traces of Thackeray's haphazard method.

The story was "revealed" to him, he says, at Berne in Switzerland, where he had strayed into a little wood, and both characters and plot grew under his hand as they listed. It was written at odd times and in odd places, and when it was finished, Thackeray contemplated it, as he contemplated all his books, with a curious aloofness. He hardly knew whether the people of his drama "are not true; whether they do not live near us somewhere." Such was his attitude towards his creations. He thought them alive; he heard their voices; he was touched by their grief; but he was never really master of them; and the result is that half The Newcomes is irrelevant.

In 1857 Thackeray permitted himself a holiday from literature, and stood for Parliament. His views were Radical, and the seat which he chose to contest was Oxford. Nor was it unexpected, this incursion into politics, for politics had attracted him ever since, at the age of twenty, he had aided Charles Buller at Liskeard. In The Constitutional, as we have seen, he had 66 supported consistently, though feebly, the great cause of Radicalism," and he had expressed his sympathy with Richard Cobden by contributing a drawing or two to The Anti-Corn-Law Circular. But though his interest in the affairs of the country was constant, he cannot be called a violent partisan, and it would puzzle the most ingenious reader to formulate his political creed. The author of The Book of Snobs was obviously a staunch democrat, who loved the people for

its own sake, and who devoutly believed in the natural wickedness of monarchs. "I would like to see all men equal," he wrote in 1840, "and this bloated aristocracy blasted to the wings of all the winds." When Punch gave him his chance, he descended from the general to the particular, and attacked the Prince Consort, his hat, his Chancellorship, and all that was his with a ceaseless violence.1 The Bal Poudré, which the Queen gave in 1845, aroused his bitterest scorn, and inspired him to a piece of satire that was neither pointed nor in good taste.2

But for all his detestation of kings, for all his love of the free and enlightened democracy, he had no sympathy with the people when it attempted to capture its "rights" by force. He found its "views about equalising property" mere robbery, and he "thanked God that they had not a man of courage at their head who might set the kingdom in a blaze." In other words,

1 In Mr Spielmann's Hitherto Unidentified Contributions of W. M. Thackeray to Punch' the curious will find ample material for forming a judgment on Thackeray's political opinions.

2 It has been said by more than one of his champions that Thackeray had a profound admiration for the Queen and Prince Albert. If this were so, he showed it in the oddest fashion, and Shirley Brooks's well-known lines, quoted by Mr Spielmann, expressed the general indignation

:

"We'll clear thy brain. Look westerly. See where yon Palace stands ; Stains of the mud flung there by thee are on thy dirty hands."

But Shirley Brooks wrongly attributed the offence to Douglas Jerrold, with whose disloyalty he contrasted

"The truthful, social sketch, drawn with Titmarshian skill With colour bright as Dickens's, and pencil keener still."

his love of the people was platonic, and was more than counterbalanced by his hatred of physical force. So, too, in his treatment of Ireland, he never showed a bigoted admiration of one party or the other. He judged even the great O'Connell on his merits, and while to-day he pronounced him "the greatest man in the Empire," and eloquently compared him to Washington, to-morrow he is a buffoon, who, when "the Want of a Nation stares him in the face, replies with a grin and a gibe," an old sharper, who takes his compatriots' money, and scorns even to hide the jugglery by which he robs them." His views upon Young Ireland were equally inconsistent. In 1843 he contributed an effusion"Daddy, I'm Hungry"-to The Nation; yet two years later he had never heard of Davis, whom he attacks with becoming energy. And through it all he was constant only to one thing-Home Rule-which he supported at first for the sake of Ireland, and secondly that Great Britain might be well rid of a disloyal and avaricious partner.

Such was Thackeray's political record, when in 1857 he opposed Mr Cardwell at Oxford. The circumstances of the election were peculiar: the sitting member, Mr Neate, had been unseated for "twopennyworth of bribery which he never committed," and Thackeray frankly declared that "he would not have stood against. Cardwell, had he known he was coming down." But having stood, he fought the election with all his energy. The foremost plank in his platform was the question of reform, which he had strenuously supported ever

since his appearance at Liskeard in 1832; and he not only pronounced himself in favour of the ballot, but declared that it was his ambition to amend the suffrage "in nature, as well as in numbers." In accord with the principles which he had always professed, he believed that the State would be benefited "by the skill and talents of persons less aristocratic" than those who were then administering it, nor did he spare the electors the familiar commonplaces about "hard-working, honest, rough-handed men." At the same time he loyally promised to "advance the social happiness, the knowledge, and the power of the people," and he lost many votes by advocating the opening of museums on Sunday. But throughout the election he showed himself a man of the world rather than a serious politician. He owned that he "could not speak very well, but," said he, "I shall learn," and he plainly recognised that talking was not the chief business of the House of Commons. That he was not returned was not surprising, least of all to himself, and at the declaration of the poll he made his happiest speech, told the story of Gregson and Gully, how the victorious prize-fighter was the first to shake the hand of the vanquished, and declared that he would retire, to "take my place with my pen and ink at my desk, and leave to Mr Cardwell a business which I am sure he understands better than I do." Thus ended Thackeray's one political interlude, which in his own phrase was "very good fun," and the failure of which none regretted less than himself.

220

CHAPTER VIII.

THE VIRGINIANS-THE EDITORSHIP OF THE

CORNHILL.

As

So he returned to take his place with his pen and ink at his desk, and four months after his defeat at Oxford there appeared the first number of a new novel -The Virginians, a Tale of the Last Century. Esmond was the natural result of the lectures on The Humourists, so The Virginians came in due sequence after the lectures upon The Four Georges, and Thackeray's two journeys to America. But no books could differ more widely in treatment than Esmond and The Virginians. Esmond is a deliberate work of art, composed with a definite purpose, and in a definite style. It is the worst fault of The Virginians that it is without form or shape. It is less a novel than a series of essays interspersed with anecdotes, and with experiments in the art of literary imitation. It professes by a permissible fiction to be written by a

1 The Virginians was published in twenty-four monthly parts, from November 1857 to October 1859.