Thackeray could never completely free himself from
this orthodox training,7 and those dualities learned at
his mother's knee certainly did inform his creative work,
even to his last novel at age fifty. The tendency to see
the world split into divided camps also carried through to
maturity. Therefore, it is not surprising that Thackeray,
with his training at home and experiences abroad, should
hit upon the opposition of energy to order, and should have
this contrast shape the artistic and thematic patterfisoéf
his great novel.

In Vanity Fair, the values that Amelia strives for,

 

and to some extent, represents, are the Apollonian ones of
complicance and order.8 Rejecting the “destructive opera!

tion of the standards of Vanity Fair," she chooses the

 

 

 

168

"life of personal relations, the loyalty and selflessness
inspired by home affections."9 The center of this life is
the home, a sanctuary that is sustained by loving relation-

ships between husband and wife, parent and child. Thus

 

Amelia worships George long after his death, and worships
her son from birth. These relationships, furthermore, are
characterized by gentleness, selfesacrifice, andnuin the
extreme-—the annihilation of the individual to serve the

family. Thus Amelia spurns, for a long time, the comfort

 

a marriage with Dobbin would provide, prefering to live in
poverty and maintain her "union" with George. The love
Amelia feels for others, including her two husbands, is
agape rather-than eros: attachment laden with gentility,
religious sanctions and affection rather than deep passion;
a wounded Dobbin can speak of her "little feeble remnant

of love."

Dobbin is an excellent counterpart for Amelia, for

 

he also shuns worldly prizes for personal relationships.
Thackeray hails him as a gentleman, one of the few

men whose aims are generous, whose truth is
constant, and not only constant in kind, but
elevated in its degree; whose want of meanness
makes them simple; who can look.the world
honestly in the face with an equal manly
sympathy for the great and the small

(IV, 259) '

 

As with Amelia, fame, power, wealth, and honors lie outside
his desires, for those baubles must be pursued aggressively
and strenuously, and must be sought with traits different

from gentleness and self~sacrifice. So the life of Dobbin

   

 

 

169

and Amelia is basically, stable, sober, responsible-sand,
as some would see it, dreadfully dull and unimaginative.

The Dionysian world of vanity'Fair is incarnated

 

in Becky Sharp; its values are those of energy and self!
assertion. Benedict says of the Dobuans: “They are law-
less and treacherous. Every man's hand is against eVery

10 This is the moral universe Becky finds

other man."
herself in, so in the battle for worldly gains (and mili«

tary imagery suffuses the novel), deception and trickery

 

 

are virtues, gentleness and selfnsacrifice, vices. She

 

moves up the social ladder by playing with human affections,
by virtually robbing Jos Sedley in Brussels in their horse
trade, by literally robbing Raggles and Briggs. Power and
domination over others is sought just as actively as fame
and wealthe-power that can lead to violence.and to
exhileration. When Rawdon attacks Lord Steyne after finds
ing Becky and him together, his wife responds thus: “She
stood there trembling before him. She admired her husband,
strong, brave and victorious" (III, 113). For a brief
moment the veneer of civilized manners has slipped off the
Becky—world: the law of the jungle asserts itself and she
stands in approval. It is a most revealing event.

If Dobbin is the Apollonian male, then Lord Steyne
is certainly the Dionysian one—~a dark, menacing figure of
ruthless drives. He has an overweehing will to power and
pleasure, and those ends he attains by manipulating some

figures (like Wenham) and crushing others (like his wife).

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

170

When this will is balked, Dionysian emotional frenzy, even
violence, can result. Confronted with the angered Rawdon
in their great scene, "Steyne rose up, grinding his teeth,
pale, and with fury in his looks" (III, 112); in Rome,
Fiche tells Becky that Steyne's “rage redoubled . . . he
was like a madman last night when he came home" (III,
304—5), and then passes on a thinlyedisguised threat to her
person. Indeed, because of his son's insanity, Steyne
fears going mad. All in all, Thackeray's "Wicked Nobleman"
represents worldliness, surrounded by its trappings of
great wealth (conspicuously consumed) and influence, and
living by its standards of aggression and cynicism.

The Dionysian world appears to be a harsh arena of
continual battle, but it nevertheless holds definite attrac—
tions. Becky Sharp is certainly one of them, for she
possesses both social charm and artistic grace. Chapter
LI, which details the Charade at Lord Steyne's apartments,
is a good testimonial for the life of wealth and glamor,
lingering with fascination on the "splendid room," "cool
dainties," "grand exclusive table" and "gold plate."
Perhaps society is so combative because those baubles are
so alluring.

Amelia and Dobbin against Becky and Steyne, love
against the world, the Apollonian against the Dionysian--
this tension runs throughout the novel. It is this same
division that informs Thackeray's travel sequences in

Vanity Fair, segments which establish an elaborate contrast

 

 

 

171

between an Apollonian England and a Dionysian Continent.
The travel sequences are purposeful; on one hand:
Thackeray meant us to see that Vanity Fair does
not stop at the Channel, that "the Performance“ which
he views . . . with.such mingled emotions takes place
on a much vaster stage than we might suppose if we
took his book as a specifically Englishstory.ll
On another, he wishes to show that master-passion, vanity,
operate on a grand scale——in terms of whole nations and
peoples-~and trips to other countries allow him to develop
this idea. Finally, travel gives him the opportunity to
contrast different cultures, and, in analyzing them, to
take important thematic statements.

A good place to begin a discussion of this English/

Continental antithesis would be with a passage late in

 

Vanity Fair. When Dobbin returns to England after his
long tour of duty in India, the author muses about his
character's ride from Southampton to London:

how happy and green the country looked as the

chaise whirled rapidly from mileastone to miles

stone, through neat country towns where landlords

came out to welcome him with smiles and bows; by i
pretty roadside inns . . . by old halls and parks; '
rustic hamlets clustered round ancient grey

churches-~and through the charming friendly

English landscape. Is there any in the world

like it? To a traveller returning home it looks

so kind-~it seems to shake hands with you as you

pass through it. (III, 188)

Here, in this frankly flattering portrait, we see a measured

 

and orderly world, as well as a very charming one. Every-
thing is neat, regulated, molded for human use-“and in the

background we see the proprietary figure of the landlord.

 

 

 

172

At one point in Vanity Fair, Thackeray refers to

 

Britain as a "nation of shopkeepers" (II, 51), and.while
that familiar expression is used ironically, it still
indicates a central perception of his vision of England.
Many key figures are drawn from important merchantile
families--the Osbornes, the Sedleys, the Dobbins«~wh03e
business in life is business. The older generations in
those families, good early nineteenth century Forsytes,
have assiduously compiled wealth through caution, hard
business sense, and no flights of fancy. In their circle,
Mr. Frederick Bullock, suitor to Maria Osborne, is a
paragon: "a man of the world, and a junior partner of a
wealthy firm [who] knew what money was, and the.value of
it" (I, 341); and old Mr. Sedley, who lets a fortune slip
through his fingers, is an almost unspeakable disaster. As
a class, these sober and industrious Britons are the back!
bone of their nation, the managers and merchants that obey
the laws and work for expansion of the Gross National
Product.

The somber work ethic of these people and their
austere private lives are shaped in part by religious atti—
tudes. Or, perhaps, their lives shape the religious attis
tudes, for the worship of the Southdowns, the Bute Crawleys,
Sir. Pitt Jr. seems cold, stiffa-a business relationship
between God and man. This is a religion propagated by

stultifying tracts like The Washerwoman of Finchley Common,

 

A_Voice from the Flames, and FreshpotsyBroken; or the

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

173

Converted Cannibal;12 it is used by Pitt and Lady Southdown

 

to manipulate others and advance themselveSHHto justify

man's ways to men. Finally, its heavy emphasis on sin and

damnation functions, more than anything else, to keep

people obedient and in line.

Of course, in this business—oriented world, order

and "good sense" must prevail-~people must be allowed to
pursue and accumulate wealth without being diverted with

dangers like romantic love, idealistic values, sexual

immorality, or violence. Society is constructed to deflect

or channel those subversive activities so that they do not

threaten it; or, in the case of a hard-core sinner, to

purge him from its midst and send him abroad. Thus Becky,

after being caught with Steyne by Rawdon, flees to the
Continent for long years, stopping first "upon the French
coast at Boulogne, that refuge of so much exiled English
innocence" (III, 288); Rawdon, who fought one duel in his
youth and threatened another with the Marquis, leaves
England for Coventry Island. With the old Pitt Crawley,
society reSponds in a different way: after he openly

flaunts accepted norms by bedecking his butler's daughter

in ribbons, the baronet is isolated by the local community,

and then seemingly "struck down" by God for his iniquity.
Those who do not leave or die are generally forced

to carry out their aggression by civilized means. Sir Pitt

!' Si

lawsuits, Osborne's hard business dealings, Becky's.triumphs

over drawing room foes are all examples of muted warfare.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

174

Even Rawdon, desperate for a duel with Lord Steyne after

their great confrontation, is sidentracked from his objec—

 

tive, and what might have been a bloodletting becomes a
mock humorous quibble between himself, Captain Macmurdo,

and the lawyer Wenham. Further, homage must continually

 

be paid to strict virtue--Becky must have a "sheep dog"
and even Lord Steyne must make circumspect bows to
morality.

So far I have discussed the marketplace as a locus

of English life in Vanity‘Faire—but the hearth.deserves

 

 

great prominence also. Curiously, Thackeray very seldom
shows his major figures at work or business, preferring
to depict them in their domestic lives. Some characters,
indeed, devote virtually their entire lives to the home,
with minimal outside interests--with.Amelia, Mrs. Sedley,
and Lady Jane Sheepshanks chief among them. But deSpite

this massive invesment of energy and emotion, family life

 

is not often happy, and people are continually frustrated
with their children and spouses.13 As Tom Eaves cynically
notes: "'the fathers and elder sons of all great families

hate each other. The Crown Prince is always in opposition

to the crown or hankering after it" (III, 7).

 

The English world portrayed in Vanity Fair is

 

strongly middle class (as Thackeray was himself, after all)
and displays typically bourgeoisie virtues and shortcomings:
it is hard-working, orderly, law-abiding, concerned with

morality, religion and the home, and on the negative side,

   

 

 

175

smug, insensitive, unimaginative, dull, selfish, obsessed
with money. Basically, it is an Apollonian culture where

tensions have been smoothed or muzzled, where extremes

 

are avoided, where people follow their designs with a

minimum of excitement or disturbance. It is sane and

 

lackluster then, although there are the spectacular
exceptions of Becky from the lower classes and Lord Steyne
from the aristocracy.

Continental society serves as foil to the British

 

community, providing, through contrast, a sharper under—
standing of the workings and values of English life.
Thackeray has chosen to reveal Continental living primarily
by indirection--by the way it influences the actions of
visiting Britons, rather than the way it governs its
native people. And in the book's two major travel sequences—-
the Waterloo Campaign of Chapters XXVIII to XXXII, the
Pumpernickel journey of Chapters LXII through LXVI—-the
conduct of visiting English changes markedly when they set
foot across the Channel.
In Belgium before Waterloo, there is a sudden
transformation in British manners, a kind of "sea~change."
The upper classes
flung off that happy frigidity and insolence of
demeanor which occasionally characterises the
great at home, and appearing in numberless public
places, condescended to mingle with the rest of
the company whom they met there. (II, 65)

Old restrictions are cast aside, pent up energies released

on the Continent. The atmosphere of Brussels encourages

this, being

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

176

one of the gayest and most brilliamzlittle

capitals in Europe, and where all the Vanity

Fair booths were laid out with the most

tempting liveliness and splendor. Gambling

was here in profusion, and dancing in plenty

. . . beautiful rides, all enlivened with

martial splendour; a rare old city, with

strange costumes and wonderful architecture

. . . (II, 64)
In this festival atmosphere, the English visitors conduct
themselves boldly, even recklessly. Becky defies public
opinion by lodging in apartments with her husband and
General Tufto, and openly flirts with the General; Jos
Sedley marches into the Low Countries in colorful military
garb; George Osborne neglects his bride of six weeks to
pursue Becky; Peggy O'Dowd has a turban and a bird of
paradise on display. The whole Brussels experience is
summed up by the great ball on the night before the battle
of Waterloo-~frantic drinking, dancing, gambling conducted
under the looming shadows of death.

In the case of Amelia, a trip to the Continent-~to

Germany and Pumpernickel-—brings her liberation and growth.
John K. Mathison argues that many of her early shortcomings
"are the defects of English middle—class society? and that
the German visit broadens her intellectual and emotional
horizons, although, in the end, she cannot overcome the
narrowness of her upbringing.l4 Certainly the gray
bourgeosie world of English restricted Amelia to a narrow
perimeter, so that she had "not fallen in the way of means

to educate her tastes or her intelligence. She has been

dominated over hitherto by Vulgar intellects" (III, 251).

 

 

 

 

 

 

177

Amelia's awakening begins on the cruise down the
Rhine, where she takes up sketching scenery. Then, in the
small German towns along the way, she visits the opera
houses, and hears the "wonders of Mozart and Cimarosa" so
that "a new world of love and beauty broke upon her when
she was introduced to those divine compositions (III, 257—8).
The music lead Amelia to Dionysian levels of awareness: "The
tender parts of "Don Juan" awakened in her raptures so
exquisite that she would ask herself . . . whether it was
not wicked to feel so much delight . . ." (III, 258). The
glorious Rhine seenery and the works of human art scattered
along its banks thus conspire to make Amelis aware of new
dimensions of reality and of herself.

But theDionysian release of energy can take several
channels, not all of them as attractive as the gay Brussels,
the pleasant Pumpernickel, or the artistic flowering of
the Rhineland. For example, the easy morality of the
Belgian capital allows for flagrant dishonesty. The charac-
ters lie, cheat, exploit and bully each other in a bold,
open air style, rejecting the English pattern of sub rosa
manipulation. In this, the host peOple are full equals to
their visitors: Isidor, Jos's servant, shamelessly schemes
for his master's fortune; Regulus, the Belgian hussar, lies

vabout the battle of Waterloo. Among the English, Becky
beguiles and then overcharges Jos Sedley on the horses he
wants to leave the city; Jos himself deserts his sister.

Significantly, in the catch as catch can atmosphere of the

 

 

 

 

178

Continent in warfare, Becky has found the perfect medium
for her energies and skills, and makes a tidy sum of money.
(Conversely, the Apollonian female Amelia becomes totally
ineffectual——Dobbin at one point viewing her "as a parent

regards an infant in pain" (II, 102).)

 

Becky, of course, returns to the Continent after
her disgrace, at first clinging to respectability, then
becoming "a perfect Bohemian ere long, herding with people
whom it would make your hair stand on end to meet" (III,

298). The Roman segment of Becky's wanderings serves as

 

 

a good vantage point to observe the uglier side of Conti—
nental life, as it sets into relief a sordid netherworld of
vice and crime. It is peopled by outcasts and exiles, by
"shabby bullies, penniless bucks" and by "French widows,
dubious Italian countesses" (III, 299, 301) who have been_
expelled from their countries and prowl about Europe as
"marauding irregulars." These peOple gamble, drink,
swindle, rob, and conduct themselves with much more sexual
freedom that Britain would allow. In one instance, Lord
Steyne, that wealthy self-exile, openly consorts with the
Countess of Belladonna (whose husband is away in Morocco).
Those more liberal attitudes strike at the very heart of
British culture--they allow free rein for passion, they
remove sex from its sanctified position in the home-~but
they reach even into respectable society:

Love and liberty are interpreted by those simple

Germans in a way which honest folks in Yorkshire

and Somersetshire little understand, and a lady
might, in some philosophic and civilized towns,

 

 

 

 

be divorced ever so many times from her respective

husbands and keep her character in society. (III,

347)
Significantly, the Roman sojourn ends with a threat of
physical violence, as Fiche warns Becky that the city is
not healthy for her. Moving in the circles she does,
accompanied by brutal ruffians like Major Loder, this
threat has some credence for Becky, and she avoids Steyne
in the future. If the rule of law is not complete in
England, it at least offers a modicum of protection from
such threats; in Rome, Becky is defenseless and knows it.

Ultimately, Dionysian excess and self—exaltation

can lead to physical assaults on others, the celebrated

self disdaining the restrictions placed upon him and strik-

ing out against them. In Vanity Fair, there are two deaths

 

by violent means, and both of them take place on the Conti—
nent. The first is George Osborne's demise on the fields
of Waterloo, amidst a bloody military engagement. The
second is the murder of Jos Sedley by Becky Sharp at
Aix-la-Chappelle fifteen years later, and while Thackeray
avoids explicit statement that foul play was committed, he
implies as much by picturing Becky as Clytemnestra.
Thackeray clearly has mixed feelings about the
Apollonian life of England and the Dionysian life of the
Continent, and in some ways sees the two cultures as divided
within themselves into opposing camps—-foursquare virtue
versus Philistinism in England, beauty versus brutality

on the Continent. More accurately, however, he sees the

 

 

}

 

 

 

 

 

 

180

virtues of the cultures very difficult to disentangle com-
pletely from their vices. In the case of England, her
people's upright and moral lives are partly a product of
their dullness; for the Continent, freedom permits the
beauties of the Rhenish opera houses and the butchery of
Waterloo. All is vanity, he repeatedly tells us, and the
hope that one can isolate the good from the bad is a
chimera.

Further, while the contrasts between England and the
Continent are sharp, the two should not be considered exact
opposites. There is considerable congress between the two
cultures, and some of the differences would seem to be in
degree rather than in kind. For example, Rawdon Crawley
violently attacks Lord Steyne in dull and Apollonian
England, and then threatens to duel him. Physical assaults
tend to be products of the Continent, so Rawdon's action
tends to be an exception to the rule; still, English
restraint asserts itself, so that the duel is forestalled,
instead of ending in death. Indeed, the relative stability
and order of British life, as Thackeray envisions it, could
be explained in part by the turbulent Continent: Britons
who are unhappy, uncomfortable or unwanted in their own
country can cross the Channel and inflict themselves on
the residents there. On one hand, we might call this a
European form of Turner's American Frontier Thesis; on
another, it appears that a symbiotic relationship exists

between the dissimilar cultures.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

__ _ __ ,1 “__*MW
18$

Developed out of his insights into foreign lands and
beliefs about life, Thackeray's Apollonian and Dionysian
systems give him the chance to organize human experience on
a broad and cultural level, and to show the different forms
that experience takes. They enable him to work the travels
and visits to foreign lands into a purposeful artistic
pattern. Finally, they help to forward his great theme,
for whatever the culture-~and there are definite differ-
ences between them,-—the end result is frustration and

unhappiness. In Vanity Fair, there can be little brooding

 

over the road not taken, even though Thackeray is constantly
presenting the reader and characters with choices, because

all paths lead to the same deadend.

 

II

So far this discussion has been restricted to the

thematic aspects of foreign lands in vanitY'Fair. Now I

 

will turn to the novelss relationship with the travel litera-
ture that preceeded it, regarding with special interest the
narrative techniques and the character of the narrator in
both. Vanity Fair followed an apprenticeship period over

a decade long, a phase in which journalism, short stories,

sketches, and comic pieces competed for the artist's atten—

 

tion and energies with travel writing. But while travel
literature's influence is mingled with that of many others,

it has still pressed its own mark on the completed novel.

 

 

 

 

 

 

182

In defining the character of the narrator, a key
passage occurs late in the novel, where, after describing
Amelia and Dobbin's progress down the Rhineland, the narra—

tor interjects:

It was on this very tour that I, the present writer
of a history of which every word is true, had the
pleasure to see them first and ti make their
acquaintance. (III, 260)

The narrator goes on to describe his first sight of Dobbin
and the traveling party at the Erbprinz Hotel in Pumper—
nickel; the evening at the Court theater where he, as one
of "the young fellows in the stalls" (III, 262), watches
Dobbin and Amelia; and, after the entertainment, how they
greet the party and chat with Jos Sedley. If this entrance
into the novel seems a break with the puppet-master—-that
self-conscious and intrusive narrator who admits he is
writing a nove1--one must agree that it is, and acknowledge
that the narrator isn't completely consistent in his stance
toward the narrative. Still, the role of traveler has

been well prepared for him by several passages spaced
throughout Vanity Fair; he says at various times: "I have
heard a brother of the story-telling trade, at Naples . . ."
(I, 116); "At the little Paris theaters, on the other hand,
you will not only hear . . ." (I, 116); "I recollect see-
ing, years ago, at the prisons for idiots and madmen at
Bicetre, near Paris . . ." (III, 174). The reader is made
aware, then, that this man has traveled and has a real

knowledge of other nations and cultures; he is cosmopolitan

rather than provincial.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

183

At this point, it is important to recall how
Thackeray used his narrator. He had a stock of narrative
masks he would assume repeatedly (FitzBoodle, Pendennis,
Titmarsh), as long as those masks fit the needs of the
work at hand; if he wanted to assume a different attitude,
Thackeray would create a new figure (like the Fat Contri-
butor) rather than change the character of an old one.
While the Vanity Fair narrator is unnamed, his traveling
habits make him appear akin to Titmarsh; thus, the question
becomes: is the puppet-master a new creation, or does he
have other affinities and points of comparison to Titmarsh?

Thackeray's publishers felt at first that the
Vanity Fair narrator and Titmarsh were one and the same—-

and advertised the book under that familiarnon‘de‘plume.15

 

Subsequently, the book was published under Thackeray's
name (the first to be so printed), but there remains ample
evidence that the puppet-master, stage—manager, man—about-
town of the novel evolved from the narrator of the travel
books.

In all those works, the narrator is intrusive and
self—conscious, frequently calling attention to his presence
and telling the reader that he is writing the book. There
are frequent direct addresses to the audience ("But my kind
reader will please to remember that this history . . ."
(I, 116) is one example), showing a real effort to estab—

lish a personal "I—you" relationship. At times there are

asides referring to the responses that the audience is

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

184

making: in Cornhill to Cairo he mentions "ladies who read"

 

his description of a Turkish bath "will be going into

hysterics" (XXI, 344) and in Vanity Fair talks of the con-

 

temptuous reaction of Jones to one of his sentimental
passages. This give and take is a social affairs-and,

not surprisingly, the narrator of vanity Fair sees himself

 

as a traveling—companion to the readers, whom he calls
"fellow-sojourners" (II, 160):

This, dear friends and companions, is my amiable
object--to walk with you through the Fair, to
examine the shOps and the shoWs there; and that
we should all come home after the flare, and the
noise, and the gaiety, and be perfectly miserable
in private. (I, 280)

 

 

That the narrator should be a delightful Compagnon de voyage

 

is, of course, a constant demand in Thackeray's reviews of
travel books, and is one of the major objectives in his
own travel literature. The "companion" of the novel we

are discussing performs much like the Titmarsh.of Cornhill

 

to Cairo or The Irish Sketch Book: charming the reader

 

 

with gay banter, a wide store of learning and a plentiful
stock of anecdotes, always willing to break from his story
to digress or moralize. Hence the novel's many parentheti-

cal comments about Lady Emily Hornblower and'The'Washerfi

 

woman of Finchley Common, or "irrelevancies" like the

 

little children and Peggy with the penny (I, 34l)—-the
friendly storyteller is having a pleasant chat with his
reader. Strolling casually through the Fair with a comrade,
he should not be expected to apply rigid narrative logic

to his tale.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I I n ,H II

185

There are two other areas of continuity between the

narrator of the novel and the travel books. First, the

 

puppet-master of Vanity_Fair retains the triple role of
character, companion and conduit that was discussed in
Chapter III. He appears in the novel as a character in

the Pumpernickel section; as a companion, in his relation—
ship to the reader; and as a conduit, whose art shapes and
selects the information the reader receives about the Fair.
Secondly, he is essentially the same person, with basically
the same personality, as the writer of the travel books.
Both Titmarsh and the puppet-master are middleaclass figures
with classical educations; they hold no discernible jobs,

and seem to be men—about town who wile away idle hours in

 

club gossip, or in travel; they are religious, conservative,
and, one guesses, older gentlemen. Through the medium of
Thackeray's prose, their characters and sentiments appear

similar. Take this phrase from Cornhill'tO'Cairo: “If I

 

entertain you with accounts of inns and nightcaps it is
because I am.more familiar with these subjects than with
history and fortifications" (XXI, 302). It is loosely echoed

in the sentences from Vanity Fair: "We do not claim to

 

rank among the military novelists. Our place is with.the
non-combatants. When the decks are cleared for action we

go below and wait meekly“ (II, 90). Likewise, the descrip-

 

tion of Vigo's Place of the Constitution-ea “scene .

just like that of a little theatre" (XXI, 27l)-ehas clear

 

186

parallels to the "Before the Curtain" section that Opens

Vanity Fair.

 

But the surest index to the narrators' similarity
is not verbal echoes or parallel passages, but shared
personality traits. The three most prominent characterists

of Titmarsh are also those of the vanity Fair narrator;

 

good humor and wit, generally of the comic/ironic sort;
a tendency to deliver blunt opinions freely and without

fear; a habit of moralizing, of evaluating all before them

 

according to certain standards. There is a difference,
however, in the relative prominence of those traits in the
narrators: Titmarsh is very highly opinionated and plain-
spoken, and less importantly a moralist; the puppet—master,
just the opposite. This can be explained by the works
themselves, though, because the narrator is supposed to
assert his personality in travel literature, according to
Thackeray, and therefore is outspoken. But in the novel,

where a cast of characters share the limelight with the

 

narrator, he can recede from center stage and comment on
them as a reflective moralist. And even if the puppet—

master is not precisely identical to Titmarsh, it is clear

 

that he has been develOped from the earlier figure point
by point.
Just as the character of the narrator carries over

from the travel books to Vanitnyair, so do various literary

 

and narrative techniques. The first of these tactics needs

but the briefest mention here, for it has been discussed

   

 

 

 

187

extensively above--Thackeray's use of cultural comparison
and contrast. By using England to criticize the Continent,
and vice versa, he is able to illuminate and extend his
thematic contrast of the Apollonian to the Dionysian. As

in the earlier books, then, Vanity Fair's travel is pur—

 

poseful--undertaken by the author not to snatch_glimpses
of exotic scenery (although this does enter in), but to
broaden his and the reader's view of the human condition.

Next, Vanity Fair employs the "multiemedia" approach

 

mentioned in Chapter III, using both drawings and prose to
establish its ideas. The two are intertwined: the prose
sector is aware of the drawings, and at one point when
Thackeray says: "And while the moralist, who is holding
forth on the cover (an accurate portrait of your humble
servant) professes to wear neither gown nor bands . . ."
(I, 116), he is alluding to a woodcut that was on the cover
of the original edition.16 And as in the travel books,

the drawings expand the meanings found in the text. The
picture of Becky throwing Johnson's Dictionary at Jemina
Pinkerton i1, 10) reveals the character of the two peOple;
the pencil sketch of Becky as Clytemnestra is a vital indi—
cator that she murdered Jos Sedley, and thus helps explain
an element of the plot left ambiguous in the prose. To be
sure, this "multi—media" approach is not confined to the
novels and travel books, for Thackeray illustrated his

magazine sketches and short stories also. But the novel's

original subtitle, "Pen and Pencil Sketches of English

 

 

 

188

Society,‘ is certainly significant, echoing the titles of
the two sketchbooks, and recalling Thackeray's practice,
in Ireland and the Levant, of traveling through an area,
executing pencil drawings and short prose pieces as he went.
This subtitle was subsequently replaced by the more familiar
"A Novel Without a Hero," perhaps signalling a change in
the author's conception of the book from a loose confedera-
tion of sketches to a highly integrated work. The original
tells us, however, that along with the image of puppet-
master, stage manager and traveling companion, we can
regard the narrator as a rambling artist.

In the travel literature, Thackeray frequently
employed an impressionistic style of narration and descrip—
tion, attempting to convey the "fool" of travel and foreign

countries through clusters of sharp images. In an essay

on Vanity Fair, V. S. Pritchett notes this method, saying

 

that Thackeray "is the first of our novelists to catch
visually and actually life as it passes in fragments before
us . . . he is above all a superb impressionist—sperhaps

our greatest . ."17

His sharp ear for dialogue, his use
of selected detail to "reconstruct" the Regency era in his
1840's novel, his ability in this wide-ranging, quick—
moving book to suggest new settings and places in short
paragraphs are all facets of his skill as an impressionist.
Take the first paragraph of the novel:

a large family coach, with two fat horses in blazing

harness, driven by a fat coachman in a three—cornered
hat and wig . . . A black servant, who reposed on the

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

189

box beside the fiflzcoachman, uncurled his bandy legs
as soon as the equipage drew up opposite Miss
Pinkerton's shining brass plate . . . (I, 1)

The thick flow of visual detail that opens the book is

sustained throughout.

The landscape mode of‘The'IrishiSketch;Book, the

 

organization of natural scenery into word pictures, carries

over into Vanity Fair. One passage I have quoted above««

 

the Southampton to London road section—-is a sample of
Thackeray's arrangement of a series of images into a pic—
ture frame. He falls into this pattern again in Chapter
XXVIII, as he describes the lowlands before the great
battle of Waterloo, and in Chapter LXII, where he sketches
the Rhineland.

The prose texture of Vanity Fair, aside from land—

 

scape prose drawings and impressionistic etchings, is rich
in its allusions to foreign lands and travel. Old Mr.
Osborne "basked . . . as a Neopolitan beggar does in the
sun" (I, 186); Becky is considered like "the most hardened
Arab that ever careered across the desert“ (III, 345); her
sordid history in Europe cannot be baldly described, just
"as the Ahrimanians worship the devil, but don't.mention
him" (III, 289). These are only a few examples: continue
ally the novel harkens the reader to foreign lands and
cultures by the fund of metaphor, allusion, simile and
comparison woven into its prose. Like travel literature,

the writing excites growing awareness of the world "out

there."

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

190

The most important link between the travel litera-
ture and this novel is, perhaps, their common use of the
narrator-—how he dominates the works by funneling all
information to the reader, and by shaping that information
through opinion, exhortation, and emphasis. This dominance,
of course, is not the exclusive property of the travel
books and the novels, but extends to virtually every prose
form Thackeray worked in; it links all his literature.

Even though it cannot be claimed that vanity Fair derives

 

its puppet-master's dominance from the travel narratives,
two techniques flowing from it deserve mention here: the
substitution of psychological relationship for temporal,
and the emphasis on process as well as product.

In Chapter III, I showed how Titmarsh.would narrate
according to the flow of his experiences and the associa-
tions they summoned up, rather than to strict chronology

and the itinerary of his trip. In Chapter X of The Irish

 

Sketch Book, he would leap backwards and forwards in time,

 

freely digress into short essays, and inflate the importance
of seemingly insignificant events, while skimming over
"major" ones. The first half of Chapter XLVIII in vanity
gag; likewise seems structured on the passage of thoughts

in the narrator's mind, not the characters' passage through
time or movement through space, This section tells of
Becky's presentation to that "Magnificent Idea," George IV,
but shuttling in and out is the narrator with his commentary.

Surrounding the details of Becky's trip to the Court that

 

 

 

 

 

—>—‘% "_ _ 7" 7
191

day, her dress and what she said, and connecting one fact
to another, is a web of memory, Opinions and predictions
spun out by the narrator: ideas about the ways Older
women dress, the remembrance Of seeing the King thirtyetwo

years ago, and the knowledge Of the future: "a score Of

 

years hence . . . that milliner's wonder, will have passed
into the domain of the absurd . . ." (III, 20). These
various reflections are vitally important——they provide

the context whichgives the bare record Of Becky's meet-

ing both significance and meaning. This marvellous

passage (and there are many others) demonstrates the
puppet-master's great power: his thoughts determine the
contours of the narrative, the association Of those thoughts
determine narrative movement, and his Opinions, in large

part, determine the reader's response.

 

The importance of this narrator, and his frankly
intrusive nature, call attention tO the process Of story!
telling and novel—writing, as well as the product itself,

Vanity Fair. In the travel books, we are aware that the

 

narrator is composing his narrative, and that the events
confronting him are shaping it. Likewise, the making Of

Vanity Fair is one Of that novel's favorite topics, with

 

frequent asides noting problems encountered and efforts
exerted. There is the rhetorical question: "But what
would have become Of our story and all our friends, then"

(II, 63); the discussion of technique: “And, as we bring

 

our characters forward, I will ask leave . . . not only to

 

192

introduce them, but occasionally to step down from the

platform and talk about them" (I, 117); the concern at

what the reader will think: "Yes, I can see Jones at this
minute . . . taking out his pencil and scoring under the
words . . ." (I, 8-9). Thackeray is the kind Of performer

who loves to share the tricks of his trade with the
audience--a magician who, during the show, will eXplain

how the rabbits pop out Of his hat.

In sum, Vanitnyair is permeated with travel motifs,

 

and shaped in part by the travel literature that preceded

 

it--the book's events, themes, narrator and narrative
techniques point backwards, toward the author's experiences I
in foreign lands and his early writings about them. Indeed,
travel embraces not only the different aspects Of the novel,

but the whole. For in "Before the Curtain," Thackeray

 

considers the entire enterprise-estage manager, characters,
the Fair itself—~a sort of traveling show that has moved
through "all the principal towns in England".fI, xviii);
one that "a man with a reflective turn of mind," perhaps

the reader, can travel through himself at his own pleasure.

 

 

 

 

 

 

FOOTNOTES - -CHAPTER IV

lStevenson, p. 153.

2Works, I, 1. All subsequent references will be
identified within the text.

3The definition Of a "major character" in a novel
(or play, or motion picture) is slippery. In'vanity'Fair,
I believe that Becky Sharp, Lord Steyne, William Dobbin,
Rawdon Crawley, George Osborne, Amelia Sedley and Joseph
Sedley are the major characters due to their importance
in the narrative and the amount Of time they engage the
author's attention. ' '

4Ruth Benedict, Patterns Of Culture (Boston:
Houghton Mifflin, 1934), p. 79. She is quoting Neitzsehets
The Birth Of Tragedy (New York: Random House, 1924),
pp. 40, 68.

 

 

 

5Benedict, p. 122.
6Benedict, pp. 78-79.
7Pritchett, pp. 829-830.

8See Bernard J. Paris, "The Psychic Structure of
Vanity Fair," Victorian Studies, 10 (1967), pp. 389e410.
In part this article sees Amelia and Dobbin living by a
compulsively "compliant" value system, and BeckySharp by
a compulsively "aggressive" one. In some ways, those value
systems parallel Apollonian and Dionysian ones.

9

 

 

Ray, Adversity, p. 422.

 

loBenedict, p. 131.

1George J. Worth, "More on the German Sections Of
Vanity Fair," Nineteenth CentUry'Fiction, 19 (1964), p. 402.

12John K. Mathison, "The German Sections Of vanity
Fair," Nineteenth Century Fiction, 18 (1963), pp. 243.

 

13Paris, p. 394.

 

 

 

 

194

l4Mathison, pp. 245-246.

15Ray, Adversity, p. 385. Bradbury and Evans
placed an announcement in Punch in November, 1846:

NEW WORK BY MICHAEL ANGELO TITMARSH
VANITY FAIR
BY W. M. THACKERAY

 

l6Pritchett, p. 95.

l7Pritchett, p. 823.

 

 

 

 

 

CHAPTER V
FOREIGN LANDS IN THE OTHER NOVELS
In this final chapter, I would like to expand

briefly on my discussion Of Thackeray's thematic treatment

Of foreign lands, here touching on the way those countries

 

appear in his other novels. Vanity Fair was his great
work, and its vision Of Continental life was implied in
the one novel that preceded it (Barry Lyndon) and sub-
stantiated in the five that followed it (Pendennis,Henry
Esmond, The Newcomes, The Virginians, and Philip). While
these other books include Ireland and the United States
as travel destinations, the views that Thackeray holds on

the Continent in Vanity Fair carry over to those nations

 

also.

Essentially, Thackeray sees foreign culture as (
Dionysian (as I have used the term in Chapter IVI+e- i
culture that is directed toward the release Of energy, 1
toward liberation, toward self-expression. This unchained
energy moves in two Opposite directions: the path Of
beauty and affirmation, or the path Of violence and des-
truction. In Vanity Fair, theglamor Of Brussels was an

example of the positive side, and the battle Of Waterloo

195

 

 

 

 

196

a representative Of the negative; and the splendor and
savagery of the Continent--its tendencies to excessive
beauty and ugliness—~are treated in many other ways
throughout the novel. The other novels use the same
positive/negative pattern.

In those books, I find several prominent themes
that stress Dionysian virtues: foreign lands havegreat
color and liveliness; young romantic love can flourish in

them; they afford great freedom; they foster artistic

 

expression. In The Paris Sketch BOOk, Thackeray noted
"the dark uniformity Of a London street" which looks as
though "it were painted in India—ink" while there is "a
thousand times more life and colour" On a Parisian byway.
This motif is picked up in Pendennis, when Helen Pendennis
sees on her Continental tour: “black-veiled nuns with
outstretched arms kneeling before illuminated altars . . .
bare-footed friars in the streets . . . priests in gorgeous
robes, theatres opened, and people dancing on Sundays" (WOrks,
VI, 73). The sheer brightness and Vibrancy Of foreign lands
extends to natural scenery-—Clive Newcome crosses the Alps

beholding the snows on St. Gothard, and the

beautiful region through which the TicinO rushes

on its way to the Lombard lakes, and thegreat

corn-covered plains Of the Milanese . . . 0

sweet peaceful scene Of azure lake, and snow—

crowned mountain, so wonderfully lovely is your

aspect, that it seem like Heaven almost . . .

(Works, VIII, 169-170)
In this bright world, the artist's Opportunities are

great. Clive Newcome and J. J. Ridley spend long months

on the Continent in practicing their painting skills:

 

 

 

197

there is the artists' colony in Rome that is depicted in

The Newcomes; Philip Firmin hones his writing skills while

 

living a Bohemian existence in Paris. The people have a
great esteem for art, Thackeray believes, and thus "An
artist in [Paris] is by far a more distinguished personage
than a lawyer & a great deal more so than a clergyman"
(Letters, I, 261).

English visitors are frequently charmed and
delighted by the colorful and artistic world Of foreign
culture. Young Philip Firmin claimed his days Of poverty
in Paris were the happiest Of his life, and he does not
stand alone in so celebrating life abroad. In The Newcomes,
Ethel writes to Laura Pendennis: "I remember, in Old days,
when we were travelling on the Rhine, in the happiest days
of my whole life"; and the author muses that "when Clive
Newcome comes to be Old, no doubt he will remember his
Roman days as amongst the happiest which fate ever awarded
him" (Wgrkg, IX, 262; VIII, 229). Even dishonest Barry
Lyndon enviously looked back on his freebooting Continental
days, despite the subsequent wealth he assumed.

Thackeray's work and letters abound with passages
celebrating the natural beauty and idyllic charms—«one
example being these reflections in the Roundabout Papers:

I had occasion to pass a week in the autumn in the
little town Of Coire or Chur in the Grisons . . .
The pretty little city stands, so to speak, at the
end of the world—«Of the world of to-day, the world
Of rapid motion, and rushing railways, and the
commerce and intercourse of men . . . I have seldom

seen a place more quaint, pretty, calm and pastoral
. . (Works, XXVII, 1)

 

 

 

 

 

198

This is the image of a golden era, of the idyllic pastoral
experience. Romantic love is part of that experience,

and Thackeray depicts several pairs of lovers in foreign
lands. Philip Firmin and Charlotte Baynes fall in love

in France; Clive and Ethel Newcome revel in their days.
along the Rhine; Henry and Rachel Esmond quickly settle
down in America after their marriage.

Finally, there is freedom in the air——people are
allowed to pursue their inclinations without heavy social
pressure. In Paris, Philip shuns the stultifying manners
of the British colony as much as possible, to mingle
happily with open and spontaneous natives. In The’N€Wcomes,
the young people at the Congress of Baden find themselves
freed, in part, from manners based on selfish calculation
and stiff tradition. Freedom, of course, is a two!edged
sword, and the greater liberties allowed in foreign coun—
tries give the opportunity for simple, straightforward
and honest conduct, while including the open temptations
to evil. One can become a developing artist, a maker of
beautiful things, like J. J. Ridley, or blossom into a
dissolute, vicious gambler like Barry Lyndon.

So because of this freedom, Thackeray's golden age
and pastoral garden stand uncomfortable near a ruthless,
primitive jungle of crime and murder. This is the predatory
world inhabited, in Vanity Fair, by figures like Major
Loder and Becky Sharp on the lower levels, and Lord Steyne

and Napoleon on the upper ones. The primary qualities of

 

 

199

the foreign netherworld are violence, immorality, and
deceit, extending all the way from individuals to entire
governmental structures.

In work after work, Thackeray paints scenes of
warfare, bloodshed and murder in other countries-every
revealing when one considers that most of the action of
Thackeray's novels occurs in England, but most violence

happens abroad. Take this passage from Henry ESmond,

 

concerning a campaign the in War of Spanish Succession:

our troops entering the enemy's territory, and
putting all around them to fire and sword; burn—
ing farms, wasted fields, shrieking women,
slaughtered sons and fathers, and drunken soldiery,
cursing and carousing in the midst of tears, terror
and murder. Why does the stately Muse of History

. . . leave out these scenes, so brutal, mean,

and degrading, that yet form by far the_greater
part of the drama of war? (Works, XI, 15s6)

Barry Lyndon and The Virginians also have long sections

 

dealing with Continental warfare, and those passages
invariably deal with the gory and blood-letting aSpects of
military struggle, instead of making it appear heroic or
glamorous. The uncivilized Sport of duelling is also

treated unsympathetically in Henry Esmond, Barry_Lyndon,

 

 

and The Newcomes, as a distasteful example of warfare on

 

the individual level. Perhaps because of all this violence,
death becomes an important part of Thackeray's vision of
foreign lands, and it claims victims not only by brutal
means, but--in the case of Helen Pendennis and General

Baynes of Philip-—by natural ones.

 

 

 

200

Warfare becomes not only fact, but metaphor for
foreign life—-for a Hobbesian world where peOple swindle,
trick, and assault each other, leading lives which are all
too often nasty, brutish and short. Barry Lyndon's career
as a professionalgambler is a marvelous model for such.an
existence. It is a procession of rigged gambling matches,
cheating on debts, lying and duping others. An excep-
tionally large portion of the novel is devoted to a sordid
intrigue that Lyndon and his uncle become involved in while
residing in a German duchy, and as this affair unwinds the
cyncism, duplicity, and ruthlessness of all parties becomes
apparent.

Thackeray was also shocked by the greater sexual
freedom of foreign lands (Ireland and the United States

clearly excepted here). In The NeWComes he talks of the

 

Baden—Baden gambling tables, where there are:

ladies who are not virtuous at all, no, not even

by name . . . where you meet wonderful countesses

and princesses, whose husbands are almost always

absent on their vast estates—-in Italy, Spain,

Piedmont—-who knows where their lordship's

possessions are? (Works, VIII, 29)
The married woman traveling by herself, whether through
simple separation from her husband or divorce proceedings,
was an object of scandal to Thackeray, and he placed these
women in Continental settings. Lady Clara Belsize of The
Newcomes, Agnes Woolcomb of Philip, and a host of minor

characters can find social acceptance on the Continent

where they would meet outright rejection in England for

 

 

 

 

20¢

their deviations from the strict sexual—marital codes.
While Thackeray could find some sympathy for such outcasts,
he generally sided with those who decried more tolerant
and liberal mores; he would at times contrive suffering
and humiliation for such.transgressors. Henry Esmond was
the product of pre~marital dalliance, and although.he was
legitimatized by a late marriage, his mother spent the
balance of her life in a convent, expiating her sin.

In his travel writings and private letters, Thackeray
was a frequent critic of foreign political institutions,

finding them inadequate and harmful. In The Paris Sketch

 

Book, for example, he attacked French monarchs such as

Louis XIV and Louis Philippe, ridiculed the French.legal

 

system, and bluntly dismissed the political thoughts of

Louis Napoleon. In his novels aside of Barry Lyndon, suCh

 

criticism is rare. But in that first novel, the individual
knavery of the people and the cynicism of the rulers are
drawn together on the same broad canvas—~and leaders like
Frederick the Great of Prussia are not seen as standing
above the predatory jungle, but as partaking in its pur—
suits with special skill.

As I have indicated, Thackeray‘s_general treatment
of foreign lands as Dionysian is consistent, and continu—
ally falls into the "beauty vs. brutality" pattern. But
within this limited framework, there is considerable
variety, and Thackeray finds various ways to fit foreign

lands and travel into the overall thematic patterns of

 

 

 

 

202

his novels. In Henry Esmond, for example, there is a
three-way structure involving England, the Continent, and
America. In this scheme (to simplify somewhat), the Con“
tinent is the arena for continual, bloody strife and naked
deceit; America, a place of repose, where Esmond's life
"was passed in the tranquil offices of love and duty"

(X, xx-xxi); and England, somewhere between the two. The
title hero is a soldier on the Continent, a farmer in
America, and primarily a suitor for Beatrix in England.

The Newcomes, on the other hand, emphasizes the possibili—

 

ties for young love and artistic expression on the Contia
nent, and more violent aspects of that region are played

down (but not excluded). In The Virginians, a very inter—

 

 

esting reversal takes place from Thackeray's usual practice-~

 

America, the birthplace of Henry and George Warrington,
becomes the "home" country, while England becomes a
"foreign“ land to the two young visitors. Against this
background, Thackeray develops, years before James, the
"international theme" of American innocence against
EurOpean experience and cynicism.
Further, the relative importance of foreign travel

varies in these novels, ranging from the dominant'(Thel

Yirginians) to the clearly secondary (Pendennis). Travel

 

 

sequences take up large blocs of The‘Newcomes and‘Philip,

 

but are restricted to several key chapters in.Henry‘Esmond.

 

Some novels are concerned with.travel in a singleforeign

country; others deal with several.

 

M -W :

 

 

 

 

203

These differences, of course, are less important
than significant similarities. Presented in each novel,
presented in like and purposefulways, foreign lands and
travel are clearly major interests in Thackeray's fiction.
They are, furthermore, interests central to his personal
life and artistic career, so that a study and illumination
of them enhances our understanding of Thackeray's mind and

art.

 

 

JV“ ‘ .(Q ‘.‘ I ‘

 

V——‘m7.'TT-T"."-.-."..-'T‘ "‘

FOOTNOTES - -CHAPTER V

lWorks, XVII, p. 13. All subsequent references

will be identified in the text by volume and page.

 

20¢

 

BIBLIOGRAPHY

 

 

 

BIBLIOGRAPHY

I. Primary Sources--Thackeray's Works

Thackeray, William M. The Letters and Private Papers of
William Makepeace Thackeray. Ed. by Gordon N.
Ray. 4 vols. Cambridge: Harvard University
Press, 1945—1946.

Thackeray, William M. The WOrks of William Makepeace
Thackeray. The Kensington Edition. 32 vols.
New York: Scribner's, 1904.

 

 

 

Thackeray, William M. "Angleterre." Foreign Quarterly
Review, 34 (July, 1844), pp. 234-239.

Thackeray, William M. "City of the Czar." London Times.
August 30, 1858, p. 3.

Thackeray, William M. "City of the Czar." London Times.
September 7, 1838, p. 2.

Thackeray, William M. “Elliott's Travels in Austria,

 

 

Russia, and Turkey." London Times. October 2,
1838, p. 6.

Thackeray, William M. "Elliott‘s Travels in Austria,
Russia, and Turkey." LondOn Times. October 4,
1838, p. 3.

Thackeray, William M. "Excursions on the Shores of the
Rhine." Foreign Quarterly Review, 27 (October,

 

1842), pp. 57-67.

Thackeray, William M. "Extracts from the Travelling Journal
of a German Naturalist." FOreign'Quarterly Review,
26 (July, 1842), pp. 203-211.

Thackeray, William M. "Fraser's Winter Journey to Persia."
London Times. November 16, 1838, p. 3.

 

Thackeray, William M. “How to Observe." London Times.
October 9, 1838, p. 5. ‘

205

 

 

A ‘fl—is ;

 

 

 

 

206

Thackeray, William M. "Lord Lindsay's Travels in Egypt
and the Holy Land." London Times. September 25,
1838, p. 2.

 

Thackeray, William M. "New Accounts of Paris." Foreign
Quarterly Review, 32 (January, 1844), pp. 254—265.

 

Thackeray, William M. "The Rhine." FOreign Quarterly
Review, 25 (April, 1842), pp. 77-92.

 

Thackeray, William M. Thackerayfs Contribution to the
Morning Chronicle. Ed. by Gordon N. Ray.
Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1955.

 

 

Works by Other Writers

 

Addison, Joseph. The Miscellaneous Works of Joseph
Addison. Ed. by A. C. Guthkelch. London: 'G.
Bell, 1914.

 

Borrow, George. The Bible in Spain: or the Journeys,
Adventures and Imprisonments of an EnqliShman in
an Attempttto Circulate the Scriptures in the
Peninsula. London: J. M. Dent, 1907.

 

 

 

 

Boswell, James. The Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides.
Ed. by R. W. Chapman. London: Oxford University
Press, 1970.

 

Dickens, Charles. American Notes and Picturegjfrom‘ltaly.
London: Oxford University Press, 1957.

 

Fielding, Henry. The Journal of a Voyage to Lisbon.
Ed. by Henry Pagliaro. New York: Nardon, 1963.

 

Gilpin, William. Remarks on Forest Scenery, and Other
Woodland Views, Relative Chiefly to PictUresgue
. Beauty. 3d Edition. London: T. Carhill, 1808.

Hazlitt, William. "Notes of a Journey through France and

 

Italy." The Complete Works of William Hazlitt.
Ed. by P. P. Howe. London: J. M. Dent, 1932, X,
pp. 83-303.

Heber, Reginald. Bishop Heber in Northern India: Selec-
tions from Heber's Journal. Ed. by M. A. Laird.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1971.

 

 

Irving, Washington. The Alhambra. Revised Edition.
Philadelphia: D. McKay, 1894.

 

 

 

ui—————_————fip A! , or

 

 

 

207

Irving, Washington. "A Tour on the Prairies." The Crayon
Miscellany. Holly Edition. New York: Putnam,
1895, pp. 1-276.

 

 

Johnson, Samuel. The Yale Edition of the Works of Samuel
Johnson. 9 vols. New Haven: Yale University
Press, 1963-1971.

Kinglake, Alexander. Eothen, or Traces'Of'Travel'Brought
Home from the East. 2nd Edition. London: John
Oliver, 1845.

 

 

Smollett, Tobias. Travels through France and'Italy.
Fontwell: Centaur Press, 1969.

 

Sterne, Laurence. A Sentimental Journey'thrOugh'FranCe
and Italy. Ed. by Ian Jack. New York: Oxford
University Press, 1968.

 

 

Sterne, Laurence. Tristram Shandy. Ed. by James A. Work.
New York: The Odyssey Press, 1940.

 

Trollope, Frances. Paris and the Parisians in 1835. New
York: Harper & Bros., 1836.

 

Tuckery Josiah. Instructions for Travellers. 1757; rpt.
New York: S. R. Publishing, 1972.

 

Warburton, Eliot. The Crescent and the Cross: or, Romance
and Realities of Eastern Travel. 2 vols. New
York: G. P. Putnam, 1849.

 

 

II. Scholarly and Critical WOrks

 

Auden, W. H. "Introduction.“ The AmeriCan Scene. New
York: Scribner, 1946, pp. v-xxiii.

 

Baker, Joseph E. "Thackeray's Recantation." PMLA, 77
(1962), pp. 586—594.

Bate, Walter Jackson. From Classic to Romantic: 'Premises
of Taste in Eighteenth Century England. Cambridge:
Harvard University Press, 1946.

 

Benedict, Ruth. Patterns of Culture. Boston: Houghton
Mifflin, 1934.

 

Bradner, Laurence. Thackeray. London: Longmans, 1964.

 

Burke, Thomas. Travel in England. New York: Scribner,
1946.

 

 

 

A: -———_———H 4 is A r“

 

 

208

Cook, T. G. Transport and Communications. Edinburgh:
Oliver & Boyd, 1971.

Cox, Edward G. A Reference Guide to‘the‘Literature\of
Travel. 3 vols. Seattle: University of Wash—
ington Press, 1935—1949.

Colby, Robert A. "Barry Lyndon and the Irish Hero."
Nineteenth Century Fiction, 21 (1966), pp. 109—130.

Dean, James L. Howells' Travels Toward Art. Albuquerque:
University of New Mexico Press, 1970.

Dodds, John W. Thackeray: A CritiCal Portrait. New
York: Russell & Russell, 1963.

Fedden, Robin. English Travellers in'the'Near'East.
London: Longmans, 1958. '

Frye, Northrup. "Towards Defining an Age of Sensibility."
ELH, 23 (1956), pp. 144-152.

Grieg, J. Y. T. Thackeray: A Reconsideration. London:
Oxford University Press, 1950.

Gulliver, Harold Strong. Thackerayis Literary Apprentice—
ship. Valdosta: Southern Stationery, 1934.

 

Hagan, John. "A Note on the Napoleonic Background of
Vanity Fair." Nineteenth Century'Fiction, 15
(1960), 358-361.

 

Hardy, Barbara. The Exposure of Luxury: ‘Radical Themes
in Thackeray. London: Peter Owen, 1972.

 

Hibbert, Christopher. The Grand Tour. London: Weidenfeld
& Nicolson, 1966.

Kirkpatrick, F. A. "The Literature of Travel 1700-1900."
The Cambridge History of English Literature. Ed.
by A. W. Ward and A. R. Waller. New Yorkz"G. P.
Putnam, 1917, III, 265-283. '

Loofbourow, John. Thackeray and the Form of'FictiOn.
Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1964.

Mathison, John K. "The German Sections of'Vanity Fair."
Nineteenth Century Fiction, 18 (1963), pp. 235—246.

McMaster, Juliet. Thackeray: 'The Major Novels. Toronto:
University of Toronto Press, 1971.

 

 

 

 

209

Mead, William Edward. The Grand Tour in the Eighteenth
Century. Cambridge: Houghton, 1914.

Michael, M. A., ed. Traveller's_gu§st:' Original Centri—
butions towards a_Philosophy cf‘Travel. London:
William Hodge, 1950. ‘

 

 

Miller, Perry. "Afterword." The Sketch Bock Of'Geoffrey
Crayon, Gent. New York: New American Library,
1961, pp. 371—378.

Monk, Samuel H. The Sublime: A Study of Critical Theories
in XVII-Century England. New York: Modern Lan-
guage Association, 1935.

Nicolson, Marjorie Hope. Mountain Gloom and Mountain
Glory: The Development of‘the‘AesthetiCS'Of'the
Infinite. New York: Cornell University Press,
1959.

 

Paris, Bernard J. "The Psychic Structure of vanity Fair."
Victorian Studies, 10 (1967), pp. 389—410.

Pritchett, V. S. "Afterward.", vanity Fair: ‘A NOVel
Without a Hero. New York:r New American Library,
1962, pp. 823—830.

 

Ray, Gordon N. The Buried Life:' A Study of the Relation
Between Thackeray's FictiOn and'His Personal
Histor . Cambridge: Harvard University Press,
1952.

Ray, Gordon N. Thackeray: The Age of Wisdom'184761863.
New York: McGraw-Hill, 1958.

Ray, Gordon N. Thackeray: The USes of‘Adversity‘18ll-
1846. New York: McGraw—Hill, 1955.

Rice, Warner G. "Introduction." Literature as a Mode of
Travel: Five Essays and a PostScript. New York:
The New York Public Library, 1963, pp. 7-10.

Saintsbury, George. A Consideration of Thackeray. London:
Humphrey Milford, 1931.

Scholes, Robert and Kellogg, Robert. The Natureof
Narrative. New York: Oxford UniverSIty Press,

1966.

 

Solomon, Eric. "Thackeray on War." VictOrian Newsletter,
No. 23 (Spring, 1963), pp. 6—11.

 

 

 

-—— n—_ao-‘ s.» _- to»;

 

210

Stevenson, Lionel. The Showman'Of'Vanity Fair: ‘Th 'Life
of William Makepeace ThaCkeray. New York:
Scribner, 1947.

Tillotson, Geoffrey. Thackeray, The Novelist. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1954.

 

Trease, Geoffrey. The Grand Tour. London: Heinemann,
1967.

 

Wheatley, James H. Patterns in Thackeray's Fiction.
Cambridge: M.I.T. Press, 1969.

 

Williams, Ioan M. Thackeray. London: Evans Bros., 1968.

 

Wilson, James Grant. Thackeray in the United States,
1852-3, 1855-6. 2 vols. New York: Dodd, Mead,
1904.

 

Wilson, Mona. "The Decline of the Grand Tour." ‘Grand
Tour: A Journey in the TrackS‘of'the'Age of
AfiStocracy. Ed. by R. S. Lambert. London:
Faber & Faber, 1935.

 

Wood, Robert. Victorian Delights. London: Evans Bros.,
1967.

 

Worth, Geroge J. "More on the German Sections of vanity_
Fair." Nineteenth Century FictiOn, 19 (1964),

pp. 402-404.

 

 

 

HICHIGQN STRTE UNIV. LIBRQRIES

 

.2. . T
.3. _

 

.v. :.
find...